SonicFlyer

I just watched this and have a few thoughts....


1- Nice to see some real investigative and useful journalism for a change. While the production was a bit over dramatic the content of the story was well done and beneficial.

2- The Canadian government was absolutely worthless it seems. Maybe some diplomatic backchannels got the job done, but we will probably never know. DR a 3rd world country, wasting time dealing with their courts is exactly that, a waste of time. Drop an ultimatum and if that doesn't work send in extraction forces. Of course I'm sure this was not high on the list of priorities for Trudeau until the media started embarrassing him over it. In other words they had something else going on with the DR government and didn't want to ruin it over this until the news report started making it a priority for him.

3- If I had been the airline and/or the families, I would have pooled money together to hire a reputable mercenary firm to go in and extract the flight crew assuming the government wasn't going to. They are only 75 miles from Puerto Rico and I doubt the US government would have shipped them back to DR, especially if they claimed asylum in PR. I would also hope that Pivot Airline would be paying their salaries and expenses during this time.

4- With government you can never tell if malice or incompetence. It's quite possible this was a government op (think Iran/Contra Affair) or that some high ranking Canadian officials were simply in on the side business. Either way unsure if the government was just incompetent and didn't care, or if they were worried that this issue would embarrass some of them.