MONTREAL — Air Canada is celebrating several milestones in relation to business, people and the planet, proving that sustainability remains a top priority for the airline despite the challenges of COVID-19.

In its newly released 2019 corporate sustainability report, ‘Citizens of the World’, Air Canada detailed its progress in these three major areas of sustainability. The fundamental pillars of ‘Our Business, Our People, and Our Planet’ are all centered around the airline’s core priority of ‘Safety First, Always.’

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on our employees, customers, communities and other stakeholders, but we must not lose sight of all the great achievements of the last decade,” said Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, Executive Vice President, Chief Human Resources and Communications Officer at Air Canada. “I truly believe that our resilience, strong culture and engagement during these unprecedented times will serve us well for years to come. We will overcome these challenges so that we continue to serve local communities and contribute to the social and economic health of our country.”

Key achievements include the following:

Business

• Ranked in the top 3% of airlines included in the IATA Operational Safety Audit;
• Important contributor to the travel and tourism sector worldwide, which represented approximately CAN$102 billion in annual GDP and employed over 1.8 million people in Canada in 2019;
• In 2020, more than 30% of the members of the Board of Directors are women;
• Introduction of the Airbus A220, expected to average 20% less fuel consumption per seat and emit 20% less CO2.

People

• Engaged workforce of close to 38,000 employees (in 2019);
• Was recognized as one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers for the fourth consecutive year, named one of Canada’s Top 100 employers for the seventh consecutive year;
• Supported 315 registered charities through the Air Canada Foundation, with more than $2 million net raised for the communities we serve;
• More than 100 million miles donated by Aeroplan and its members for charitable purposes;
• Disaster relief aid deployed for Canadian floods and Hurricane Dorian.

Planet

• Experienced a 19% improvement in fuel efficiency between 2009 and 2019;
• On target to meet the annual 1.5% fuel efficiency improvement by end of 2020;
• Progressed on work toward carbon-neutral growth in 2020 for international aviation (through CORSIA);
• Continued to support the development of lower-carbon Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) in Canada;
• Removed more than 38 million pieces of single-use plastic from onboard service (in 2019);
• Achieved the 2020 recycling efficiency target in 2019.

More details about Air Canada’s 2019 performance are also available in its 2019 Annual Report.