Brian Gover, a member of the legal team for the inquiry, said Wednesday he's spoken to a senior Air Canada lawyer who has "assured us of complete co-operation" and agreed to work toward setting a date for the testimony.
The airline had rejected an earlier invitation to appear, but reversed course after an irate Major threatened to use his legal powers to force compliance with his wishes.
"It is not Air Canada's decision to make as to whether they appear as a witness at this inquiry," Major declared at the start of hearings Wednesday.
"I view it as their duty to attend . . . . Unless this co-operation and attendance is confirmed forthwith, the commission will consider issuing a subpoena to their senior officers to compel their attendance."
A key issue at the inquiry is whether domestic and international security practices have been reformed sufficiently over the last two decades to avert another tragedy like the terrorist attack on Air India that took 329 lives.
Gover reported earlier this week that Air Canada had been invited some time ago to participate in the part of the hearings dealing with airport and airline security.
Louise-Helene Senecal, assistant general counsel for the company, replied in a letter dated May 6: "We must advise that, after consideration, we will not be able to testify at the inquiry on the topics identified."
Gover said there was no reason given at that time for the refusal to participate, which he described as "frankly surprising."
Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for Air Canada, would not elaborate on the nature of the original dispute but said Wednesday the airline will now be "pleased to appear before the inquiry" and provided any useful knowledge it has.
Air Canada was the domestic agent for Air India at the time of the bombing, but Major indicated he's more interested in hearing the company's views on more general topics related to aviation security, such as passenger screening and baggage handling.
Aside from helping the commission, he said, Air Canada's participation would give it a chance to "assure its customers that safety is an important issue for the airline and the public they serve."
The inquiry, which has spent the last month dealing mainly with police and intelligence activities in the weeks leading up to the bombing, shifted its focus Wednesday to airport and airline policy.
It's long been known the bomb that brought down Flight 182 on June 23, 1985, originated in Vancouver, where it was checked onto a CP Air flight to Toronto and loaded there onto the domed Air India jumbo jet.
A three-member advisory panel that reviewed the events for Transport Canada noted that no one had bothered to notify either CP Air or Vancouver International Airport of the heightened security rules in effect for Air India in Toronto. Nor had word gone out to other airports or airlines operating similar connecting flights.
"The information was certainly not getting through to us on the ground at the time," said Chern Heed, then the Vancouver airport manager and later one of the panel members to conduct the review.
Reg Whitaker, a University of Victoria political scientist who chaired the panel, said a related problem was the lack of training in security matters for airline clerks.
Baggage was not normally supposed to be "interlined" on connecting flights for any passenger who didn't have a confirmed reservation. But a CP Air ticket clerk in Vancouver made an exception after a man - identified only as M. Singh - insisted his suitcase should be checked through all the way to New Delhi.
The bag turned out to carry the bomb that brought the plane down, but Whitaker said it would be wrong to blame the clerk.
Instructions to airline personnel at the time were often ambiguous and put an emphasis on pleasing the customer, the told the inquiry.
"If there are different sorts of pressures on an employee in that kind of situation, they may make a wrong decision - but it's really the lack of clarity in the guidelines."
Jacques Bourgault, a management expert at the University of Quebec at Montreal who also served on the panel, took issue with the threat assessment process used at the time by the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Transport Canada.
Officials from all three organizations have long insisted that, although the general threat against Air India was considered high in 1985, there was never any "specific threat" indicating a particular plane was in danger.
The problem was that the definition of specific threat was so narrow, said Bourgault.
"It was ill-adapted to the need . . . . Not many terrorist groups will tell that they will blow a plane on a particular date with a given flight number. It would trigger a whole set of measures that would permit the authorities to conduct further investigations of the luggage and the people aboard."
Transport Canada was drafting new rules in June 1985 - but hadn't yet completed the process - to require that all bags loaded onto a plane be positively matched with a specific passenger. If that had been done on Flight 182, the unaccompanied bag from Vancouver would likely have been spotted and pulled off Flight 182.
