Air Canada’s accounting doesn’t add up
Re Air Canada chief upbeat on flight demands, Nov. 1 With crude oil prices, from a high in 2014, dropping dramatically over the next four years, one finds it hard to fathom the argument put forward by Air Canada’s chief executive Calin Rovinsescu that “higher fuel costs” have lead to its current year-to-year drop in net income.
Given Air Canada has, according to its chief executive, “invested very heavily in the top end of our business and we think that is something that helps sustain us,” perhaps its this accommodation of its “top end” clientele and management that’s squeezing Air Canada’s books and not fuel costs, which have dropped, not risen, over the year.
If there’s any squeezing that the nation should be concerned about, it’s Air Canada’s squeezing of its bottom-end passengers forced to sit in seats so tightly pressed together that sardines packed in a tin can appear more generously spaced, while the top-enders of the corporate ladder are sustained in comfort from the profits squeezed from the pocketbooks of the lowerrung.
Operating revenues keep going up, top-enders keep getting rewarded, while for the prols, fares and ancillary fees keep rising while service keeps declining, and Air Canada whines about being “squeezed” by higher fuel costs affecting its quarterly profit?
One can’t help be overcome by the cognitive dissonance being tooted to the public by Air Canada.
There’s so much that doesn’t jive with the fuel story, nor with Air Canada’s reporting of its accounting, that this reader can’t decide whether what he has just read is a case of fake news or creative accounting or both. Mario Godlewski, Toronto