will5404

I haven't researched it, but I'm guessing the competitors in these markets have an advantage in labor costs. Further more with J sales on these routes being low to nil, there only hope of making money is shifting lots of Y class passengers with low staff costs. It makes perfect sense for them to do so. If the unions keep labor costs high, eventually AC will be back in bankruptcy and I would hope the government will let it die at that point.

AC WILL default on its pensions without a bail out, just look back on the article about the pilot with a 120K a year pension upon retirement. Does anyone think AC has the money to support this when more and more pilots retire? What have the returns been like in the stock market over the past 5 years?

cslusarc

The big question of the day is whether this new discount airline will have a seperate operating certificate or will it be another airline within an airline. This new venture could work if the unions would agree to reduced pay and new work rules that lead to increased productivity. With most legacy airline like AC, it is archaic work rules in collective bargaining agreements that limit management's ability to run a low cost operation and adapt to current economic conditions.

jlisi984

+1!! Even if it's 50%...

sushi

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YEG USER

I really hope that AC doesn't do this. I hated that AC pulled mainline service on certain routes from YEG such as to YVR back in the zip days.

It wouldn't be so bad if they hat fleet-wide AVOD and premium economy on leisure routes, but to bring in more planes like the 3 amigos with mainscreen entertainment is taking a big step backwards IMHO.

pitz

I have no problem with AC being up-front with its passengers, like they were when they did the Zip/Tango 'experiments', that the service was going to be 'different'.

But I think we all hate arriving at a gate, and finding that instead of meals and a movie, we're in for a ride on some of the uglier aircraft in the fleet.

global happy traveller

may i propose a corporate slogan???

"Discount travel with exorbitant fuel surcharges!"

gglave

No, they were very successful. Their goal was to drive competitors out of business, which they did. Once that was done, they rolled Tango back into the mainline brand.

YYZC2

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

How about "Low Fares are Just the Beginning... No seriously, they are really a comically tiny portion of your actual cost!"

bizaro86

You get status miles on the lowest cost tickets on the three amigos routes to BCN/ATH etc. Hopefully they make the new international routes the same, or at least 50% status as someone else mentioned.

emma69

I rather like the idea of a econ and premium economy aircraft for vacation destinations and Europe. I would love to see the YYZ -MAN route for example, on this new carrier. It is pretty hard to fly to the UK for less than $1000 with AC, but doable for around $5-600 on charter airlines. If AC could launch a product that took what AC does well but at a lower cost, I'd certainly give it a whirl!

Symmetre

Ouch!!

global happy traveller

this relates back to the bigger corporate statement "were not happy until your not happy" ..... i believe i heard that from newspaper or other forums

tcook052

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...rticle1987669/

Calin Rovinescu is moving full speed ahead with Air Canada’s global expansion.

Air Canada’s new low-cost airline division will be launched next winter, targeting under-served destinations in Europe, Mexico and the Caribbean with non-stop service, the chief executive officer said in an interview. He is undeterred by a setback suffered Friday, when the pilots’ union cancelled its ratification vote for a tentative labour agreement.

TheGreatestX

Under-served Mexican and Caribbean destinations?? Are they crazy? How many flights per day are there from any given Canadian city to any given sunspot resort??