WestJet aims for 2022 recovery

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This article was published 30/10/2021 (1615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg may not be WetsJet’s most important market but it’s the Winnipeg Richardson Airport’s biggest carrier — and the only commercial carrier at the Brandon Municipal Airport — so a number of regional industry and government leaders were on their best behaviour at a virtual roundtable discussion with senior WestJet officials on Friday.

Billed as a discussion about the state of air travel to and from Manitoba, it served as a clarion call for all parties involved to work together to get air travel back up and running.

After experiencing, what Barry Rempel, the CEO of the Winnipeg Airports Authority, said was “truly the worst crisis our industry has ever witnessed,” planes are flying again, schedules are slowly being expanded and instead of talking about survival, the industry is talking about growth again.

WestJet officials Andy Gibbons, vice-president, government relations and Charles Duncan, president of Swoop, WestJet’s ultra low-cost carrier, spoke about the 25-year partnership the airline has had with Winnipeg and its commitment to remain the Winnipeg Richardson Airport’s number one carrier. The city is also the location where all of the airline’s Boeing 737 General Electric engines are overhauled and serviced by StandardAero.

Gibbons said it is WestJet’s intention to bring passenger counts and investment back to 2019 levels in 2022.

“That is our ambition and commitment to work with everyone to achieve that,” he said.

The timing is auspicious for Winnipeg.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Winnipeg airport’s terminal building and on Monday — the first day of the return to international flights since borders were shut down — Duncan will be in Winnipeg to launch Swoop’s new Winnipeg-to-Mesa, Ariz., service.

As well, federal vaccine requirements for air travel start on Saturday.

It will mean the aviation industry — arguably the hardest hit sector by the pandemic – will be the first fully-vaccinated industry in the country.

It’s fairly well known just how much the industry suffered by the rolling lockdowns across North America.

By WestJet’s accounting, its demand dropped by 90 per cent and actual passenger count was down by 82 per cent.

Gibbons, Rempel and others on the call made the point that it is not something that can be revived without a lot of care and attention.

WestJet was riding high in 2019 at its healthiest financial state since it launched 25 years ago — Winnipeg was one of five destinations it served then — but the pandemic knocked it back to 2002 levels of revenue.

Since June it has grown, percentage wise, as much as it did the previous 11 years, so there is some optimism.

But as Rempel pointed out the Canadian commercial airline industry is operating with 100 fewer planes than it had in 2019. Swoop is adding a 10th plane back to its fleet on Monday.

Meanwhile, in order to survive, airports such as the one in Winnipeg, had to go even further in debt to survive the shutdowns, something Rempel noted that their peers across the border did not have to do.

Rempel said, “Winnipeg remains a very strong market, primarily origin and destination,” meaning passengers flying into or out of Winnipeg are not connecting to or from other flights.

“But candidly we are struggling with very difficult policy choices we have made as a country,” he said, referring to, among other things, the ongoing land rental payments the community-owned airports like Winnipeg’s must pay to the federal government, essentially making airports a profit centre for the federal treasury.

He and others in the industry look to the fact that five million Canadians drove across the border to U.S. airports to take advantage of cheaper flights in 2019, hamstringing the financial health of the Canadian aviation industry even further.

WestJet has direct flights from Winnipeg to Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Thunder Bay, Ottawa and Toronto. Regularly scheduled winter flights to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, start Monday, with Palm Springs, Calif., on Nov. 8, and Orlando, Fla., and Cancun, Mexico, on Dec. 18.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca