Bilingual staff isn't really that much of a requirement at YOW. :P:haha:

Not that it directly affects an ULCC, but it is absolutely a requirement for the air traffic controllers at CYOW be bilingual.

Isn't the international language of aviation English?

Local languages are also used, on top of English. If you listen to Montreal’s ATC feed , a lot of the conversations are in French.

I was referring to the staff of the various airlines working at YOW. It is very obvious that most are not bilingual. This is true even of AC even if they are better than others.

Even CBSA does not guarantee bilingual service if we are being honest.

Yeah, YOW is actually really bad at providing adequate service coverage in French.

Official bilingualism in the federal government is badly implemented. You have managers being forced to take a year off after being hired to do French training even when all the people they manage are unilingual anglos.. meanwhile the CBSA hires unilingual anglos as border guards at the YOW airport, which is not only the national capital airport, but serves a metro where about 30% speak French at home.

Once the new security area opens downstairs, the airport will be dismantling the current upstairs screening area and also converting that area to retail and/or food. Whether the current Tim Hortons post-security is a part of that remodel I'm not sure. At the very least I'd like to see it turned into a full store, not just a little corner where you can get a last minute coffee or selection of 2 muffins.

Downstairs, the tiny food court will be opened up for whoever wants to open shop there. Tim Hortons will probably say, but Coyote Jacks will be replaced by something (hopefully something better than Coyote Jacks :tup:)

EDIT: I see that the YYT website does state that both Tim Hortons will be converted to full menu locations by fall 2018.

Yeah, I can't believe CBSA people actually go before the media with a straight face and admit that only about a third of their agents at YOW are bilingual, claiming that they're doing their best. (The comparable stats for Quebec City and Montreal airports are between 80 and 100% IIRC.)

Funny but I took the train a few times recently and while it's not CBSA of course, VIA is an organization that really takes bilingual service seriously. I am sure it might be hit and miss in the West, but that's understable of course...

VIA is widely regarded as having one of the best track records for bilingual service of all the various arms of the federal government.

It is, but in Canada the Bilingual Act (or whatever its official title is) supersedes ICAO guidelines to only converse in English, and so in certain parts of Canada (primarily Quebec and Ottawa) controllers have to be able to speak in English and French. I don't like this, but it's way above my pay grade.

I've had VIA employees on trains able to speak English/French/Spanish in the Quebec-Windsor corridor. Don't think i've come across one that couldn't work in either official language.

I don't think anyone has mentioned it this directly, but there is a widespread erroneous perception that only English is to be used in air traffic control (ATC) all around the world. With the Canadian corollary that Quebec got all finicky in the 70s or 80s and had French added alongside English (in Quebec, and Ottawa I guess). And that as a result we are the only place :slob: in the world where ATC isn't only in English. Just because we're a PITA.

International regulations actually stipulate that all ATCs at airports around the world have capacity to communicate in English at all times with any plane.

But this does not mean that communications are only in English or even primarily in that language in non-anglophone countries.

Generally speaking, in most countries ATC communications with domestic flights are in the language of the country you're in. And when flights from other countries are dealt with usually English is the lingua franca.

The idea that's sometimes been thrown around that everyone should speak English because pilots of other planes could overhear something that's important for security reasons has never been given much credence (rightly or wrongly), which explains why the ATC waves of the world are very multilingual.

^^^
Over 40 years ago. Association des gens de l’air. I remember the dust up well. Haven't heard anything since. Obviously a non-issue. It blew over quicky. A mini flag debate if you will.;)

If out of this whole ULCC wave the end result is Swoop being the last one standing offering flights at 60-70% of current full carrier prices rather than the 40-50% they're charging now, that will be a win.

Yet ULCC's have thrived in Australia. I fly Perth to Singapore weekly (5 hrs) and typically pay about $400 return. The trip to Sydney, similar in distance, would be slightly less expensive.

I've no experience with the Australian market, so I can't comment on it. Do you know if it has the same seasonality as the Canadian market does?

With respect to international travel from Australia to Asia, the proliferation of low-cost airlines in Southeast Asia has really changed the market - Scoot, AirAsia X, etc. etc. The closest ones I could think of that would be analogous in Canada would be WOW airlines, Icelandair and Norweigan (not operating here yet).

I stand corrected.

Interested to hear where you got 30% from. Here is what I found:

1.4.2. Language spoken most often at home
Between 1981 and 2011, the proportion of people in Ottawa who reported speaking English most often at home decreased from 78.7% to 77.0% (see Table 12). Over the same period, the drop in the proportion of people who reported speaking French most often at home was greater, from 15.5% to 10.7%. Conversely, the proportion of people who reported speaking another language most often at home more than doubled, from 5.8% in 1981 to 12.3% in 2011.

http://www.officiallanguages.gc.ca/e...ortrait-ottawa

That's Ottawa city proper. I'm using Ottawa-Gatineau; the CMA, where the figure is 27.0% for French at home according to the 2016 census.

AC yesterday launched 5 new routes, YUL-YQG, YUL-YXU, YEG-YYJ, YEG-YLW and YYC-YQQ.

This brings the tally up to 25 new routes launched between May 1 and July 2 this year, and includes a combination of mainline, Rouge and Express services.

9 each out of YYZ and YUL, 3 each out of YVR and YEG, 1 out of YYC.

Pretty impressive stuff by AC. Full list of routes at the following link.

https://www.newswire.ca/news-release...687114301.html