Airlines with accordion fleets
There is a fairly recent trend in Canada for certain airlines to have accordion fleets of aircraft to quickly adjust for seasonal demands. Canjet, a 737 operator, operates just 5 B-737s from June to October, but sometime in mid to late October, will gradually increase its fleet to 12 B737s, to peak sometime around Dec 15th. The peak ends somewhere around late March, when they begin to gradually decrease the fleet size, to bring it back down to 5 around late May.
Sunwing airlines does basically the same, going from 10 737s to 29 in the peak of winter.
Both of these airlines do this with short term leases of aircraft, hiring foreign seasonal pilots on short term contracts, and occasionally with foreign wet leases.
Are there any other cases in other countries where jet operators will double or triple their fleet every year for a short period of the year as I just decribed.
The only cases I can think of are the airlines that do Hajj fights which wet-lease foreign aircraft and every year for the 2 months of the Hajj.
Any other known cases ?
Last edited by Montrealguy; 30th May 2013 at 22:25.