Change for Good

Recently, I had the misfortune of having to fly on Air Canada.

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I made the unfortunate decision to fly with them. I needed to get to Calgary and could have flown with Westjet, but for the same price, Air Canada offered an uninterrupted flight.

Or so I thought. We had to land in Winnipeg to deal with a technical issue in the wings. I don't know much about flying, but I do know this: Wings are very useful.

It was interesting to see people's reactions. Most are so used to this kind of service from Air Canada that it gets shrugged or laughed off.

I would I could say I was inbluded in that group. But at least while using up my entire repertoire of French profanity shortly after the announcement was made (and not the lame France French stuff like "merde". The hardcore French Canadian stuff like...well, you know...), I was reminded of an occurence on a flight that sister-to-THIT took earlier this year. She told me about spare change being collected during the flight and how it was meant to be used. I asked the airline about it and here is the response I received:

Cathay Pacific and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) joined forces in 1991 to launch "Change For Good", an inflight fundraising programme designed to collect unused spare change from passengers to help underprivileged children in over 150 developing countries around the world.

Cathay Pacific is delighted to raise almost HK$10 million through the generosity of its passengers in the 2006/07 fundraising year. Most of the money raised will go to UNICEF to help in its projects to improve the lives of underprivileged children around the world. In addition, HK$700,000 of the Change for Good proceeds will be donated to the Cathay Pacific Wheelchair Bank to help local children with neuromuscular diseases in Hong Kong.

To date, Cathay Pacific has raised more than HK$80 million from the "Change for Good" programme.

Coolness. And they're not the only ones. Maybe Air Canada should join the club, as it were. I've contacted them accordingly and hope they see some value to becoming involved in such a program.