With demand ramping up and COVID-19 travel restrictions dropping around the world, Air Canada will more than double its capacity this year.
Canada’s largest airline said on Wednesday that capacity will jump 150% this year compared to 2021. That’s encouraging, but still represents about 75% of their 2019 levels.
Officials said they expect capacity to reach 95% by 2024.
“The overall recovery is indeed getting closer,” Air Canada’s chief commercial officer Lucie Guillemette said at the company’s annual investor day on Wednesday.
Guillemette said new routes are being added out of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, and that officials are encouraged about the future.
“We predict to be close to full recovery by 2024. This is buoyed by a strong domestic recovery, a strong rebound in the visiting family and relative market, and the overall pent up demand for leisure travel,” she said.
“The recovery in business segments or business markets will lag. However, we anticipate a strong strong rebound in 2023.”
Guillemette also hinted at changes for Air Canada rouge, the airline’s leisure carrier.
Canada is being flooded with new, low-cost carriers. Swoop, which is part of WestJet, launched several years ago. There’s also Flair, newly-launched Lynx, and soon-to-fly Canada Jetlines.
“We know that the environment now is extremely competitive. We can see the competition is intensifying here,” Guillemette said. “We are currently assessing the various alternatives of how best to position Rouge, not only in the leisure space, but possibly even in some ultra low-cost market segments.
“We are now in the process of really looking at the mission for Rouge and how we best want to proceed in the years to come,” she said.
