scrubbedexpat091

Looks like Westjet is doing some trimming in Atlantic Canada and suspending service completely to several airports.

Suspended service to:

Moncton
Fredericton
Sydney
Charlottetown

With significant reduction of service to Halifax and St. John's.

Source.

Atlantic Xpat

Unsurprising given the impact the Atlantic bubble is having on demand. Watching the CEO (who I didn't realise is a Brit) video, he subscribes part of the issue to increases in charges by airports and Nav Canada. St John's Airport is a not-for-profit organisation which has lost a major part of its revenue. Absent the government (provincially or federally) stepping in, they have little choice but to increase fees.

One hopes WJ (& Porter, who are still completely shut down) will come back when this is over. Whenever that is.

scrubbedexpat091

Yeah the fees are kind of double edged sword, reduced air traffic is reducing revenue, leading to increased fees which lead to more cuts by airlines. Both airports and NAV Canada have fixed costs that don't just go away.

scrubbedexpat091

Westjet will be contacting eligible passengers to issue refunds, they say it will take 6 to 9 months to complete.

Eligible passengers will be contacted in chronological order of cancellation, beginning with those flights cancelled in March 2020 at the outset of the pandemic.

Westjet is asking passengers not to call them, and wait to be called.

Refunds will be to original form of payment.


Press Release


It's a press release so of course they are making it seem like they are doing passengers a favor for refunding for a service they didn't provide and took 6+ months of people complaining and fighting with the airline before they decided to do a long drawn out refund process.

scrubbedexpat091

Air Canada doing more cuts in Atlantic Canada.

Air Canada will be suspending all flights until further notice in Sydney, N.S., and Saint John, N.B.

suspending four routes until further notice in Deer Lake, N.L., Charlottetown, Fredericton and Halifax.

Westjet of course had previously announced about 80% of their Atlantic Canada service to be cut and the above Air Canada cuts are in addition to previously announced cuts.


https://globalnews.ca/news/7508603/a...mpression=true

Revin Kevin

Takes them 5 seconds to charge your card but 6-9 months to refund it??????

scrubbedexpat091

My guess doing mass refunds at once would cause them to have insufficient funds to continue operations.

BristolUK

At least it reduces the chances of covid being brought in.

scrubbedexpat091

I suppose it could.

There is a chance some of these airports may not see service again too, the smaller ones that is.

BristolUK

A big majority of our cases in NB have come directly (or close contacts of) from out of province, albeit not necessarily via the airports. The early ones were.
They seem to have been doing fine previously so they ought to again. Having said that, I heard something on CBC radio the other day about whether there might be additional passenger traffic for Moncton. We're not known as the Atlantic Hub for nothing.

So maybe at some future point AC and Westjet might decide they could still serve some other places but with fewer airports used.

scrubbedexpat091

Moncton I wouldn't worry about, it's the city's they have closed completely, there is a difference between suspension of service and closing of a city, often when a city is closed, they don't get service back very quickly. Its those smaller city's they have decided to close rather than suspend that I am not confident will return quickly if at all.

scrubbedexpat091

Air Canada reducing its 1st quarter capacity system wide by another 25%, and cut 1,700 more jobs.

What's crazy is a year ago Westjet had 12,000 or so employees, and with all the cuts are in the 4,000-5,000 employee range, many of these jobs will never return as Westjet has outsourced most of their airports to outside vendors.

Air Canada ended 2019 with 32,000 employees, they are down to 12,000 employee range.

scrubbedexpat091

Prince Rupert and Kamloops are getting the axe, Air Canada will suspend all flights from these 2 airports. Looks like Air Canada was the only flights to Vancouver from Kamloops. Looking at the Prince Rupert airport website appears Air Canada may be the only service at all.

Routes out of Yellowknife, Fredericton and Newfoundland also affected.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...oops-1.5871425

Teaandtoday5

https://www.mytruenorthnow.com/52666...arting-jan-23/

Yellowknife too. Might not matter to many, but I cannot imagine not being able to get to my child if he needs me.

scrubbedexpat091

It's tough for sure. Air Canada and Westjet are likely burning money fast than they can bring in revenue, I suspect if things don't improve and they miss another peak summer, things will get even worse for them.