Several weeks ago, we learned how Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau would be ”retiring.” This followed the Air Canada accident at LaGuardia, where Rousseau was under fire in Quebec for his inability to speak French, a consistent theme of his tenure.
Continue reading: Wow: SAS CEO Anko Van Der Werff Quits, Will Become Next Air Canada CEO
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
French cannot be learned in a short period of time. I am generally rather good at learning languages (German and English C2 level, Spanish C1), but in the case of French I needed 9 years of intense classes to reach a rather shoddy A2 level ... Therefore, I think AC needs a French native speaker, many of whom are fluent in English.
It is very sad that the "botched" condolences and lack of Rousseau's French language proficiency greatly overshadowed the deadly crash at LGA itself and tragic deaths of both pilots.
Who knows... Maybe it was just an excuse to push him out, even if AC is not performing too bad...
No, language is a serious issue in Canada and what Rousseau did, was clearly not tolerable. Remember that even mid-level civil servants of the national government need to pass a very selective language test, before being appointed. Now, although AC is privately owned, it is perceived as "national" by the Air Canada Public Participation Act (ACPPA), which restricts foreign investors to 25%, but also has some cultural passages.
His tenure at Avianca surely was controversial - he helped sort out some immediate financial issues but poisoned the brand and they they're struggling to attract premium traffic long after they've restored the full business class service (e.g. you can regularly find one-way business class tickets from Europe to S. America for as little as €1k even if some of that goes to UX/AZ/SK/IB for a connection to a gateway- most of the competition won't even bother with realistic one-way pricing).
SAS are doing reasonably well at the moment, but this is probably more due to their ability to access money and know-how from their new friends at AFKL than to the CEO or his management team.
I think that the language thing is a non-issue; someone who's obviously intelligent, multilingual, and has lived in a Spanish-speaking country is likely to improve their French very quickly without needing to make a huge amount of effort.
It's definitely not the worst appointment they could make. He doesn't come across as a visionary leader, but I don't think that's a problem. I think that, as long as the board maintains a clear vision around what sort of carrier they want AC to be, he's more than capable of implementing it.
This is a clown post. Who cares whether an airline CEO is visible? The only question is whether she or he does a good job. And that doesnt require visibility
Ben isn't alone in believing that senior managers need to be the corporate equivalent of a religious leader.
That sort of thinking used to be universally popular in management and social science until maybe 20 years ago, but nowadays there's a broad consensus that leadership in complex systems/organisations doesn't, and shouldn't, come from one person at the top. The fact that a bunch of academics agree on something doesn't mean that it can be automatically disseminated to the average person, even when that consensus is shared with solid proportion of professionals in the field.
Senior managers are too dumb , and "jack-hammer-sounding" , to be "religious leaders"
Being from Quebec I have an intimate understanding of the language issues here. The plane originated in Montreal so many passengers would have been French. Both the captain and flight attendant who was severely injured were French. Giving a a condolences video in French was a basic gesture of respect. The general sentiment here amongst French Quebeckers is that if Rousseau had delegated the recording of a French video to someone who was more at ease in French it wouldn't have become such an issue. It was the tone deafness of it all that they find insulting.
The ability to speak French should be the least of the qualifications. Find an experienced airline executive that can execute the board's plans. Frankly, Canada needs to quit catering to the French speaking Providence of Quebec. Don't get me wrong, I love going to Montreal and Quebec but that are a minority within a largely English-speaking country. Sure it would be nice if someone is bi-lingual but, again, that should be a "nice to have" as opposed to a primary job requirement.
Given he speaks several languages, including Spanish, picking up French would be much easier than for someone who speaks only English. Once you have studied a couple of languages, it becomes much easier to learn another. Languages are a system, and you just need to fill in the blanks, especially from a language like Spanish that has numerous similarities with French. So then the key criteria become whether the board of directors believes he is the best candidate for the job.
Your narrow-minded view of our neighbors to the north is evident. On that day at that time, it is the Office of the CEO - his staff - that failed him and failed the public at large.
His lack of leadership, or perhaps more accurately, his staff's lack of oversight, failed him at a moment that required he address the public appropriately. There was no "overshadowing" of the accident.
His lack of leadership, or perhaps more accurately, his staff's lack of oversight, failed him at a moment that required he address the public appropriately. There was no "overshadowing" of the accident.
Ben, Rousseau was not just under fire in Quebec for his lack of being able to mumble a sentence or two in French, he was under fire by plenty of savvy Canadians and others, I'd say. He has resided in Quebec for 19+ years without feeling that he should acquire a functional knowledge of the majority language of his environs. And really, it is his minions at the Office of the CEO, certainly his Board members, that should have ensured that the appropriate steps be taken to address the issue appropriately, knowing that he has previously stumbled on this very subject.
I worked with Rousseau at AC before i retired. Solid Finance guy, I was surprised by his appointment to CEO. Mike is a great guy, excellent in finance but he never impressed me with people skills.
I think you should be the next CEO. That may sound like snark but I'm just following Matthew at LALF's suggestion.
It is not a serious issue in Canada . It’s a serious issue in Quebec . The rest of us other than a very small minority outside Quebec, no one gives a rat's ass. They wanted him out and found an excuse . This is a head scratcher . As someone in a middle of a long many flight trip and is long time SE , air Canada needs a serious shake up. It is lazy and tattered in every way and the new Aeroplan program is awful . Maybe they see a future bankruptcy coming so getting ahead of it with this guy.
Maybe this is good for SAS because SAS is a cluster. Sure, they've improved their onboard product with the intra-Europe business class but it's not consistently implemented. They will offer business class with meals and champagne on short regional flights between Oslo and Copenhagen or Copenhagen and Stockholm but not equally long or longer domestic flights like Oslo to Trondheim. Don't get me started on the lounges and customer service. The lounges are below standard. The customer service is horrendous.
