Overheard On Board A Delayed Air Canada Flight

Great Moments In Socialism 103 Comments

“Good morning, and welcome aboard Air Canada flight 354. We apologize for the delay. Marnie, the Chief Flight Attendant. has informed us that she and Bonnie are nearly finished repairs to the engines and we should be departing shortly. Please be patient as our Captain finishes serving your complimentary drinks. Thankyou.”

103 Replies to “Overheard On Board A Delayed Air Canada Flight”

  1. jlchydro,
    English language proficiency is not of utmost concern in most Computer Science and Engineering programs; in particular spelling is not a major concern. The reason for this is quite simple, about 1/3 of people in Computer Science and Engineering are ESL students, and if they focused too heavily on people�s spelling and grammar they would fail about 1/3 of their students by default.
    I recognize that my spelling is not particularly good but being that I don�t bother people who have math skills that are so poor that they have problems calculating the tip at a restaurant (that is Humanities and Social Science majors) so I generally expect the same in return. If you can�t accept that please prove the Primary Decomposition Theorem in relation to Elementary Canonical Forms and get back to me (oh yeah, did I fail to mention my math degree, which prevented me wasting my time in pointless humanities courses to improve my written English?)

  2. FlyByNight Air wants to hire flight attendants at whatever rate of pay. Marnie and Bonnie accept at the offered rate of pay. Where exactly is the problem?

  3. As a Corporal in the Canadian Forces (we’re not the ‘Armed’ Forces anymore, if no one noticed) I feel I should be paid as much as that pencil pushing officer shining his ass in Ottawa while he lines up a six figure job by kissing all the other shiny assed senior officers and beaucrats. I’ve risked life and limb while others in the same organization sit pretty and and try to find new ways to get themselves posted to Colorado or Brussels. That’s just not right! 😉
    Actually, I think I have a better case than the Flying Barbies who have the audacity to speak of there worth in the same breath as a pilot or the maintenance crew. If only Stalin had had an airline….

  4. I wouldn’t read to much into all this. Air Canada will use the ruling to their advantage anyway. For some unions, especially mine (IAMAW) negotiations are coming up mid 2006 and only pay is on the table, and I am not holding my breath for a pay raise, because the Air Canada Technical Services is a seperate enity and from what I understand, it is operating at a loss therefore no wage increase.
    Air Canada never got the concessions it wanted from the workers (ie: massive pay cuts), but in my field of aircraft maintenance overhaul we are up against low cost American maintenance facilities and third world country facilities. We are good at what we do, if not the best in North America, but too expensive. It’s funny, a car dealer can charge $95/hr, here $55 for aircraft maintenance is too expensive.
    To be honest I expect my job to be outsourced in the near future to a third world country.

  5. If any of you just watched President Bush’s State of the Union address, looks like they want to sharpen their competitive edge meanwhile we concentrate on dulling ours…Air Canada’s going to move their head office to Kentucky or somewhere next…along with Hudson’s Bay Co., CP Rail and all the rest of our founding businesses…judicial activism…disgusting concept.
    D

  6. This is a silly arguement.
    Fundamentally, I agree that flight attendants are important to the ‘safety aspect’ of a flight; however, they are no more important than that of a bus driver (in the event of an accident), or a cruise ship attendant (in the event of an accident).
    Let me be very clear, aircraft accidents are are ‘scary’ (like Stephen Harper… haha sorry..), but so are busses, subways, boats, trains, etc, etc.
    Pilots go to school and apprentice for about 8 years before they can fly commercial planes (with terrible pay). They do not deserve to make the same amount of pay as flight attendents! This is a no-brainer!
    The Government has no business in this!

  8. Doesn’t Hooters have their own airline yet?? Maybe their attendants would be worth more than the pilots ha ha. I am not sure “Barbies” is a term that applies anymore, at least not on some of the AC trips I have taken.

  9. I’m awake for roughly the same amount of time each day as the CEO of Air Canada. Does that qualify?

  10. Careful DougL…next thing you know, the gov’t will be trying to levy ‘Consciousness Tax’ for how long we’re awake every day. 🙂
    These blog thingies need spell checking… 🙂
    😀

  11. Perhaps the SCC should also look into making any pay-equity adjustments apply to all other indutries, businesses, government offices, etc. and while they are at it , make the adjustments retroactive for the duration of ones’ career.
    That way, I stand to collect a huge bundle to compensate me for the injustice of having been paid so much less than the CEO’s of the companies I worked for over the last 30 years.
    Gee, thanks Air Canada FA’s! I think you are really on to something here. :))

  12. I doubt anyone would ever disagree with the idea of equal pay for equal work.
    But that’s not what “equity” is about.
    It’s a bureaucratic weasel-word and represents a specious concept: equal pay for work of equal value.
    Want to make the same much money a pilot makes?
    Become a pilot.

  13. Oops!
    Typo alert. Fourth line should have read:
    Want to make the same money a pilot makes?
    Mea culpa!

  14. Precisely, JJM. Equity and equality are two separate words/concepts. That being said, if Canada wasn’t such a limp wristed nation of sissies, always suffering from so-called low self-esteem and jealousy that somewhere out there there is another Canadian that has one more dollar than you, this pay equity charade could be nipped in the bud.
    The only “equity” I support is equal pay for IDENTICAL work. Anything else is candy assed social engineering.

  15. If the flight attendants at Air Canada were all happy what would happen to their motto:
    “Service with a sneer”

  16. Just curious: where do you people get the idea that “pay equity” eans that everyone gets the same salary? It doesn’t. It simply means that the same standard of job classification should apply to all employees of an establishment. That means that if (for example) you base a salary partly on “education and training” in a job classification scheme, you cannot weight this factor differently for women than for men for comparable jobs.
    In the federal government, if I remember correctly, more than forty different job classification schemes existed at the time of the pay equity decision, each weighting qualifications differently, and some in an outright discriminatory fashion when jobs were compared.
    The unions wanted one Universal Classiciation System, but even to this day it doesn’t exist. I know that people here want the market to decide all this, but I would point out that most major corporations do have a single classification scheme (e.g., Hayes), and that assuredly does not mean that everyone from CEO to cleaner gets the same wage.
    “Establishment” as used in pay equity legislation simply means the business under review. That should be a pretty simple concept to grasp, but Air Canada actually tried to make the case that establishment = bargaining unit. That didn’t, er, fly. Clearly pilots, mechanics and flight attendants work in the same establishment. Hence they should be rated under one job classification scheme. Seems about right to me.
    (As an aside, interesting to see Anonalogue, or Ottawa Core, or whatever he’s calling himself these days, cite an organization with neo-nazi links.)

  17. Dawg – out of curiosity (and I have no idea what you’re talking about re: neo-nazi) but have you ever written approvingly or cited Castro-worshipping Trudeau?

  18. All i can say, after reading all this is one thing, It’s really pathetic how MOST of you feel about Flight Attendants, contrary to your comments, (mostly sexist), and unless you’ve done this job, will never really understand why we’re onboard, we just have to look at Air France incident in Toronto last August to understand that their jobs went WAY beyond serving a “blankie”, or making sure your requests are answered to… This is what they said in the news that day:
    “And how the passengers got out, we talked to a couple of them here at the CBC, one guy on the phone said the lights went off and lost power, but he applauded the crew, saying they evacuated everybody in an orderly way, pulled out those slides.
    And how many sitting on a plane when you’re getting on a plane actually listen to that safety instruction all the time?”
    And yet another:
    “(in the)news they said yesterday, that the plane was evacuted in about 90 sec. This seems incredibly fast, but even if it took longer, the crew made really an excellent job to get anyone out. Bravo.”
    This is the REAL reason why flight attendants are on your flight, and why most people survive a crash of that magnitude…
    I’d like to see a vending machine, as suggested by some of you, try and pull you out of your seat…
    What an insult!!

  19. Trudeau? TRUDEAU? You’ve GOT to be kidding, Kate. I despised the man. I hated his egoism, his arrogance, his shrugging off opposition, his macho posturing…Don’t get me started. I’ve never said a nice thing about that man in my life.
    I was referring to RealWomen of Canada. You can read all about the Anne Hartmann connection in my good friend Warren Kinsella’s book, Web of Hate.

  20. In a nation where bureaucrats determine wages according to their definition of equity, it won�t be long before those same bureaucrats are the highest compensated employees in the country. Nobody is more valuable than a bureaucrat, in their own estimation.
    Actually, I agree with the concept of pay equity. Cut the pay of pilots to the level of trolley dollies.

  21. This is CUPE trying to drive their Femi/Nazi agenda.
    The requirement to get on as a Flight Attendant at Air Canada is a High School Education, a Second Language (not a big one for 90% of Quebecers, which is where a large percentage come from) and a Pulse.

  22. Flight Attendant’s are firmly in the Un-skilled, to at best Semi-Skilled job category. The Big Airlines/Big Unions have turned it a simple Job into a career.
    There is no pre-requisite education or skill required. What little they know is taught to them by the Airline and the Unions have made it out to be Brain Surgery
    Wardair had it figured out, keep them Young, Good Looking and Stupid. Treat them poorly and they’ll do it for a couple of years and move on.
    The travelling public loved Wardair’s service. The Flight Attendants provided great service and moved on before becoming burned-out Sky Hags.

