CanadaEH

Hi Kip, I did not suggest doctors or nurses should be minimized nor did I suggest they shouldn't receive "free anything". I am simply pointing out that many other people deserve credit for the situation they find themselves in via their employment. Nothing more, nothing less.

Maybe I'm in a sour mood.. Nurses deserve credit, 100%. But so too do the doctors and janitors at hospitals; firefighters, police officers, and paramedics attending emergencies; customer service agents at grocery stores, liquor stores, gas stations; flight crews; and anyone else who has to be "exposed" to the general public. These aren't heroes these are people doing their jobs because they have to while some people don't. Nurses deserve a lot of credit I just don't want to diminish the contributions of a lot of other people in society right now.

Nailed it. The level of optimism/hope from the employee group at large needs a reality check. The false hope of things getting better fast sets a bad tone. I prefer the doom and gloom because that's exactly how bad it is. This is as honest as you can get and people need to realize they better polish up their resumes and start looking for the next job because for a lot of people that's the reality they face but have chosen to avoid acknowledging. I also think the statements are directed to the government equally as much as the workforce and general public. Of course we want to grow and of course we want to be bigger than we are today. We can't do it without government support so help us (airline) help you (economy). Get moving on the loans you keep promising us.

What is it?

It will be interesting to see how flights come back. You have to think that there will be cluster countries (low rates/deaths) that would open up their doors to each other vs. automatically opening otherwise wide open and highly travelled borders (i.e. Canada/USA). You have to think the AC/AT deal will fall apart because of this and AT may very well become the first Canadian casualty. AC and WJ will both shrink significantly over the next 5 years.

WestJet provides masks for repatriation flights. Has been doing so prior to the order.

So basically no consistency. Awesome.

Person flying required to provide their own? Or airline provided? Who denies boarding?

Sorry to hear that. How high up in tenure are the layoffs going?

I stand to be corrected but the pilots have avoided layoff up until this point. This would appear to be in-line with cuts across other operational groups.

This is a good idea. Lots of work to be found across organizations that wish to exploit "downtime".

I really hope this isn't the government's way of "helping" airlines. It seems ridiculous. But as someone who has a spouse that's been laid off I'm happy to have her collect a bigger paycheck than what she was otherwise going to be getting on EI.

They aren't going back to work. They're going back on the payroll so they can collect more than they would otherwise collect on EI (max $575 weekly vs. max $875 weekly @ 75% subsidy). They'll get laid off again when the subsidy ends which is currently early June.

100% There was concern that once the MAX returned to service that it would flood the market and negatively impact margins. Now that airlines have shrunk their capacity up to 90% it's going to take a very long time for things to return to what we once considered "normal".

Absolutely. Once a vaccine is developed people are going to travel. This event is going to change the world in a lot of ways. Travel won't be one of them for those that can afford it.