Thanks to Parnel for organising the event. Thanks to Ben Smith and the AC team for attending and being so open to ideas and complaints. Thanks to Simon for an excellent summary of questions and answers.

Simon, just one subject missing....Jazz. I appreciated the opportunity to air my concerns about Jazz, its poor on time performance, its poor concern about connections and the endless frustration of arriving in YYZ on a plane already late and waiting for minutes on end because the ramp guy with the wands is nowhere to be found to bring the plane to its final parking position.

While the gentleman in the SOC was very instructive it was interesting that when I asked about Jazz when flights need to be "thinned" during adverse weather his answer immediately related to routes on which both mainline and Jazz fly. My concern, of course, is with a route only Jazz fly.

I learned a lot from the session and was grateful for the opportunity to speak directly with execs of AC and AP. I think I made my service concerns known and I hope they are conveyed internally at AC. There is much that has improved greatly at AC in the last months but much remains to be done. I think the people we met are committed to getting there.

One suggestion I made which I hope board members will consider and is perhaps worthy of another thread is to arrange a similar session with other players in the air service business. Many of our frustrations, especially at YYZ though we also heard about YYC, originate with GTAA, NavCan, CATSA and Customs. At least with AC some of us can walk our ticket buying else where if we are unhappy. Those others have no similar accountability mechanism.

We need to focus some consumer attention on GTAA, NavCan, etc. They drive our cost of tickets up and our speed of service down. The AC team told me that in the US there is a system where planes can taxi to the nearest runway from the gate and take off. Not so in Canada. I've experienced this in the US and I too often experience the taxi to Brampton or Barrie that adds huge amounts of time to a short haul flight out of YYZ. We need as a community to be as tough on these agencies as we often are on AC. I'd love to hear other views on how we might do that.

Thanks again to Parnel and Ben Smith et al.