Westjet Retrenches

[Commander Taco]

Excerpted from the Globe and Mail:

"WestJet boosting flights in Western Canada, de-emphasizing eastern routes as part of new strategic plan"

"WestJet Airlines says it will emerge from the pandemic with a renewed focus on Western Canada, boosting its flight schedule in its backyard while flying less often within the eastern parts of the country."
"Other parts of the plan include strengthening business and holiday travel in western Canada. WestJet’s proposed purchase of Sunwing’s airline and vacation divisions, announced in March, is awaiting regulatory approval."
"The airline will also reshape its fleet, adding more narrow-body planes, including new Boeing 737 Max jets, and halt the addition of wide-body 787 Dreamliners."

Apparently the YYZ B787 pilot base is to close and one wonders what the medium term plan is for the 787's already delivered. Also, where does the ailing Air Transat fit into the overall airline equation in Canada?

Time will tell....

[VickersVicount]

and YHZ routes for S23 gone?

[Major Cong]

More room for Flair 😎

[+TSRA]

Air Canada and Porter own the east, and WestJet attempted to be a leisure airline in a business market. What they failed to realize is the majority of people are not flying from YUL of YOW to YYZ to then connect to sun destinations. They'll simply plan their vacation around the one or two YUL direct CUN flights a week. WestJet was making money hand over fist when they were doing the point-to-point leisure flying. So soon as they moved to the hub-and-spoke model, they started losing money. Profitable, yes, but decreasing YOY. The 787 was a mistake for the company to get into. They should take the ones they have and fly them to the popular sun destinations. Convert the other orders and options into 737s. As for the Q400, the only reason it exists is to support the 787. To convert that flying into the lower demand routes where a 737 point-to-point doesn't make money and leave the rest to the Boeing fleet. That's still a lot of flying out west that the Q4 will do, but the Eastern Triangle certainly didn't need yet another Dash operator doing yet again hourly flights.

There are only 37 million people in Canada, most of whom don't travel with the airlines on offer. Airlines have to find their niche and stick to it. Flair is great until the first time you want to get to Toronto on the cheap to connect to Dubai to find out that Flair cancels and now AC doesn't have to do a thing for you. Next time, you'll just take AC all the way. As for Porter. They're about to learn the hard way just as WestJet did. Unfortunately for them, they can't retreat back into the vacation market. They'll have to tough it out and hope AC decides to buy a few more Q400s and Embraers.

It blows that this is how aviation is in Canada. But, it's a big country with a small population trying to play to the same tune as America (big area, big population) and Europe (small-ish area, big population).

[Mostly Harmless]

I disagree. The 787 was the next stage of evolution for the company and would have been a winner. However, the company decided to start swoop instead of staying focused on, and continuing to build on, the success of WJ. They added costs, complexity and flushed their employee culture for the sake of a temper tantrum by the worst of the 4 founding members of the airline. Trying to be everything to everyone is the issue.

I do agree that trying to build a hub and spoke system when everyone else is dismantling their hubs is a mismanaged attempt to enter the widebody market. The focus on swoop prevented a true growth of a widebody fleet to destinations the aircraft was built to service in a point to point manner.

WJ's biggest problem right now is that they don't know what they are. They are not a premium airline because they don't want to spend the money to be one. They aren't a LCC because they moved away from the one class, one type business model. They are not a ULCC because you don't need a shoehorn to get into a seat yet. They aren't... well... they anything that is defined.