Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says Canadian airlines are “breaking their word” with the public and that the Trudeau government isn’t doing enough to help Canadian travellers left stranded at airports across the country.
Speaking with journalists in Ottawa on Friday, Poilievre laid the blame for the chaos endured by thousands of Canadian passengers over the last week at the foot of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, arguing airports and airlines are federally regulated and therefore a responsibility of the federal government, Global News reports.
“This is a federal problem,” Poilievre said.
The lead-up to Christmas was a disaster for many Canadian travellers, with snow storms and frigid conditions leading to thousands of cancelled flights. Vancouver Airport was hit with two damaging storms, and a snow/ice storm also wreaked havoc in Ontario. Sunwing cancelled a number of flights, leaving hundreds of Canadians stranded in Mexico during the holidays.
Things have begun to ease, however, and Friday was a very solid, relatively easy day for travel in North America.
After a week of disastrous cancellations, Southwest Airlines on Friday (Dec. 30) managed to keep cancellations to just 43 in total; just 1 per cent of all flights. That’s a huge improvement from the week before, when they were often cancelling six out of ten flights due to what’s believed to be computer/scheduling problems.
Canadians had a rough time leading up to Christmas, but Friday saw only a smattering of cancellations. Toronto Pearson Airport had only seven outgoing flights cancelled (1%), the same as Vancouver, while Calgary had only four. Air Canada had nine cancellations (1%), Air Canada Jazz had 13 (2%) and Ari Canada Rouge had 2 cancellations (1%), FlightAware.com reports. WestJet had 3 cancelled flights (less than 1%), while WetJet Encore had 6 flights cancelled (2%).
HIGHER FLIGHT PRICES FOR CANADIANS IN 2023?
The Globe and Mail has an excellent story today about projected flights in Canada for 2023.
Quoting figures from aviation data company Cirium, the newspaper says WestJet Airlines will fly 24% fewer domestic flights in July and August compared with 2019, reducing available seats by 20%. The Calgary-based airline’s international flight schedule is down by 20 per cent, with 16% fewer seats.
The Globe says Air Canada has published a schedule with 16% fewer domestic flights than in 2019 but the same number of total seat. The Montreal-based airline plans to offer more than 21,000 international flights, just 1% fewer than in July and August of 2019.
Aviation experts say the reduced flight options could drive up demand and lead to an increase in prices. But I’m not entirely sure, because there are a growing number of airlines in Canada offering more choices. Discount airline Flair is expanding, as is Lynx Air. Canada Jetlines launched late in 2022 and has an expanded schedule for 2023 that includes domestic and U.S. flights. There’s also the dramatic expansion by Porter Airlines, which will soon begin flying jets from Toronto Pearson to Vancouver, Calgary, Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean.
It’s a fascinating time to be covering the aviation industry in Canada, that’s for sure.
