Air Canada is back on top of the podium. The Montreal-based airline today was named best in North America by Skytrax, a prestigious British-based group that surveys airline passengers and says its reviews are entirely independent. The results were announced at the Paris Air Show. It’s a great feather in the cap for Air Canada, which was named the best North American airline from 2010 to 2014, then watched Virgin America capture the crown the past two years. That means they’ve copped the award six times in the past eight years. “We’re super happy, obviously, and very proud to represent Read more
Air Canada
First they went low. Now they’re going long. It was just 10 days ago or so that Calgary-based WestJet announced they were going to launch Canada’s first ultra-low-cost air carrier, a move that would see them tangle directly with New Leaf Travel in a sort of Canadian version of Ryanair or Easyjet. On Tuesday, the airline zagged in the opposite direction, announcing it will buy up to 20 Boeing 787 Dreamliners with an eye on grabbing some of Air Canada’s long-distance routes to Asia, Europe and South America. It’s a heckuva plan for a company that still positions itself as Read more
There’s a new app in town, and it makes easier than ever to book that trip you’ve always dreamed of. Aeroplan recently unveiled a new (and free) app that makes it dead simple to book flight rewards using your Aeroplan miles. Customers with iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile phones (still lots of folks using Blackberry) may now download the app from the Apple App Store, Google Play Store and the Blackberry App World. “We know it’s increasingly important for our members to have useful travel tools when they’re on the go, and making our app available for flight reward bookings Read more
Lennon and McCartney. Lemon and lime. Golf and Scotch. Some things in life just go together. They grow in similar climates. They grew up together. Or, like golf and Scotch, they hail from the same country and count as perhaps a nation’s greatest two inventions. I like to think the first game of golf was followed by the winner buying a dram for the boys. Or maybe girls. Or perhaps golf created Scotch. I mean, maybe one day long, long ago a guy in the Scottish Highlands was whipping his mashie club along a particularly peaty bit of soil and Read more
The deliberate crash of a Germanwings flight in the French Alps last week set off alarm bells with many airline customers. Airlines and governments around the world, including Canada, immediately brought in rules to require two people in the flight deck at all times. It is probably an improvement, but some travellers remain uneasy about low-cost carriers (December’s AirAsia crash is still a recent memory). Consumers are naturally attracted to the cheaper prices of airlines such as Germanwings, Ireland’s Ryanair and Florida-based Spirit Airlines, which flies a number of Canadians to the sunny south each winter – by some estimates Read more
