Airline in Focus: Air Canada

As Canada’s strict border controls remain in place—including crossing to and from the US for all but “essential” travel—Air Canada’s capacity is unsurprisingly skewed towards domestic routes.

According to data provided by OAG Schedules Analyser, the Star Alliance member intends to 563,000 domestic departure seats in April 2021, equating to 77.2% of the available capacity during the month. In April 2019, the airline offered 2.3 million domestic departure seats and 2.83 million international seats.

Earlier this month, Canada’s government agreed to grant Air Canada access to financial aid in exchange for several actions by the carrier, including further domestic route restorations.

A key condition cited by Canadian deputy prime minister and minister of finance Chrystia Freeland for Air Canada gaining access to up to $5.9 billion in liquidity is that “regional communities retain air connections to the rest of Canada through the restart of service at airports temporarily suspended by Air Canada.”

Air Canada said this would be achieved by providing “access to Air Canada's network for nearly all regional communities where service was suspended because of COVID-19's impact on travel through direct services or new interline agreements with third party regional carriers.”

https://infogram.com/rou-airline-in-focus-air-canada-0421-1hd12yx3yjoox…

Photo credit: Air Canada

David Casey

David Casey is Editor in Chief of Routes, the global route development community's trusted source for news and information.