We are now in a situation where Canada's second largest airline, Jazz, with over 5000 employees, over 120 aircraft and about 1300 pilots, is at the mercy of Air Canada. And their head is on the block.
Jazz, does not sell tickets, has no customers of its own, has no reservation system, has no check-in counters, no marketing, no revenues outside of what Air Canada pays them for wet-leasing their aircraft. All the passengers Jazz carries are AC passengers. This is nothing but a a pure wet-lease. AC wet-leases Jazz, and Sky Regional and Georgian to fly certain routes for them. Nothing is shared. This "code-sharing", when that term is used, is just a front.
The CTA should only allow "code sharing" between two airlines that really share codes, like AC and Luthansa for example, and deny permits to fake code shares like AC and Jazz and call it it what it is, a wet-lease on a large scale.
Laws, regulations or policies should be established that would limit the number of wet-leases that an airline can have in proportion to its fleet, just like they recently did for the foreign wet-leases which are limited to 20% of the applicant's fleet.
If this is not done, what will prevent a mainline from operating just a token number of aircraft, and wet-lease 90% of its flights to the lowest bidder, under the guise of "code-sharing" ? When a feeder become too expensive, the mainline can just pull the plug on it by not renewing its wet-lease contract.
I also think, in order to to make it a level field in the international scene, that such "code-sharing" and wet leaseing restrictions should be applied to foreign airlines coming into Canada. Any airline flying into Canada that does not have its own passengers, like Envoy, should be barred as the decoy that it is and permits should only be granted to those, like American Airlines, that would have their own passengers and that fly into Canada with its own aircraft, not chartered ones.
This would either force AA to fly Regional Jets to Canada or it would help create smaller airlines that would fly their own passengers. But this practice of giving the flying to the lowest bidder B/S has to stop. Air Canada created Jazz to undercut Air Canada, and they helped create Sky regional, and gave Georgian the boost it needed to undercut Jazz, just to play one against the other. They created competition amongst their feeders to obtain the lowest price and get a backup if Jazz, like Aveos, succumbs when Air Canada tightens the noose around its neck..
This sub contracting flying to lower bidders is a disaster in the works for everyone, the airlines, the passenger and mostly the airline employees....... We saw what happened in the US. The US is the one who needs to correct their model. We cannot let Canadian companies adopt the US model or soon we will have a young FOs do an early morning flight in a Regional Jet and return just in time to switch uniforms in the airport washrooms and start his shift at Starbucks.... We will also have pilots losing jobs where they made 6 figure salaries face the prospect of either having to go work overseas or accept a salary half of the one he/she earned in the last job.
I was looking at the Air Transportation Regulations located here:
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/PDF/SOR-88-58.pdf
What they say, is that if a licence holder want to wet-lease another licence holder to do flights on his behalf, such was what Georgian, Sky regional and Jazz do on behalf of Air Canada, it needs an approval from the CTA except if the service to be provided is a domestic Service or a flight to the US.PROVISION OF AIRCRAFT WITH FLIGHT CREW
8.2 (1) For the purposes of section 60 of the Act and subject to section 8.3, approval of the Agency is required before a person may provide all or part of an aircraft, with a flight crew, to a licensee for the purpose of providing an air service pursuant to the licensee’s licence and before a licensee may provide an air service using all or part of an aircraft, with flight crew, provided by another person
8.3 (1) The approval referred to in section 8.2 is not required if, in respect of the air service to be provided, the appropriate licence authority, charter permit and Canadian aviation document and the liability insurance coverage referred to in subsection 8.2(4) and, where applicable, subsection 8.2(5), are in effect and
(a) both the person providing an aircraft to the licensee and the licensee are Canadian, the person is a licensee and the air service to be provided is a domestic service or an air service between Canada and the United States;
These permit-less wet-leases are not possible to International destinations. So feeders such as Jazz, Georgian and Sky regional cannot do flights to Mexico or to Caribbean Destinations on behalf of Air Canada, but, according to current Air Regulations, if it wanted, Air Canada could sub-contract to feeders all of its domestic flights and all of its flights to the US and only keep its International flights with the mainline. Is that acceptable ? I do not think so.
I think we should have a lobby group to have the Minister of Transport modify the Air Transportation Regulations, to limit the number of aircraft an airline can wet-lease, regardless of the type of flying it does. Like for the International flights, wet-leases should be limited to say 20% of one's fleet, no feeders should be allowed on overseas flights and no foreign feeders should be allowed into Canada.
(This paragraph edited out after comment from CD below)
