The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 5

THE VANCOUVER SUN, MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1999 AS CANADIAN from Al NEWS IN CONTEXT. If Canadian is dead, they didn't tell employees r- 4 Number of employees and fleet size at Air Canada: 23,000 and 153 aircraft At Canadian Airlines: 17,000 and 83 aircraft Approximate amount Canadian employees gave since 1993 in wage, pension and other concessions to keep airline aloft: $270 million. Number of Air Canada employees in Greater Vancouver: 2,600. Local Canadian employees; 7,500. Estimated economic impact of Canadian operations in Greater Vancouver economy: $1 billion.

Percentage of flights from Vancouver International that are Canadian Airlines: 40. Ranking of Canadian as largest private employer in B.C.: 5th. In Greater Vancouver 2nd, after Pattison group. Hours of work generated by a Canadian Airlines B747 flight from Hong Kong: 1,300. Number of passengers in 1992 using Vancouver International: 9.9 million; last yean 15.5 million.

Sources: Canadian Airlines, Air Canada, Transport Canada, Maclean's magazine. rooms, computer cubicles, showers, a music room, massage chairs, a putting green. An airline lives by its elite frequent flyers, who represent perhaps two per cent of customers but generate 40 per cent of revenues. Sokalski, 28 years with the airline, will remember their names, mark their birthdays, and ease their journey. "It's like having company come to your house," she says.

As for her own worries, these she puts aside, at least during her shift. It's a bit like show business, she says. If Canadian is dying, no one told Peter Smith, a group sales specialist, who helped stage a lunchtime staff barbecue last week to kick off the annual campaign for the employee charitable foundation. Since 1954, it has raised more than $14 million. This year's beneficiaries include the Coast Foundation and Covenant House, both supporting the disadvantaged in downtown Vancouver, and B.C.'s Children's Hospital.

You might think donations would fall, considering years of wage cuts and uncertainty, he concedes. "Surprising-, ly, it hasn't been that way at all." Canadian also has a corporate foundation. Billion-dollar debt not withstanding, it doles out air tickets and other assistance for such events as last month's AIDS Walk Canada, and Sunday's CIBC Run for the Cure for breast O- Its headquarters is in Calgary. Vancouver is its Asian hub. Here, at least, Canadian is not the basket case Montreal-based Air Canada portrays.

Some 40 per cent of flights from Vancouver are on Canadian. Its local payroll is $320 million annually. Its estimated local economic impact is $1 billion. Employees are reminded of their links each time they enter the sleepless city of Vancouver International along its main thoroughfare. Grant McConachie Way is named for the pioneering president of what was Canadian Pacific Airlines when he established its Asian routes 50 years ago.

A plaque outside Richmond Mayor Greg Halsey-Brant's office commemorates the first trip in 1973 that a Richmond delegation made to its new sister city of Wakayama, Japan. CP Air was the carrier, one small way Mc-Conachie's vision shaped the Asian influence of the Lower Mainland. "I just can't see Air Canada, based somewhere else, would have quite that focus and energy," the mayor says. "We're quite concerned about a change of direction here." From its seat-of-the-pants beginnings in 1942, the western-based airline chafed at the advantages and prime routes lavished on federally run Trans-Canada Airlines, now the privatized Air Canada. Its growth into Canadian Airlines was a chaotic affair these past two decades a series of mergers followed by cash crunches, mounting debt and employee bailouts.

This crisis is different. Fancy flying alone won't win the air war precipitated by Onex Corporation's plan to buy and merge a weakened Canadian with a hostile and unwilling Air Canada. However the takeover bid plays out, many industry analysts expect just one international airline to survive the dogfight between the goose and the maple leaf. It isn't likely to be the smaller, poorer Canadian. "I don't think there's any going back for either airline," says Danny Strilchuk, Canadian's manager for workplace diversity.

A 20-year employee, he began with Pacific Western Airlines, another founding partner of what is now Canadian. PETER BATTISTONIVancouver Sun FRIENDLY SKIES: Pilot Lee Jasper at the controls of a new flight simulator. cancer. Both events are highlighted in the airline's employee newsletter under the plaintiff headline: "Is this the last time we lace up as Canadian Airlines?" If Canadian is dying, no one told Peter Healy, principal of Charles E. London secondary school in Richmond, where the province's only "aviation career preparation program" depends on a partnership with Canadian.

