Contact tracing: Whom do you trust - Dr. Henry or AC?
 

Dr Henry said they haven't requested passenger info since march and AC confirms that. Maybe those two parties should sit down again and see where each other stand. It sounds like AC is able to provide the passenger info and contact information that is entered at check in... Makes sense that AC would have that since they have to confirm at least the passenger's name matches the flight manifest upon boarding.

Neither,

Dr. Henry says they aren't getting contact info.

Air Canada says they provide manifests.

Neither of these statements is contradictory. Manifests don't have contact info.

Maybe there needs to be a mandate from Transport Canada to collect contact info at your destination in a special form, similar to what we fill in when checking in for US flights.

Unless something has changed (I haven't flown since COVID), you can fly domestically without providing any contact info unless you are asking for flight notifications or an electronic boarding pass - both of which are optional.

... because the information they were getting was days old and of limited use.

Having dealt with many bureaucrats on almost a weekly basis for over 40 years I am pretty cynical about the whole business. But my impression is that Dr. Henry is not that ilk. I regard her as one of the most trustworthy I have run across.

... and if I had to make a list of the three worst clients to work for, Transport Canada would be pretty close to the top.

According to Golbalnews.ca:

The country’s largest airline says flight manifest information provided includes names, contact information, seat location, itinerary and more.

What does "contact information" consist of? Name, home address and phone number? So I am Jane Smith, resident of YYZ, no cell phone, travelling to YVR, and I am covid positive, what good does this do for Dr. Henry?

I suspect part of the problem here is that what each party means by "contact information" is quite different.

As a bit of an editorial, I am also pretty confident that AC knows this and just doesn't care. In the same way they don't care about social distancing on planes.

How can that be true when you can book and fly without ever providing the passenger's contact info?

This is exactly the obfuscation Dr Henry is talking about. There's no "phone number to be contacted by public health authorities for contact tracing if you're exposed to COVID-19" field in AC's data. There's things that might coincidentally be that, and public health authorities are saying that's wasting their time to the point that they're not even bothering to work with AC anymore.

I cannot book a flight on AC.com without providing an email address. I'm not sure how that works for TA bookings.

I don't think it would be THAT hard to require a phone number be entered at check-in. I'm fairly certain that causes it to be stored on the PNR permanently too.

I think that may be the only booking point that requires it. Does mobile even require one? In my experience, TA bookings contain the contact information for the agent.

The agency and individual agent's info is stored in a separate field since they have an agent specific sign-on for the ac.com/agent portal while the passenger has a separate field for name, DOB, and phone which can be mobile, home, work or number at destination as well as an email field.

Since an email isn't sufficient to do contract tracing, then I assume you are agreeing that the current AC system and the passenger manifest are insufficient for contract tracing purposes?

Even a single phone number is not sufficient. Somebody could provide their home (land line) number and not their cell when travelling.

Mobile # and destination address and alternate contact with same detail would seem to me to be a reasonable minimum. How hard would that be to collect at checkin? I don't know; you probably have a lot better grasp of that than I do. I know the actual programming would be fairly trivial, but it is the privacy, infrastructure, db modifications, etc. that are the rub.

This function will be available very soon, right after the self-serve tool for combining multiple flight credits into a single GC is complete.

On the 15th of some month, right?