Response To Air Canada's Response

I received a response from a guy at Air Canada named Guy to the letter I sent earlier this week (see previous post.) Unfortunately I am forbidden by law to reproduce his response, but here is my response to his response. Hopefully you can get the drift of what he said from my rebuttal.

Dear Guy,

Thanks for your quick response. It appears as though your new headsets are an improvement over the old variety. However, I would like to suggest that you take even more aggressive steps to implement a more environmentally friendly approach than the ones you have outlined.

My idea is that Air Canada would no longer offer any headsets to passengers free of charge. Instead Air Canada would offer to sell them a one-to-two-prong converter (which I believe is what you are referring to when you mention retractable plugs) for the ear-buds/headsets they likely already own for use in MP3 players and other entertainment devices (until such time as airplane manufacturers smarten up and build in standard 1/8" jacks). The cost would be reasonable, and yet it would encourage frequent travelers to keep this converter for future flights (say $5 or so). For those rare souls who don't own a set of headphones or ear-buds AC could offer to sell them headsets for a bit more (say $10-$15) either on the flight or when they purchase their ticket (to be distributed when they check-in or during the flight). Would this cause a bit more work for your flight attendants? Initially yes, but in the long run it will likely save time.

Nice as it is that you have reduced land-fill and CO2 emissions by using smaller sets and encouraging people to keep them, offering them as complementary does not encourage passengers to take any responsibility for themselves. In a past age when personal electronic devices where not quite so ubiquitous offering headsets was pardonable, today it seems extremely wasteful. Furthermore, a program to recycle the sets you currently offer (as your current Heathrow experiment suggests) is a PR exercise that is ultimately wasting resources when you have a much simpler solution at hand. For those who do not own headsets and have no intention of ever purchasing them there is always the in-flight magazine.

I hope you will consider my proposal seriously, I consider it extremely reasonable.

Sincerely,
Ryan Kinrade