Air Canada celebrates Diwali

On Thursday, travel partners were invited to a special celebration at Air Canada’s Toronto office. Here, amidst staff in traditional Indian costumes, colourful paper decorations, sparkling candles and food and drinks, Air Canada, along with joint venture partners Lufthansa and United Airlines, celebrated Diwali (“The Festival of Lights”), an ancient Hindu festival celebrated in autumn every year.

Diwali spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil and hope over despair.

“I think it’s very important that we celebrate this. This is a great event,” said Hans deHaan, director Canada, Lufthansa. “Our Indian clients are very important to us and I’m really glad we can honor them this way.”

“We’re so happy you can be here tonight to celebrate with us,” said Duncan Bureau, the airline's vice-president, global sales, as he introduced deHaan and Vic Kerckhoff, director leisure sales, United Airlines.

“From all 27,000 of us here at Air Canada we so appreciate the relationships and we want to do more events like this to engage with you as often as possible,” Bureau said.

He took the opportunity to point out the succcess thus far of Air Canada rouge, which is going into its second winter season of operation.

“We’ve got a lot of new airplanes coming. We need to find homes for those aircraft. And without giving away too much, at some point we will probably deploy some 787s in markets that are important to a lot of you in this room.”

Bureau then spoke about how the 787 was a game-changer for Air Canada: “It’s a great guest experience and your customers are going to love it. We’re really proud to have it as part of our fleet.”

The evening concluded with socializing, a light buffet and of course, twinkling lights decorating every corner of Air Canada’s office.