This life jackets thing is a classic example of bean counters running a company. They plan on saving 25Kg which is the weight of a heavy bag or the extra weight of a single fat person. I suspect the in-flight magazines weigh nearly 25 Kg. But all companies make mistakes but the good ones come clean and just say oops and move on. But in this case an Nova Scotian NDP official was berated by the company for commenting on this stupidity. The last time I heard of Air Canada berating a political type they were berating the premier of New Brunswick for some deal he was doing with Delta Airlines because people in New Brunswick seemed sick of going to Toronto to get to the US. A sort while later Air Canada declared bankruptcy.
So if I were playing with real money I would look into seriously shorting Air Canada. This might not be a great plan as people are probably shorting most of the airlines. The real problem is that the present ownership structure of Air Canada seems complicated so I am not sure exactly who would be best shorted. Maybe if you could find out who they owe the most money to. They might be good to short if the damage could be deadly.
So my prediction is that Air Canada is potentially in more trouble then people realize and this tension recently splashed onto a local NDP player. I will look back in a while to see how this plays out and how best I could have monetized the situation. I could also look back to their last bankruptcy and see how money was made then. I am not sure if their liabilities are high enough to force a bankruptcy but what would get the big guy so wound up? It might be something simpler like his own job in jeopardy. So if their debt is not crushing what would the effect of this guy “Leaving so that he could spend more time with his family” on their stock price?
Oh and my opinion (as a pilot) on life jackets on air planes: Accidents don’t happen in a controlled planned fashion. Accidents usually happen due to a series of mistakes; each of which was not necessarily fatal on its own but all together result in people being dead. The argument that they don’t fly far over water brings to mind people 75 out of 80 people drowning in the Potomac River in 1982. I don’t know if life jackets would have helped but they couldn’t have hurt. But the key is that the Air Florida plane was probably only dozens of feet from the shore. How many people do you know who could swim from say 10 miles from shore? Or a few hundred feet in icy water? So why begin this chain of mistakes now by taking the life jackets out of the airplanes?