Air Canada Exec: Airline Needs Reliability to Be Fully Premium

Photo Credit: Mark Nasr, Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer of Air Canada, and CBS News Travel Editor Peter Greenberg speaking at the Skift Aviation Forum in New York City on November 12, 2026. Skift As the airline industry pours money into premium, Air Canada argues it got there first. The carrier is “the original premium airline in North America,” its chief operations officer, Mark Nasr, said at the Skift Aviation Forum in New York City on Thursday. “We were the first with lie-flat seats, all-aisle access, a lot of investments in concierge services, food and beverage,” Nasr said. “The last major thing that we need to accomplish to round out the entire picture is to get a higher level of consistent reliability.” “I wish we were more reliable than we are today,” he said. “We