Shareholder

I am surprised one of our Alberta colleagues did report on this newspaper article last weekend, but PunishedEdmontonian was out here in Toronto so he wouldn't have seen it. One of my business partners in Edmonton posted it to me and I only got it yesterday.

The Edmonton Journal ran a full page page A13 feature about the problems of getting Aeroplan awards. I wish I could post a link, but the revamped Global/Southam website is even worse than AC's when it comes to being able to access the information you really need. [Since the item ran last Saturday, today's pages supercede whatever may have lingered on the site. And I can find no search function that permits retrieving old articles from any of the Southam papers. This used to exist in the past, when they all had independent sites, but not on this new improved Converged version.]

Among the complaints, agents don't always know all the options for routing, particularly on STAR partners, so put the onus on the caller to be ultra informed, [i.e. Aeroplan agent recommended AC award to SYD and paying for a flight between SYD and PER, while the caller knew she could claim a STAR award on TE/NZ and fly to AKL and then on to PER.]

Analyst Jacques Kavafian lauds AC's short haul awards, noting UA or other American carriers don't offer them. He then notes that on AC a short haul would cost 15K, compared to 40K on UA.

An AC spokesperson states Aeroplan is seeking non-travel awards because the last thing someone earning SE is likely to want is another plane ride somewhere. However, Kavafian notes that offering items like Walkmen makes the awards look "cheaper", since such an item might cost the same number of points as a domestic flight.

Nothing in the story we aren't familiar with, but handled in an interesting fashion based on complaints that people are unable to claim the awards they want at this time of year.

tcook052

SH, I'll plead guilty for not posting that article. But a little surprised it didn't find it's way into print in TO.

Quite a balanced article on the whole. Was glad to see it included another reminder to book reward seats well in advance. While an occasional critic of our national airline, I do not have much patience for those infrequent flyers who expect to book rewards seats to Hawaii at Xmas in mid-Nov and then badmouth AC to everyone when it isn't possible.

I'll remove my default belief that what I read here is being read the same day elsewhere and keep a closer watch for future article of interest to the community.

ALW

When you get to the individual newspaper's site, on the left side, about half way down, is an item called "Archives". This allows a search through the last 14days (hardly an archive to me) of articles. Couldn't get it to hit on this week-old article in any case.

andrew

Shareholder

Thanks, Andrew. I guess it never made it to the electronic version, and thus was not archived.

tcook052, the article may yet make it into some of the other "Southam" papers, but often this can take a week or two. May start popping up in the Saturday or Sunday weekend features sections. And other than the NATIONAL POST, we Torontonians don't have a local "Southam" daily, and the STAR never picks up such items as it is an independent paper.

ALW

A friend has articles in the Ottawa Citizen from time to time. Often she'll get a surprise cheque weeks later when they run the article in another Southam paper (the articles are almost always in Homes or Style [sometimes Wheels] so they're relatively timeless).

Her stuff almost never (or never?) appears online since that would require additional payment.

andrew

I miss CDN

Here is the story in its entirety. I was unable to post a link as I am not the most technoligically adept.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I have removed the story as I am unable to post a web link. I have kept a copy should anyone wish to read it.

[This message has been edited by I miss CDN (edited 08-04-2002).]

[This message has been edited by I miss CDN (edited 08-04-2002).]

Shareholder

Thank you for posting the article. It was done by a staff person.

I would ask, however, for copyright reasons, that you go back to the web page you got it from and see if you can do a "copy" of the URL string across the top of your "Adress" box on your brower. This usually then can be pasted into your FT post. I know on Netscape, you can actually go to "View" and find the actual page URL string, which can also be copied and posted into the post.

On Explorer, I have been unable to find a similar simple URL page display, though some of this information can be found under the "View" menu's "Source" listing.

ALW

You can get the URL of any page in Explorer by right-clicking on the article and choosing "Properties". Pasting a URL into FT is easy, just paste the whole thing starting with "http://" and the UBB software will make it a link, as long as there's a space before and after the URL.

I still can't find that article on the site, so I can't provide the URL.

andrew

I miss CDN

Shareholder, While I have not posted a link, I hope that I have adequately resolved the matter.



------------------
I miss Canadian Airlines

Shareholder

Can you send Andrew Webber or myself the page reference you used to find the article, or just where you found it, and we will post the link. I was not rebuking you for posting the article, but just advising how you might in future better post such things.