Ouch. Bad things to come for AC. I surely hope he doesn’t plan on taking you out of star alliance, like he did to us and now everything is terrible. Skyteam is the worst thing to have ever happened to humanity.
This shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s a hopper.
He had not moved to Denmark despite Danish takeover/concentration of SAS. He doesn’t own the Stockholm house in which he has lived for some years; he had no recent interest in buying a home in Stockholm; and he didn’t relocate himself and family from Stockholm to Copenhagen or even southern Sweden. Not the signs of a man committed to remain at SAS. Will be interesting to see if his family moves this time.
He spoke some French, not sure how much. Or at least he did a bit when he was in Sweden around 20 years ago when he was with KLM in Sweden. And he was with AF-KL long enough that he probably realized long ago as a Dutch guy that more French would help with the French masters.
Air Canada leaving Star Alliance for Sky Team would be great for those of us who are stuck flying Delta. WestJet is AWFUL. Porter is interesting but isn't yet viable.
The domestic routes must be very hard to operate profitably, lots of these cities are essentially small towns. The Asian routes have been screwed by the Russian airspace issue, so I don't really think that we can be too critical of them.
And Finnair are happily selling 'business light' fares to Manchester without luggage, lounge access, or even a blocked seat on the Embraer! As someone would doubtless observe, that 3-hour sector literally is a flight from HEL...
I know it's only a detail, but Dutch naming works as follows when 'van', 'van der', 'van den', etc are part of their last name:
- When you write first name + last name, only the last name itself is capitalized: Anko van der Werff
- When only using his last name, the first letter of the 'prefixes' and the first letter of the name are capitalized: Mr. Van der Werff
'Van' means 'from', as in 'from Chicago': whatever follows in general is a place/town/area
de/der/den (from those who speak German recognizable): different forms of the word 'the'
This concludes my Dutch lession. Thank you for your attention 🙂
I know language politics are super complex—in lots of places, inclusing Canada. I wonder if a non-native French speaker get "respect for good effort" in Quebec? Or is the standard higher than that?
I don't follow sports, but the Dutch speaking football players and coaches seem to make a good effort quickly when working in other countries.
Skyteam already have a major North American airline other than Delta. It would make more sense to improve WestJet/Air Transat instead of trying to poach AC.
SAS advertises a meal, champagne and a blocked seat in business class on all international intra-Europe routes but then has a regional jet on certain international flights, like Stockholm to Trondheim, where there's no meal, no champagne and no blocked seat.
There are quite many readers who spread deceptive views of the importance of French language in Canada, especially in Quebec, as well as the complexity of acquiring French language skill, without shame. There is no doubt that they are all non-Canadians who express an absence of knowledge in Canadian history as well as the acceptance of the rest of Canada that Quebec always maintains a special unique status, privileges and power in the country. Even when Van der Werff is tri-lingual, acquiring a new language in the remaining years of a career is no walking in the park. He can work hard at being proficient in French, good luck with that, but will never become fluent in French. Few of us who learned French from English can attest to the fact that it is difficult to learn it in an acceptable manner. I do not believe French Quebecois speak universally sufficient French when more than three quarters of French native speakers do not comprehend them.
To talk down on academics speaks volume of the pseu-do knowledge one possesses. If you understand R&D, you know all inventions began in theories then being developed and improvised in labs and open fields. The new crops of leadership since Clinton rejected "old school" standard practices have driven the country into the "rat hole", at home and abroad. Histories, economics and business practices no longer uplift the working class and working poor. What we normally see in the third world countries are now embraced, expanded and entrenched at the "head spin" speed in governments and businesses. But Americans are incapable to walk in others' shoes and look themselves in the mirror while indulging in lecturing and preaching others to adopt their models and follow their lead. In post WWII, we used to be the world's top creditor, building and advancing new technology to improve lives. Today, we are the world's top debtor who reign supreme in churning out massive WMDs and other technology to monitor movements and constraint life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Honestly, looking at it from a European perspective, the Canadian language obsession feels a bit silly. I understand that the context is a bit different but the idea of hiring a CEO of an airline (!!!), let alone in a country where English is the native language of vast majority, based on how good their french is, rather than based on their actual skills is mind blowing for us. Kebab stands put less emphasis on manager's language skills over here, lol.
Spanish and French, as well as Italian (Romanian and some other dialects for that matter) are all Romance languages, and as such, share a lot of similarities. Dialectally similar, although the words are slightly different.
The lack of blocked seat in SAS business on smaller planes is a far bigger concern for me than not offering SAS business on domestic routes. The latter is at least clearly advertised and you can see you're not getting business on that sector. But booking a three hour long business sector and then sharing tiny space on Embraer with a stranger is a massive fail.
So what? Some people shuffle through cities with 5 different languages over the course of their careers, it's not reasonable to expect them to learn every single one of them, let alone fluently. It's just a tool for communicating, move over yourself. The entire Europe would fall apart if we adopted silly ideas like our northern northern American friends.
Stockholm to Trondheim is not a domestic flight. SAS specifically advertises at booking a blocked seat, champagne and a meal on all international flights in the Nordic countries.
He speaks Spanish, it's not the same as a Dutch native speaker learning Korean from scratch.
The two Marks were passed over for the Job my guess is they will both be gone in a year. Big loss for AC.
I have known Anko since around 2012 and witnessed how quickly he became fluent in Spanish when he moved to Aeromexico. He was fluent in Italian, English, and Dutch at the the time. I have no doubt he will be speaking fluent French in a few months time
AC774 just went off the runway at YUL; 737, LAX-YUL, wet runway; everyone’s ok.