Westjet Incompetence - What they're (not) doing to help the mess at Canadian Airports
 

With the Canadian airports overwhelmed with passengers.. what is Westjet doing to help? Seat Sales!

Email received July 19 (Tuesday)

Today only: save on Canada

A picture can't capture the sound of the waves or smell of fresh mountain air. Save an extra 20% off already reduced base fares across Canada to experience it for yourself.

Book by:
Tonight! (11:59 p.m. MT)

Travel:
August 2 - September 6, 2022



You notice above they mentioned today only.. yet 2 days later - today:

Save on Canada, up close

A picture tells a thousand words, but being there will leave you speechless. Save 20% off base fares and see more of Canada this summer.

Book by:
July 21, 2022 (11:59 p.m. MT)

Travel:
August 2 - September 6, 2022



In the Tuesday email.. they also included this...

Know before you go

Pack your bags with confidence. Explore our Get Travel Ready page for the latest on travel requirements.


Pack your bags with confidence? That's funny. :rolleyes:

Ron.

Not all airports are overwhelmed all of the time. Kerb to gate last Thurs afternoon in the YYC International terminal took 20 mins. They already cut their schedule back for the summer, but business goes on and this seat sale is obviously designed to fill available seats in the reduced schedule.

I'm failing to see Westjet's incompetence here.

Incompetence:
lack of ability to do something successfully or as it should be done
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...sh/incompetenc

You honestly believe Westjet are operating all of their flights successfully - passengers arriving on time with their luggage?

Ron.

Are other airlines like AC, Delta and others also having seat sales?

Yup!

Are other airlines like AC, Delta and others also having operational issues (which is sometimes connected to airport authority operational issues, which is out of the airline’s control)?

Sure are!

So Westjet may be incompetent”, but then so must be AC, Delta, and other airlines.

This is a round the world problem, stemming from the pandemic and the after effects of it. Staffing, supply chain, and more. Not just at Westjet.

Name me an airline that is, with stats to back it up.

I'll wait.

Actually Air Canada has not matched (or at least advertised it) the Westjet 20% off Canada sales this week.

Ron.

As a footnote, where do we classify someone claiming incompetence of others yet is unable to spell the word incompetence correctly?

Touche! fixed that :)

Ron.

No but AC continues to advertise Summer seat sales so why reserve the faux outrage solely for WS?

Is your expectation that WS cease to advertise at all?

The problem with WestJet and their so-called "sales" is they continually pull the bait and switch (great flight times to lure you in, and then they cancel those flights and put you on a red-eye, that was cheaper than you paid for the "sale"). So considering all the additional problems this summer, it just seems extra slimey (so, more slimey than they usually are!) considering we know that the majority of these flights will NEVER run, and only this time, they will not have other flights to put you on the same day. Not even the redeye! 🤪

The June 2022 stats from OAG (https://www.oag.com/en/on-time-perfo...ines-june-2022) show that WestJet cancelled 4% of their scheduled flights (about the same as Delta and American), compared with 9.7% for Air Canada. Difficult to conclude that any significant number of flights they are having a seat sale on will be cancelled.

It's impossible to qualify their bait and switch strategy with cancelation percentages. For all we know, those 4% could be the the sales they're advertising. I don't disagree that it's difficult to conclude with any accuracy- I'm just going by the numerous reports of this tactic I've seen on this forum. And while AC may cancel twice as many flights, I've seen far less reports of them not getting you on a comparable flight. So no slimey feeling afterwards that you got played...

It is easy to correlate what they sell with what they fly. The schedules are published well in advance, with over 16,000 flights a month at the moment and about 2 million seats per month available I’m sure there is an illusion of “bait and switch” to a few people, but flights don’t just appear and disappear. 4% cancellation is still over 600 flights and about 90,000 seats dropped from inventory a month, but it is only a small amount of the total flown.

I’m inclined to trust real data from reputable airline industry sources, as opposed to people’s impressions from reading Internet forums and social media with absence of critical data analysis.

As an indication of completion rate before Covid, WestJet was typically in the 98 to 99% range, so the current 96% is starting to get back towards their past performance.

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?