The latest (Monday Aug 12) word from WestJet:
WestJet service update - August 12
As WestJet teams continue working hard to perform necessary inspections and repairs, the airline operated several extra sections between Friday, August 9 and Monday, August 12 to accommodate disrupted guests and support the airline's scheduled service, including:
Total cancellations
Monday, August 5. 58
Tuesday, August 6. 106
Wednesday, August 7. 86
Thursday, August 8. 47
Friday, August 9. 52
Saturday, August 10. 66
Sunday, August 11. 58
Monday, August 12*. 57
Tuesday, August 13*. 37
Wednesday, August 14*. 27
- 37 additional sections operated by WestJet Encore
- 14 additional sections operated by Canadian North
- 1 additional section operated on WestJet's Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner
Total cancellations by day as of August 12, 4 p.m. MT
*
Forward looking cancellations subject to change
It looks like the cancellations are trending down . But there’s no indication from WestJet that there is an end in sight. Getting better, but still not good.
Originally Posted by
YXUFlyboy
What they should do is change the schedule now to give people certainty. But they're not, so you get to play "is my flight getting cancelled today so I can spend 30 hours on the phone waiting to get there someday" bingo.
You should not assume WestJet is reliable right now. Book an alternative refundable flight as a backup.
Oh my. If that’s what they’re doing … and this is going to be the case for many weeks … this is going to be bad for customers and disastrous for WestJet’s brand (after an already bad summer).
Originally Posted by
PHXflier
Looking through plane utilization in FlightAware (planes according to Airfleets), Canadian North seems to have a lot of planes available that have not been used in days. From a plane utilization standpoint it would seem feasible to charter a few of them for a few weeks.
First question has to be … why are so many of their planes just sitting idle? And they have crews available (since their planes need to be flown by their own crews)? Seems odd! That’s very unlike operators like Omni or GlobalX whose business is to have planes and crews ready to jump into service for airlines at (almost) a moment’s notice.
And everything I’ve seen indicates that Canadian North was only called into service by WS for 2 or 3 days — this past weekend, with no word that WS is keeping them around for longer.