six7driver,
It's hard to roll your eyes when they're hiding behind a blindfold.
Sorry but I am far from convinced. What's that old saying? "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics".
As someone else already said, numbers can be manipulated in a myriad of ways to achieve a desired result. A "researcher" looking to support the Air Canada side of this dispute could easily take the numbers from the quoted study and manipulate them to favour their side.
I find the study numbers dubious for two important reasons. There is nothing in them to suggest that the passengers numbers they are claiming are new passengers. To suggest otherwise is to claim that somehow Emirates has a magic bullet that will encourage 274,000 Canadians to travel when they otherwise wouldn't have, had it not been for their saviour from the UAE. And since these are not new passengers, they have to come from somewhere else, thus taking revenues and jobs from a competitor. So to claim new jobs and revenues as a spinoff is disingenuous. They aren't new, they're just replacements. My bet is that these replacement jobs would pay less than the jobs that are already out there, thus taking money out of the hands of our citizens and our economy. Not much of a benefit, IMHO. As an aside, the number of O & D passengers between Canada and the Emirates wouldn't fill one aircraft a month, never mind on a daily basis. So all Emirates is really looking to do is to take passengers to other places in the world when those passengers can already get there through multiple gateways with the current services that are in place through both Canadian and foreign carriers.
I may be wrong, but it sure sounds to me like you're more interested in taking something (anything) away from Air Canada and its employees than anything else. And for the record, I am not an Air Canada employee, nor have I ever been. I'm just an industry employee who is interested in looking at the entire picture, including the cultural differences that would let someone believe that what is coming out of the UAE is anything other than a threat made by a bully who is used to getting their own way.
Last edited by J.O.; 22nd March 2010 at 20:32.