No surprise. Will be interesting to see how the eventual return to the fleets go (assuming this happens). Depending on how the re-certifying goes each airline will be affected differently:
If the MAX is reinstated with a common type rating (like it was originally) Westjet has a slight advantage as their entire 737 pilot group would essentially be permitted to fly them. AC has to retrain their entire 737 pilot group as I assume they are not longer qualified on the aircraft.
If additional training is required then AC may have a slight advantage. They would still need to recertify their 737 pilots group but at least the pool is relatively small. WestJet would have to figure out which pilots to choose/train and then build pilot scheduling accordingly. It would not be worth it to update the entire pilot group and they would essentially be creating a new subset of pilots. Makes for a bigger headache than AC would have in this case.
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