CBC MARKETPLACE: TRAVEL & RECREATION » TESTING THE SKIES
Testing the airlines: Tango
Broadcast: January 30, 2002
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Inspecting the $4 snack pack

John Walker arrives 9:45 a.m. at Toronto's Pearson International airport. He's travelling on Tango, Air Canada's brand new discount airline.

Walker's return ticket cost $643, the lowest of the three airlines we tested. But there's a hitch: he can't get back in the late afternoon. He'll have to overnight in Calgary.

"The check-in wasn't bad," Walker said. "My concern is direct eye contact with the customer. [It] doesn't seem to be there. It's a canned approach. The smile was a somewhat phoney smile."

But the Tango clerk did manage to score some points.

"I purposely left my itinerary behind and she came running after me. Not bad."

Tango doesn't include meals in the price of your ticket either. You can bring your own or pay $4 for a "Snack Pak." So what do you get?

"Salsa to go, cute little orchard fruit bits, chips to go…and a napkin that matches the outside of the plane."

Better than pretzels, but hardly a lunch.

"The first thing I noticed," Walker told us, "there was no up-sell, no promotion of the product. I thought that was a wonderful opportunity for him to say, 'no it's on the house… try it out this is a great product.' So I was a bit taken aback when I was asked to pay for the product."

Walker added that the plane appeared to be quite clean when he first got on. But then he looked a little deeper and found a dirty newspaper in a seat pocket that was missed by the cleaners.

And the washroom? On a long flight it can get a lot of use.

"The toilet bowl inside was clean. What I always look at is the areas around the door handles… and that was quite dirty. Some areas of the walls were dirty as well. That could be maintained quite easily by someone going in and doing a quality check… Everything else was fine."

Refund/return policy:

At Tango, tickets are non-refundable. If you decide to change the date of your flight, you have one year from the date you buy your ticket to do so.

You can use the ticket for any other flight, but like Air Canada, if the flight costs more at the later date, you'll have to pay the fare difference.

The ticket has to be used by the same person. There is also a cost of $25.00 to change the travel date or destination.

NEXT: More test experiences: Air Canada »

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