Swoop budget airline offers $1 base fares in Canada

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/01/2020 (2089 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Got a spare loonie? With a new promotion from low-cost airline Swoop, that single dollar is enough to cover the base air fare for several one-way flights within Canada, including a few to and from Winnipeg.

The ludicrously low-priced roster includes one flight from Winnipeg to Victoria for $38, and the lowest of the low is a flight from Abbotsford, B.C., to Hamilton, which costs a grand total of $12 once fees and taxes are accounted for.

Flights from Winnipeg to Edmonton, Abbotsford, London (Ontario), and Kelowna are all available for $38, and trips from the Manitoba capital to Las Vegas, Orlando, and Los Cabos are each priced under $100. Comparatively, a flight from Winnipeg to Kelowna next month costs somewhere in the $260-$330 range, while a WestJet flight to Orlando in the same time period costs at least $650.

The airline does charge extra for checked baggage as well as a minimum of $36 each way for carry-on luggage. Plus, the sale blacks out most long-weekend dates and most of the summer: June 25 through Labour Day.

Budget travellers started searching your couch cushions for spare change, so much so that the Swoop site appeared to crash Tuesday afternoon.

“This sale not only gives Canadians more opportunities to explore North America, but also speaks to our continued commitment to making air travel more affordable and accessible,” the airline’s president, Steven Greenway said in a release sent out Tuesday.

Swoop is putting up 100,000 seats as part of its promotion, which runs from Jan. 14 through Jan. 21. The seat sale applies only for trips booked for between Feb. 4 and Oct. 24 of this year.

Swoop, which launched in 2018, is an independently operated airline under the WestJet umbrella. It offers flights to 12 Canadian, six American and five international destinations.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca