MANY FREQUENT FLYER POINTS, BUT NO FREQUENT FLIGHTS

March 1, 2001

OTTAWA – Members of the Canadian Alliance met with Air Canada officials yesterday afternoon to discuss the rapid deterioration in the company’s service to most of western Canada. 

Officials from the Government Relations department had been trying to schedule meetings with Alliance MP’s to address the concerns raised in the House of Commons this week by Alliance Chief Transportation Critic, Jay Hill, who has been leading the charge on allegations of abuse of dominance and predatory pricing by Air Canada toward emerging competitors. 

The meeting request was raised during the Alliance Caucus meeting on Wednesday morning and the Members unanimously agreed that a meeting was necessary, but that the topic should be the cancellation of numerous flights to and from western Canada during the month of March. The announcement was made days before the service was yanked, leaving many travellers with tickets for flights that no longer exist. 

Good luck finding anyone that would have wanted to trade places with two brave souls from Air Canada: Steve Markey, VP Government Relations and Regulatory Affairs, and Fred Gaspar, Government Relations Manager, who showed up for the meeting. For close to two hours the pair faced a barrage of questions regarding Air Canada’s ability to provide the service promised by their boss, Robert Milton. One thing is certain, they left the meeting with two very clear messages: 1) don’t show up to a meeting with frequent flyers unless you have done your homework, and 2) MP’s are regular travellers so they have a good understanding of the level of service Air Canada is providing to its passengers. 

It may come as a surprise to some Canadians that MP’s don’t have a special air service (with the exception of Ministers who have access to private Military Challenger flights). MP’s are frequent users of Air Canada and get bumped, stranded and re-routed just like everyone else.

Some of the unanswered questions, which the pair should have been able to answer but at least committed to “looking into”, were: 

1) How can flights that are constantly over-booked and for which there is obvious demand be cancelled due to “unprofitable results”?

2) Merging Air Canada with Canadian doubled the amount of aircraft that the “new” Air Canada has at its disposal, so why can’t they figure out how to match the proper sized aircraft to capacity demand on their routes?

3) Why didn’t Air Canada give at least 30 days notice that flights were being cancelled instead of dumping?

4) Why run a “Frequent Flyer” program if it is making your routes unprofitable? 

The message from Air Canada’s President & CEO, Robert Milton, was quite clear “Our objective is to always deploy our aircraft where it makes the most economic sense.” 

Based on that philosophy, we all better hope that the only place we ever need to fly to is Toronto.