  23. I remember PWA Flight Attendants going on strike, I believe it was the early 80’s?
    They were hiring like crazy for ‘replacement workers,’ a neighbor gal took a job.
    The entire training was THREE DAYS!!
    Blessed by the Government.

  24. “Wardair had it figured out, keep them Young, Good Looking and Stupid. Treat them poorly and they’ll do it for a couple of years and move on.”
    Yadda, yadda. Lucky Uli Derickson didn’t work for a company like that.

  25. “The requirement to get on as a Flight Attendant at Air Canada is a High School Education, a Second Language (not a big one for 90% of Quebecers, which is where a large percentage come from) and a Pulse.”
    You forgot the bitchy attitude….

  27. Flyerguy must be an Air Canada Steward.
    The only thing Pathetic is your Union and it’s lack of reality.

  28. Actually if you read the synopsis of the Air France crash you will find that it was the PILOT who made sure the plane was empty – the flight attendants were long gone at that point. I fly every week and appreciate the service by the guys/girls in the back but frankly would do just fine without them.
    The flight attendants have argued that they are really there for safety but if that was true, they’d all be 220lb six foot firefighters so they could carry people out the exits, overpower drunks, etc. What’s really telling is that when they do have a problem with a customer… they call the captain back to deal with it. The captain has ultimate command over the airplane and its passengers. NOBODY can override him. He can ignore Air Traffic Control, flight attendants, air marshals, police as long as he believes he is acting to preserve the safety of the airplane. There is a reason they use the term Pilot-in-Command. The head flight attendant is called a purser (“The officer in charge of money matters on board a ship or commercial aircraft.” – American Heritage Dictionary).
    This is a totally stupid decision and actually makes a case for the notwithstanding clause and/or creating a process whereby justice’s can be removed for incompetence.
    This isn’t a guy/girl argument… there are lots of women pilots and guy flight attendants. There is no pay difference between the sexes for the same role. This is just plain STUPID!!!

  29. Kate, incidentally, you know they never serve drinks while you’re stuck on the tarmac. Not even coffee. God knows why, but I’ve suffered through hours of this in my time. You get the complimentary drinks once in a blue moon, but only when you’re airborne.

  30. Dr. Dawg, you should direct that question to an “official” of Transport Canada… As it is they who set the rules you don’t understand…
    To answer “Ken” , i am NOT unionised and DO NOT work for Air Canada.. What by the way do you do for a living??

  31. “Dr. Dawg”, you should direct that question to an “official” of Transport Canada… As it is they who set the rules you don’t understand…
    To answer “Ken” , i am NOT unionised and DO NOT work for Air Canada.. What by the way do you do for a living??

  33. I was simply aswering your question, in case you were about to blurt something stupid about vending machines or something.. lol!!!

  34. By the way “Barry”, some of those Wardair f/a’ s moved to Canadian before being merged with Air Canada.. So guess what… there still around!! 🙂

  35. Now that some airlines allow you to serve yourself homemade baloney sandwiches & coffee, does this mean that you’ll also be allowed to take turns with other passengers flying the plane?

  36. Mike said “I’m all for equal pay for equal work, but……”
    EVERYONE is for equal pay for equal work. The problem is, pay equity has nothing to do with that concept. Pay equity is based on the notion that a difference in pay between a group that is predominately female and another group that is predominately male must be justified on the basis of one having more “value” than the other. When doing so, you can’t consider factors such as the number of people who are vying for the same job; the amount others in the same industry are paid; how distasteful the job is; or the relative amount of brainpower required to do the job. It matters not that there is a critical shortage of qualified commercial pilots, all that matters is the minimum standard for the position. For example, a pilot doesn’t need a university degree. Under education, therefore, he (since pilots are predominately male) receives the same number of points as the flight attendant. Get enough “same number of points”, and you have a valid pay equity complaint. The entire system has cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, and will continue to do so until the legislation (brought in, believe it or not, under Mulroney) is totally repealed.

  37. Dr. Dawg said a lot, most of it completely valid, but some of which is somewhat misleading.
    “(Pay equity) simply means that the same standard of job classification should apply to all employees of an establishment.”
    You’ve corrected this misconception in your example, but just to be clear, pay equity leads to a standard of job classification, one that must be applied to all employees of an establishment – that part is accurate – but that is not what pay equity is or means. Pay equity means that once jobs are classified, you MUST base your salary decisions on that job classification system. It therefore requires that the establishment become a micro-economy for the purpose of salary administration, unable to compare outside the establishment.
    “I would point out that most major corporations do have a single classification scheme (e.g., Hayes)”
    Most major corporations have a single classification scheme because most major corporations are required to do so under the same pay equity legislation that imposed the requirement on the federal public service. Examples: The insurance industry, financial services (but not credit unions), and banks.

