Airlines with accordion fleets

[Hotel Tango]

Does any airline outside of Canada do this,

Yes, in the USA (Sun Country), the UK (various), and The Netherlands (Transavia) to start with.

[Montrealguy]

Originally Posted by Burnie5204

Jet2 do it every summer when they lease in some extra airframes and livery them into their own colours each time (just the text, not the whole vert. stab. colouring etc)

Thank you. I just checked their numbers. This spring for example, they added 9 aircraft to their fleet, increasing it to 49. So they went from 40 to 49. A significant increase, but nothing close to tripling it's fleet size like Sunwing does from summer to winter every year.

[Montrealguy]

Originally Posted by Hotel Tango

Yes, in the USA (Sun Country), the UK (various), and The Netherlands (Transavia) to start with.

Yes, I noticed that Sun Country and Transavia swapped 3 aircraft this year. Nothing in such high proportions as what I described though.

[N707ZS]

This fleet operates in North Korea.

[Phileas Fogg]

There's a fleet in Norway also:

[jabird]

you just have to be clear about which market you're serving at any one time - don't mix the Sun flights up with the Hajj

I thought Saudi was Sunni

Now Hajj and football flights would be interesting, especially if they moved the 2022 World Cup dates to coincide.

[Montrealguy]

Well if what goes on in the world as far as accordion fleets go is what was depicted in North Korea and Norway, I can pretty much come to the conclusion that the version we have in Canada is unique.

This airline, which was operating 29 B-737-800 aircraft in Canada last winter, is down to only 6 aircraft in Canada now.

It plans to go back up to 40 aircraft in Canada again next winter.

Sunwing Airlines - PILOT CAREER CENTRE

[canberra97]

I think this post should come to an end as there is no more to add to the subject as the topic is NOT new in the aviation industry it has been going on for years.

[Agaricus bisporus]

I suppose it wouldn't be acceptable nowadays to call it a squeeze-box fleet?

[jabird]

I think this post should come to an end

Surely the only decent thing to do now is to find as many ways as possible to expand it again and keep going

[Montrealguy]

Many are fixated with the term "accordion fleet", which I didn't invent. I merely read it in a newspaper article. Maybe you should write a letter to the editor to straighten him out.

The purpose of this thread was not to discuss the term but to try to learn if any airline in the world expands and shrinks its fleet size on an annual basis to the extent that it is done in Canada. Thanks to those who replied on subject.

To those who, for reasons mysterious to me, seem to get a hot flush when reading this thread, my most sincere apologies.

[DaveReidUK]

Many are fixated with the term "accordion fleet", which I didn't invent. I merely read it in a newspaper article. Maybe you should write a letter to the editor to straighten him out.

At the risk of digressing, a bit of Googling would suggest that the term was coined a year or so ago by Jean-Marc Eustache, CEO of the Air Transat group, at last year's AGM where he referred to "double-accordion” fleet size variability, meaning varying the relative numbers of narrow- and wide-body aircraft in the fleet between winter and summer by means of aircraft swaps with CanJet Airlines and XL Airways.

If the term was in use prior to that, I haven't found any record of it.