Just a quick summary of a few of my thoughts on the past couple of week's events:

Government: A disaster. If they were going to invoke 107 they should have done so before the strike commenced. I don't really know why, but I feel that compliance before they walked out would have a higher chance of success than after everyone was on the picket line and in "strike mode" mentality. I get they were trying to force a last minute agreement (and not looking too anti-labour), but it did not work. I expected this to be invoked, but not until a few days after the strike commenced, to put pressure on both sides to come back to the table.

CUPE: Mixed feelings. I am not a fan of unions, and thought it was really not a class act to invade the AC press conference. However, full points to them in rallying the FA's and public support on the "Unpaid work" angle. With the 10 year contract it is logical they fell behind (in terms of purchasing power) the last few years, so they did deserve some degree of increase. And its possible that the amount of "Unpaid work" increased signifcantly over this period due to delays, airport constraints, etc. Its also nice that the junior people appeared to obtain a larger increase. I was shocked at the wage level of new(er) FA's. It is still not clear to me how much actual time (not just paid time) junior FA's work so its difficult for me to judge how fair the compensation is. It does appear that total time spent working is far less that than a 40hr per week job, and varies greatly based on seniority, so salaries (when adjusted for hours worked) appear to be fairly good.

AC: Disaster. Who holds a press conference without security present? And it appeared that those in attendance were not very well briefed or schooled by anyone in their communications department. The Rosseau interview was particularly bad. It was not clear to me what exactly he meant by stating that AC expected Section 107 to be enforced by the government. Did AC have advance knowledge of 107 being enacted? Or was he just referring to once it was enacted it was not enforced? In any event, IMO part of planning in general, and in particular "Crisis planning", is that you plan for all scenarios and certainly the worst case scenario (in this case the strike). He basically admitted that AC had no plan. Now the question is how diligent will the AC Board of Directors be? If I were a Board member and saw the first press conference being invaded by CUPE, I think I would have been calling some of the other Board members then. Things got worse with the way AC handled the customer end the strike and the Rosseau interview. I do doubt that much will come out of this, but I will be watching. In reality, the results and share price will probably recover, and it will be another full bonus for the AC Execs.

Let's hope us as customers and the FA's quickly forget about this so that things on board the aircraft get back to normal when we fly (except for the surliness and the overcooked J meals ).

ps - thanks to our moderator for keeping things flowing the past few weeks. Between the AP announcement and the strike it has been very busy here.