I guess it has been a good week for ranting against the high cost of air travel here. This little news item caught my attention today. Now I'm not sure if it is because I'm getting older but I sure am getting a lot more cynical about things these days.
In a nutshell, one of the northern airlines, First Air, has hired a former long time Nunavut politician and perennial cabinet minister, Ed Picco, as "Director of Government Relations". Again while it may be just the airlines way of trying to make things better, my inner cynic is noting that the timing of the hiring (Government is starting to take a closer look at the extremely high fares for travel in the North) says that they are trying to head that storm off before it cuts into their large profit margins.
The story indicates that Picco's job won't be to lobby on behalf of the airline. Indeed he is prohibited from doing so until, oh, April 18th. That's a long time from now, all of seven weeks. No his job is to liase with mayors and Hamlets and resolve any problems they have with freight or fares, sort of a special customer relations guy but for Government.
I hope that he can resolve the problems when Mayors complain that the fares and freight rates are about ten times too high. "Really, that much? I'll get on it right away. Maybe the directors and executive can return the $1.5 million in bonus and see if we can't get those reduced. Am I glad you told me!"