  38. Dr. Dawg, in using the term neo/nazi to refer to the Real Women of Canada, you’ve used demagoguery of the worst kind. Was the point that was raised valid or not? You have the intelligence to address ideas, and you should use it.

  39. Patrick:
    “Dr. Dawg, in using the term neo/nazi to refer to the Real Women of Canada, you’ve used demagoguery of the worst kind.”
    Actually, I referred to the links the organization had with that brand of far-Right extremism. Surely there are other sources that one could quote to make the same point? Granted, that was not an argument against the point made–I made that argument in other ways–just a note for the discerning here.
    Your points about pay equity are not that far off my own. Do you have a problem with a classification plan per se? In any case, thank you for the points you raised. I agree with them, except that I think banks are exempt, at least in Ontario.

  40. Patrick:
    “Pay equity is based on the notion that a difference in pay between a group that is predominately female and another group that is predominately male must be justified on the basis of one having more ‘value’ than the other.”
    I still fail to grasp the difficulty you are having with the notion that differential treatment of women and men in the workplace, with respect to remuneration based upon their respective skills and knowledge, can be discriminatory.
    Let me give only one example. Years ago, when I was living in England, a TV show aired about this new concept, pay equity. It looked at a pottery, I believe in Staffordshire, and the wages paid there. Women were employed to paint the china–a job of enormous skill, including hand-gilding of the rims and hand-painting floral designs on plates and cups. Men were employed, inter alia, to sweep up the scraps of china around the kiln. Guess who got paid more? Is this fair?
    You want the market to decide. But the decisions the market makes can discriminate against individuals on the basis of race, gender, you name it. Is it sound public policy to “let the market decide” in these instances? Not in the kind of society I want.

  41. By the way “Barry”, some of those Wardair f/a’ s moved to Canadian before being merged with Air Canada.. So guess what… there still around!! 🙂
    You are correct, after the merger between Wardair and Canadi>n the ex-Wardairs JOBS became careers at Canadi>n.
    Up until that time the Wardair F/A doors were swinging.

  42. Whoops. Reification alert. “The market” doesn’t decide anything. People decide. If they decide in a discriminatory fashion, is that not an appropriate point for intervention? If not, how would one logically oppose, say, Jim Crow in hiring?

  43. Simply put, “Pay Equity” is nothing more than a government mandated vehicle whereby anyone can ask to be paid the same amount as someone else, even if that other person does a different job than you. the only qualification is that you “feel” you are worth the same as the other. (Which is typically MORE).
    C’mon you limp wristed lefties, this is all about advocacy for the lazy under the guise of that good ‘ol socialist catch phrase of “low self-seteem” (read: “this isn’t fair….how come she gets….why can’t I have….there ought to be a law….I’m worth twice that amount….”)
    Go and get your frickin’ pilots license, Bambi. Until then, shut your world-owes-me-a-living pie hole.

  49. I believe the issue was raised to get the hint across to Air Canada management that flight attendants are not pee-ons! We have an important job up in the air just like the pilots. I dont agree we should get paid the same, however we deserve the same respect. Yes they land us safely, but if they don’t they are the first to get out and do not come back to save a passengers life, that is the job of the flight attendant. At most airlines when it comes to contract negotiations, the pilots usually have the upper hand, where the flight attendants get royally screwd. We are not asking to make 100K a year, we are asking to be treated as a person not a employee number. I also believe this whole issue was brought on by CUPE, because flight attendant contract negotiations for wage reopening are up this summer, and they should fight for what we lost a few years ago. Especially since our President gave 300 million to the share holders as an advance, than give his own employee’s their money back that they lost in wage cuts while going thru bankruptcy. We also deserve more credit for busting our backs while Milton and Brewer continue with cut backs. The company does not see that when removing flight attendants from flights to save money not only puts the safety in question, but it also does not get your cocktail in your hand faster, and lets face it, those business class passengers care more about getting their jackets hung up and their drink than if there is sufficient crew onboard to evacuate properly.

  50. I see AirCanaduh had to pay for a fellows Westjet tickets because he arrived to late (45 minutes before) against their one hour rules.He had to buy Westjet tickets at a cost of 1400$ fifteen minutes before they left , but none the less made his destination.
    As they say at AirCanada “We’re not happy until your not happy”
    nothing like a union shop to frustrate life.

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