Craig Landry, Senior Vice President of Revenue optimizations for, along with Lucie Guillemette EVP & CCO for Air Canada hosted corporate clients and trade partners Monday night at the Air Canada offices on Queen Street in Toronto to formally welcome Duncan Bureau into his role of President of Air Canada Rouge and John MacLeod into his role of Global Sales and Alliances.

After only a few weeks of being on the ground working with the Rouge team, recently appointed President of Rouge Duncan Bureau, said overall there is a lot of excitement about Rouge, the fleet and the network and the transition into his new role is going well.

Bureau, who was this years’ recipient of the Readers’ Choice Award, for “Travel Person of the Year” when questioned on whether or not there were any material changes on the horizon, responded quickly. "There is nothing broken at Rouge. The opportunity is around culture; it's about what does the future look like and where we can put aircraft. It's making sure the Rouge brand is complementary to Air Canada and ensuring we are competitive to LCC and ULCC and we compete strongly in that space."

"The crew is the brand. We need to make sure the crew is equipped with everything they need to deliver a great experience. Culture outpaces strategy all day long. With the right culture and right organization, we are going to do great things at Rouge." concluded Bureau.

John Macleod, who ironically was Mr. Bureau's boss many years ago at Canadian Airlines, is the newly appointed VP Global Sales and Alliances for Air Canada, and spent the evening shaking hands and spending time with attendees. "It is about relationships in our business. I'm looking forward to building those relationships as we are working toward our goal of being in the top ten airlines in the world. These people here tonight are going to help us get there and I'm happy to get to meet them all."

As reported in Travel Pulse Canada, the Airline recently announced a strategic partnership with Air China. Macleod said "New joint ventures are key. While our brand is very well known here in North America, in places like China where we have five flights a day to Canada, dealing with a great company like Air China, helps build our brand and sell tickets."

MacLeod joined Air Canada 16 months ago coming from Virgin America after it was sold off to Alaska Airlines.