So it always was
Though no fan of AC, running commercial aviation in Canada has always being a challenge.
Lots of space and little population means that making money is going to be difficult. In the end if the service providers don't make money everyone, employees and customers suffers.
World wide aviation has always defied financial gravity. Somewhere there is a report by Boeing that calculated for the capital deployed over that last 70 years some tens of billions in return are missing.
In the old days commercial aviation was a regulated utility overseen by government agencies that placed a premium on safety and were not terribly concerned with what customers paid. The customers were chattel assigned to various cartel members who "owned" them. You still hear pilots referring to passengers as "our work" - as if they own the passengers. You never hear a car dealer or a restaurant refer to their customers in those terms.
Things have changed, you have the local LOCO, Southwest, Ryan, EX etc that work with a high frequency, single equipment, short haul model that Canada cannot support except in very few markets. The other is the growth of the EK's, Cathy, Jet etc who are taking long haul traffic away from the bilateral legacy carriers. They are two incompatible markets. Different equipment, marketing, staff utilization etc. It is no coincidence that airlines making money were never part of the legacy bilateral cartels and stick to one segment or another.
So Canada is stuck in a changing world market. AC, among a lot of others, has never let go of its legacy thinking and converted to an operation that can make money. Being a LOCO really doesn't work and would mean abandoning long haul. Being purely long haul, doesn't seem to be an option due to markets and geography.
If commercial aviation is to thrive in Canada carriers need to make $$$. AC's biggest challenge is a change in mindset of the management, required first, and then the employees. I'm not sure that will ever happen short of AC going bust and breaking up in two completely separate companies and then developing management practices and costs that are compatible with the sector they are operating in.
It is going to be tough on the AC employees but slowly the competition is creeping in and there is little that can be done to stop it. Emirates, and others will get more slots in Toronto, Southwest and Jet Blue will show up in Canada, and Westjet will continue to grow.
The days of one airline operating mixed fleets and pilots working up that chain are dying. As a practical matter having multiple equipment bids and the associated costs makes the labor expensive even if the pilots themselves are not paid more than their peers.
20driver