Air Canada has been forced to apologize after it was discovered that some of its planes do not show Israel as a state on their inflight maps.
While it seems it might not have been Air Canada’s fault – it has been reported the inflight entertainment containing the map was produced by French aerospace group Thales, and the map itself produced for Thales by an unnamed external company – their apology is odd and unsatisfactory:
“It was brought to the attention of Air Canada that the interactive map on its Boeing 737 fleet did not consistently portray certain Middle Eastern boundaries, including those of the State of Israel, at all amplification levels,” the statement said. “Air Canada’s policy in general is to display only city names on the maps in its aircraft, and the configuration on this particular system was not compliant with this policy.”
“Air Canada and Thales apologize for the unease created by this situation,” it concluded.
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Thales added in a separate statement that the map had been provided by a third party.
“Thales is working closely with the airline and the involved third-party to remediate this regrettable issue as soon possible,” they said.
Besides sounding rather robotic, they seem to be apologizing not for the very real upset caused by Israel being wiped off the map, but rather for “unease” caused by them displaying things beyond city names (which led to “Palestinian territories” being displayed to begin with).
And why didn’t either Air Canada or Thales name the third-party responsible, or at least promise to find a new vendor for the map, given the severity of this incident, which cannot possibly be the result of an error (someone consciously programmed “Palestinian territories” over the map of Israel, after all)? Last year, after a similar issue with JetBlue’s moving map was discovered, they promised to switch to another moving map provider. This is what Thales and Air Canada need to do in this case if they are serious about sending the message that this is an unacceptable situation.
Alas, given what I am seeing out of Canada these days, I am not sure they see this as unacceptable.
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