Air Transat

And now on to Air Transat, the company that almost got me off track and I should create another post just to smite them. And so I did.

They were the company that flew us to Bosnia in 1994 and also handled our flights home on leave. Now as you may know, I stayed in Europe for a perversion excursion for my leave, but I was one of the few. All the married folk headed home (there was no reverse LTA program in effect where instead of flying home you could fly your spouse to Europe) and a lot of the single folks also choose to head home. Not only did Air Transat charge the troops to fly home, but they also collected their frequent flier miles from them also. Now, I can't absolutely say this is true, because I stayed in Europe and paid my own way around Europe with a Euro-rail pass. In fact a year later I did the same exact thing. But sometime after that they started to pay single guys travel expenses, and that is good.
To get back to Air Transat, I have heard lots of stories of soldiers getting fucked around on thier flights back to Canada. Well actually most of the bitching was about the fact they had to pay for the flights. I fear some under the table bargaining took place. They actually had a lot of work to do to get us out of Bosnia. On my leave we were supposed to fly out of Sarajevo, but when we got there there was too much shooting going on, so plan B came into effect and they took us back to the bottom of route Pacman by MLVW (army truck) and loaded us into waiting buses. Thinking back it must have involved some good planning to have those buses there waiting for us. The buses drove us to Dubrovnik, on of the greatest cities on the Adriatic in Croatia. We got to the airport and had time for a bunch of beer before our flight to Rome, Italy.
Uhmmm, I seem to be arguing against myself.
I guess the biggest thing against them was that they kept the airmiles thing (or the RCD did, and now that I think of it the Regt did) and the ones that flew back to Canada payed for the flights.
The Regiment made a small fortune out of this tour and put it into a 20 year bond or something, which as it turns out should be great for our Afghan vets,,, maybe...
Heck I should review this whole post but what the heckness...