Air Canada refund warning
 

Be advised that if you live outside Canada and purchase a non-refundable ticket on Air Canada and you need to cancel, in addition to a standard $100 change fee, you may use the remaining value of your ticket ONLY for a ticket that routes you via Canada. So, if you bought an Air Canada ticket to Toronto for a convention that was cancelled due to SARS, be aware that you will get no value from your cancelled ticket unless you travel via Canada.

I don't think AC has any flights that don't touch Canada...so there fore, you have to travel via Canada

Lissa:

Air Canada has at least 1 'quirky' option that doesn't touch Canada. They will sell AC 33/34 between Honolulu & Sydney and its a native AC flight all the way. The flight is actually to/from Vancouver that stops in Honolulu, but AC needs to structure the ticket that way to allow passangers the option to do an extended layover in Honolulu to/from Australia.

There are also 'code share' options where its an Air Canada ticket but you use a partner (e.g., I've been on AC 9553/9554 between Heathrow/Bangkok, but did the Ottawa/Heathrow portion on a 'native' AC flight where I then caught a Thai Airways flight even though it was an AC ticket). But I don't think Air Canada will (can ?) sell just the partner part on an Air Canada ticket.

Z

When I spoke with AC they said we could not use a partner airline but we could do a code share (I believe its called) flying via Canada.

I guess my warning was to advise others that flying with a US airline is preferable for that odd trip to Canada. My company losts thousands of dollars on this mistake. At least with a US airline we would have been able to use the tickets for elsewhere and only lost hundreds. It's easy to make the mistake of buying the cheapest ticket without thinking of the repercussions.

Maybe for the future your company may want to consider insurance. Air Canada now also has a lot of fares that can't be changed at all.

I don't know of any insurance that will cover a cancelation such as we desired for SARS since Toronto wasn't actually on WHO's list at the time.