Westjet Incompetence - What they're (not) doing to help the mess at Canadian Airports
Jul 24, 2022, 1:39 am
#16
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Calgary
Posts: 1,444
Thanks for those stats - very good to see the numbers laid out like that - and it's encouraging to know that the number of dropped seats is low enough that you could actually track to see how many are the flights they advertised at a sale price, and see what percentage of those they end up turfing. Maybe it isn't enough to classify it as a bait and switch, but it makes you wonder why there's been so many complaints about this? I guess it's like any reviews, you mostly just hear the bad stuff?
Although the data is only available up to April so far, Canadian stats now show load factors close to 80%, so close to 2019 levels (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1...401%2C20220701)
This means that it becomes prohibitively expensive to consolidate or cancel many flights, as the capacity to take the passengers on other flights or routes is just not there as it was in 2020 and 2021. WestJet is also now back to 77% of the flights in June compared with June 2019, but with a slightly smaller fleet with the 737-600s being retired, so there isn’t really any spare capacity in the mainline fleet at the moment. Air Canada is at 70% of the flights of June 2019, so at the same load factor WestJet may have increased market share slightly.
