ulyparis

Yes I agree, more Canadian content would be appreciated, it is so rare in magazines now. What about books?

Simon

Arjun:

Welcome. Many of the comments you're going to get here are from a FF perspective, of course. Myself:

- more airline stuff ^
- more good restaurants stuff ^ (the out of the way destinations are an interesting read, but not likely places I'm ever going to see. Knowing about 3 great restaurants at an AC destination would be great
-one thing that the US Air magazine had which was a good and interesting read was a "letters to the ombudsman" two pager -- good and bad letters, with responses from US Air. A daring move, and an interesting read.

Thanks for making it a great magazine, and I too love the glasses !!

Simon

gglave

>and what you'd like to see in the future

As a unilingual English-speaker I find the format difficult to read. You should print the magazine back-to-back in English and French. i.e. pick it up it's in French, flip it over it's in English. I realize that the back page is a huge ad revenue location but this would make it much easier to read.

Cheers,
Geoff Glave
Vancouver, Canada

Canada Flyer

Thank-you very much for your reply!

I'll be counting down the days. ^

enRouter

All. A great first day! Thanks for all of your fantastic comments. I will take all of your comments to heart, share them with staff and see what we come up with. I'm doing this for one reason only: to make enRoute better, to engage in dialogue with some of our most important - and frequent - readers and to learn. As this gets longer I will respond to individual requests and questions directly - all of your questions will be answered. I'll start with this: the French/English thing: yes, being a bilingual magazine has its challenges - from design to text lengths. The idea of splitting the magazine has been raised before and there is one simple and one idealistic reason we don't do it: the simple one - advertisers don't want us to split the magazine. And from my point of view, creating the magazine twice is, frankly, boring. Many of the Asian magazines, especially Japanese airlines, do the split run - they have more compelling reasons to do so, of course, given the differences between the English and Japanese alphabets - but it's still half a magazine or, more to the point, the same magazine twice.

And from a symbolic point of view, the thought of separating the two languages into their own spaces/ghettos would leave me, well, sad. It just doesn't feel Canadian. That is another argument, I know, but I feel quite this quite profoundly.

So, the side by side treatment is going to stay. But it can be improved. The last redesign (May 2005) was attempt, in part, to improve the linguistic navigation in the magazine. The arrows, for example, the different font treatments, etc. all done to make the magazine easier to read. I know the dual language thing is always going to have its detractors. No matter how clean we make the magazine, this is going to be an issue. But we are constantly trying to improve the navigation.

Finally - we're looking at rejigging the front of the book. The Jet Set section in other words. And these changes may impact what we end up with on certain pages of the Air Canada section as well. Many of the comments up to now have dealt with Air Canada Altitude material so I thank you again.

You guys are awesome!

Arjun

Simon

And Arjun, if you ever do want a FF correspondent, I'd be another one happy to offer up my services ^

parnel

Sorry, that's not the Canada I live in

Seat13F_AC_CRJ

J'suis d'accord! ^
--
13F

karachi

"FF profile"

not sure if i want this one. there is enough whining, ego inflating and self centred matter going on here at FT. do you really want some snob saying "pet peeves : people who dont dress up in the lounges" for example.

cattle

I understand where you are coming from and regardless of what others say it doesn't make you anti-Canadian as is being implied

You and I (and many others here for that fact) don't speak/read French just as some other Canadians don't speak/read English. That doesn't make either a bad Canadian.

This thread is about suggestions and you made one ^ You were given some reasons why it won't change and they were valid but so was your original suggestion. Don't sweat it

cattle

LOL - hopefully the editorial staff would be able to save us from ourselves

dbyyz

Great initiative!

I find the short stories boring.

I wish the fleet information was complete. I would add examples of where they various aircraft fly to.

I love "ask the pilot" and would like to see you expand on this, to explain other parts of AC's operations, or information on airports, navigation, the people behind the scenes that make AC work, etc.

I would like to see more articles for "tack on" travel, ie when you tack a few days onto a business trip. Things like "two days in NYC" type articles. But not all the typical stuff either. Include interesting, off the beaten path stuff like hip neighbourhoods (as opposed to redevelopment projects) in Buenos Aries, Neruda's homes in Chile, mountain biking in Bolivia, short boat trips to see the Norwegian fjords, civil war battlefields near Wash, DC, etc.

I would also welcome articles about things to do near vacation destinations, for example, the other cities of the Yucatan penninsula (i.e. other than Cancun).

I like the restaurant reviews, but would like to see some smaller, cheaper, good restaurants rather than just all high-end ones.

I like the new, seperate entertainment guide, but its hard to find and difficult to read.

One thing I don't like very much is the AC President's column. It is nice when they are actually saying something, but most of the time I find it is just gratuitous ad-speak.

The road warrior suggestion made by a few others is a good one! Profiles of road warriors or travel tips by road warriors would be interessting.

Good magazine. I am sure you will get a lot of good suggestions on here.

FYI, although I personally prefer the side-by-side layout of English and French in En Route, I once participated in a focus group for Canadian Airlines magazine and the majority of the participants prefered front and back sections.

californiadreamin'

It does to me.



This is true.

cattle

He didn't say he was ofended by the French beside English just that it's hard to read. I don't see anything anti-Canadian about that.

Aelx2k

Hi,

I don't remember if the entertainment guide is part of the magazine or not. However, I wanted to say that I've noticed that the description of movies in the entertainment guide is often misleading. The summaries of movies I've seen don�t' describe the movies well at all.