Re: Suggest Airlines
 

Finally booked with air transat from their website deals and paid extra money for extra room for legs seat.
Air transat also got the facility of air cargo on the same flight

Re: Suggest Airlines
 

Keep in mind that WestJet will be using 737s for this hop.
Having flown back on the same type of aircraft on Friday night from Vancouver-Toronto (which is about the same duration and timings as St John - Dublin), I've been reminded how much worse a narrow-body overnight flight on a relatively short hop across fewer time zones can hurt more than a wide-body flight that's a little longer.

Sure, everyone has their own preferences, but I have no problem with a reasonable layover if it's somewhere that I can actually have a decent quality break: I'm happy to have 5-6 hours in PHL so I can get the local train straight to Reading Market and have a great meal, maybe even a walk 1/2 mile down the road to see a couple of sights, and then a painless train ride back to the terminal before the night flight to Europe. It might seem weird, but turning the whole thing on its head to make a "micro-break" can be brilliant.

Also, if you can get in to a lounge that has a decent shower before taking the night flight, that's even better (if you don't have lounge access for free, one-off paid access is possible - food and booze is usually included, so not hard to justify in terms of value, as opposed to being ripped off for overpriced crap in the main terminal outlets).

+1 on watching out for AC rolling out the 777HD on other TATL routes. It's already been happening on YYZ-LHR from time to time.
The daily day flight from YYZ-LHR is worth considering if you don't mind losing a day in transit, and can overnight close to LHR (you land approx 2100 local time).

Transat seem to be upping their game (not that this was too hard, given the quality of some of their shabbier planes in not too recent memory! But their newest products are more akin to, say, JetBlue), and given AC's downward path in terms of seat pitch/width and what's (not) included, the gap between the two is narrowing.

Icelandair were fine when we flew them ~3 years ago. You can bring your own food on board. They feed kids for free (and give them other freebies - including colouring kits with postcards that they actually mailed for us for free!) - the option of a free stopover either direction is worth a try at least once (tip: apartment rentals in Reykjavik are the most cost-effective for families with kids!).

Re: Suggest Airlines
 

Well, AC flies an A319 on the YYT-LHR flight which is about the same size albeit with better seat pitch than the 737. Sadly, AC will replacing their narrowbody fleet with 737's (& that reduced seat pitch) so they certainly seem to be racing to the bottom with this, 777 HD's and Rouge.

I'll suck up the 319 (or indeed the 737) experience for YYT-LHR as it's a 4-5 hr flight. Any other routing means flying at least an hour and a half in the wrong direction (YHZ) or worse 3.5 hrs (YYZ) followed by a layover.

Re: Suggest Airlines
 

Seat pitch is something that the airlines set. The seats are in tracks and can be adjusted. It has little to do with the aircraft. The more seats you can cram in the better the return for the operators. By tightening the pitch you can squeeze in an extra row !

Re: Suggest Airlines
 

Granted.. but airlines' seat pitches can (and do) vary across the types of aircraft in their fleet. I think this is what Atlantic Xpat was referring to - the seat pitch across various AC aircraft.

I found it interesting that seatguru lost some of their fine-grained detail when their website had a serious refresh a while back... in particular, no longer showing the rows in AC 763s which had 33-34" in Y as opposed to 31-32"..