Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jun 06/01) - Frequent flyers may be relieved to hear that Canadian North has done away with a big source of frustration.
Upgraded software at Canadian North means boarding passes for connecting flights can be issued in Yellowknife, avoiding the need for passengers to line up and get a boarding pass to their connection after landing in Edmonton.
The company won't reveal how much the upgrade cost, but general manager Michael King says the better service adds up to a competitive advantage.
"We now have the ability for two incompatible systems to talk to each other," he said.
Canadian North still uses the Sabre reservations system, which used to handle connections hassle-free when the airline was a franchisee of the larger Canadian Airlines.
In June 1998 Canadian North was bought by the Inuvialuit Development Corporation and Inuit company Nunasi. When Air Canada didn't put the airline into its Reservation 3 system after buying Canadian Airlines, rumours that Air Canada wanted to drive Canadian North out of business began to circulate.
The recent upgrade establishes a better relationship with Air Canada. Canadian North had earlier bought computers to set it on a path into Air Canada's reservation system, but there were big problems to overcome, King said in January.
Last August, "Air Canada suddenly realized that within the reservation system there was no way to do what's known as multi-hosting a carrier. There is no way to have two separate carriers in there. It would mean each would have access to one another's records, fares, anything."
