Good Afternoon Clunkdriver:
It would appear you have kicked over a hornet's nest here. That being said besides the lying part which might or might not be in the Kool-Aid that is consumed in we should consider the following:
• Remember the illegal use of the employee travel site where it was proven they were using Air Canada Propriety information to adjust their prices?
• Air Canada countered their disingenuous misrepresentations in court and was winning the case when West Jet threw in the towel
• For those who have convient memory loss that Clyde Beddoe came to YUL and bought Robert Milton lunch at Queen Elizabeth Hotel, "donated" 10 million to Dreams take Flight the charity that Air Canada Employees support that take children in terminal phases of cancer to Disneyland for a day and apologized in the media for doing so
Also did they not have a problem with Transport Canada with their maintenance in their first couple of years when they almost lost their Operating Certificate? If I remember correctly as it was a while back Air Canada said they would honour their tickets so the passengers would not be stuck
As far as their service goes some business friends I know decided to try West Jet and came back to Air Canada because they could not do work on board because of all the corny jokes on the P/A, the pass the toilet paper roll front to rear to see which side gets off the flight first etc.
In closing I will add this which I feel is egregious behavior on the part of West Jet executives who are alleged to be lobbying the Finance Minister against extending the pension holiday that Air Canada needs to force Air Canada into bankruptcy again.
To those who would say good ask your selves this who would want to step in to take the place under the provisions of the Air Canada Participation Act ie be bilingual, be mandated to have 4 maintenance bases, forced to fly to communities that are not viable, head quarters forced to be in Montreal and the list goes on I am sure if the employees of West Jet had to work under the same constraints the Kool-Aid would not be as palatable for them.