The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition that Air Canada chief executive officer Michael Rousseau sped up his planned retirement by 12 months following his widely ridiculed English-only video in response to the fatal crash at New York's LaGuardia Airport. The Globe's Andrew Willis and Eric Atkins write that Montreal-based Air Canada is interviewing internal and external CEO candidates after announcing on Monday that Mr. Rousseau, 68, will retire at the end of September. The announcement of his planned departure came after the CEO and airline were criticized for their response to last month's crash, which killed two Air Canada pilots. Mr. Rousseau and the Air Canada board had been working to a schedule that would have seen the CEO announce his departure in the summer of 2027 and step down in October of that year. The board decided to move up the transition by a year in the wake of the controversy, which centred on the CEO's inability to speak French when responding to the LaGuardia accident, despite the CEO's past promises to learn the language. French and English are both official languages of the airline. Air Canada has hired executive search firms Egon Zehnder and Korn Ferry to assist in the process.