The students spend three weeks a year "shadowing" a Canadian employee on the job. For some it's the first step to flight school, or to the aircraft maintenance engineering program at BCIT, where Canadian also has a partnership. "They've stuck with us through thick ent among minorities, among aboriginal groups, among disabled people, for jobs that may never be filled. The Airbus simulator, installed at huge expense this summer, also reflects Canadian's corporate determination to carry on, come what may. The training centre itself is another example.

Classes continue in the complex of 100 instructors and 22 classrooms attached to Canadian's giant four-bay hanger. One classroom is filled with aircraft seats and a galley to teach the art of food service at 40,000 feet. Another is the complete interior of an aircraft, able to be filled with smoke at the push of a button for emergency drills. Then there is a language school, so successful in teaching accelerated courses in other. Other travellers swirl past, politely averted their gaze from the sweet sorrow of their parting.

Across the terminal, Valerie Wilson of Port Coquitlam happily anticipates a 1 p.m. Canadian flight to Toronto and a visit with her grandchildren. Annie, her smooth fox terrier, was making the journey, too. Her husband, David, says they have been faithful customers since the days of Canadian Pacific. "I wouldn't like to see it gone," he says.

What will happen to ticket prices? Valerie asks. And to the employees? More than 15 million air travellers will arrive and depart from Vancouver this year. Yet even in this jaded age, emotion is part of every flight. It is some of what makes a merger all the more complex. The goose and the maple leaf are pioneering airlinesThey grew with the nation, and, paradoxically, they shrank the country.

Each has scattered families and brought families together and some of those memories vest with each carrier. Back in the flight simulator, Capt. Jasper takes the Airbus up a second timepver Boston, in fog and heavy weathei r. I I Mandarin, Japanese, French and Span- He agrees with Canadian manage and thin," Healy says. "We're not writing them off yet." On Tuesday, Transport Minister David Collenette and Prime Minister Jean Chretien gave conflicting messages about the degree of job loss and 'consumer price protection the government would tolerate in any merger or of Canada's two major ment that Onex's proposed shotgun ish, that Canadian offers its services to merger of the two airlines is the best other companies.

7 option. juDoiq suj "We kind of see it as a competitive "I here got to De changes to them says John Madden, direc- oVee Trainingand Devel dustry to make it work better, ncsays: tor 01 fcmpl PETER BATTISTONIVancouver Sun WELCOMING: Concierge Marlene Sokalski greets weary travellers at the Empress Lounge in Vancouver's airport scaled back. Then, there's the heavily advertised unveiling of jts business-class menu and its "millennium-class seating. Z.Z.'"'.Z.S," If Canadian is dying; youH notsee a hint of it in the warm smile of Marlene Sokalski, one of 15 concierges serving Canadian's business class travellers. She works from the expense-ac.

count of the new Empress Lounge, opened last December. in addition to the usual bar, snacks and designer coffee, are conference "It's not working. It's not working fori opment, on a week'when news reports tairlines. He switches to autopilot and the It only added to the uncertainty as employees await a Nov. 8 meeting by us at all, and it's not working for Air Canada either." i Together this decade the two carri- have all but pronounced the airline dead and are carving it up for spare parts.

plane banks and begins its descent. At Air Canada shareholders to vote on the 200 feet the runway looms out of the 1 ers have lost a combined $2 billion: Thestubbornstreakextends to Onex offer, which may resolve eyrinistTJus time, the landing is smooth Yet, luce otner Canadian canaaian bold or foolish rein-Strilchuk seems stubbbrflly deteii1- traduction of the Canadian goose as its mined to carry on business as usual. corporate logo; part of a $38-million In his case, that means fostering talJ1J program to refurbish its planes, since 'U11115 ui 11UUU115. aiuc uiu irai icaitaii uc. Tuesday morning in the Vancouver For a moment, the mind believes the terminal, a young couple in the Air impossible: This is Boston.

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