24left

Link to Presentation

Air Canada's Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, Michael Rousseau presentation to the CIBC 17th Annual Eastern Institutional Investor Conference - Montreal - Sept 26, 2018

https://www.aircanada.com/content/da...9262018-en.pdf

Chart on page 3




Mods - feel free to edit, merge etc

Stranger

Nice. Now the man can retire in peace.

vernonc

Seat densification ? How much denser ?

24left

You need to look at the other charts in the presentation. Topics like culture change, customer engagement (like mobile), rouge....
Much more entertaining.

ChrisA330

ChrisA330

24left

Yes, but still entertaining.

shadowspar

Heh, it's true. Slide 12, for instance:
They might want to get a grip on the deflating seats in J, otherwise a new premium passenger's first trip on AC might well be their last.

CZAMFlyer

A reasonable person might think so, but we need look no further than this forum to find plenty of examples of premium flyers - with choices - finding themselves seated on an airborne park bench time and time again, happily paying for the privilege.



I was looking at the Customer Engagement side of the slide, and marvelling at how AC seems to be trumpeting the four points as wins.

Improved customer experience seems directly at odds with other points on the slide (seat densification for example). Most of the ground-based customer experience gains are a result of airports' and agencies' improvements, not the airline's.

Award-winning (cough cough) products and services seem to be considered so only in the eyes of the marketers. We all know that AC is a solid mid-tier airline when compared to top airlines globally in terms of food, service, lounges and seats. Bottom-tier if we factor in the IT experience.

Launch of new loyalty program is something the customers neither asked for nor wanted, and came only on the heels of years of gutting the original benefits. And given that we're still shielded from any details, it doesn't seem it's anything worth heralding in advance.

The Investments in technology seem largely obsolete before the bugs are rolled out. Are they referring to the AVOD? Sure, anything's better than that old Thales POS, but aren't we largely turning towards our own streaming devices with downloadable content? I can travel for a long time without needing to watch a constantly-interrupted and glitchy screen showing material somebody else curated for me. Tablet devices and audio/video streaming technology have done an end-run on seatback entertainment.

We could go on...

Well done, Air Canada for taking credit for "geographically well-positioned hubs". Was that Taylor, Harris, Brewer or Milton who strategically placed Vancouver and Toronto where they sit?
How does AC manage to boast about "efficient in transit facilities processes" that are a brainchild of the airport authority and are available to WestJet passengers?
AC, are your "record" levels of liquidity and financial results really that impressive, considering the low bar from which you started?

Ahhh, Marketing. These eastern institutional investors to whom you speak must be an unquestioning bunch.


That's enough of that. Hey you kids...git off mah lawn!!!!

Stranger

I suspect that's the one area which is real though. I believe they are referring to upgrading their systems, mainly reservation and moving away from RES-III. Which won't be cheap, won't work if poorly managed and if expectations are unrealistic. But they already got bitten once and hopefully this time, with IT mnagment with some experience, they'll manage their expectations better and hopefully it will go somewhere. Transition to Amadeus that is.

canadiancow

AC had/has a large role in the past and future improvements at several airports. And not everything is available to WS passengers.

YEG USER

YYC009

I saw the same thing when I read it. Didn't anyone else catch that?

AtlanticXpat

As a Procurement guy I noted this "Procurement initiatives – savings of $120 million over life of agreements" which while a big number lacks any context to make it meaningful. What is the spend over the total life of those contracts? If it includes aircraft procurement then I'm thinking $120m over an unknown number of years ain't necessarily that impressive.

CZAMFlyer

Fair point. I can only speak to my local airport, in which AC actively resisted some of the efficiency enhancements and were less than enthusiastic adopters of some of the ideas on offer. For example, bypassing the need to collect checked luggage and endure pre-board screening when transiting from international to domestic (ITD) flights from the US, Europe and Australia. Despite shortening ITD connection times to a quarter of an hour, it involved a bus, so that was a sticking point for AC. They became, of course, happy to participate once their chief competitor went all-in.
In this airport, the services in question are indeed available to WS passengers. Some benefits (much faster CATSA Plus lines for example) are available to domestic WS but not AC passengers, unless they want to clear security at a different terminal pier and take a detour through a corridor on the secure side. That's a function of building design, and not reflective of either airline.
Mind you, the food & beverage outlets at the domestic AC pier (which are all changing soon, save one, by the way) are blessed to have a much more prevalent rodent problem which does not exist to the same extent at the WS gates. So there's that.