As recently as October, Air Canada and WestJet Airlines were flying a combined 540 flights between Calgary and Saskatoon each month, according to aviation data firm Cirium.
On a cold, cloudy Thursday night in February, Donovan Onishenko arrived at the Calgary airport on a delayed flight from Atlanta and rushed to catch his connection to Saskatoon. With the airplane still at the gate, he said WestJet ticket agents told him the flight was full and about to depart without him.
Now, WestJet is the only carrier offering commercial flights between the largest cities in Alberta and Saskatchewan. It operated 345 flights between the two airports in February, 36 per cent fewer than when the airlines shared the route. Meanwhile, the route’s average fare went up 45 per cent over the last four years.
Duncan Dee, Air Canada’s former chief operating officer, said routes like Vancouver-Toronto enjoy robust competition, with five airlines offering the trip compared with two a few years ago. But the sparser flight boards at many airports also stem from a de facto division of the country by the two main players: Air Canada and WestJet, which shared nearly two-thirds of the domestic market in 2022, according to Cirium.
“Montreal and Quebec in particular are underserved by low cost carriers and full service carriers on a per-capita basis,” said Lynx CEO Merren McArthur in an interview. The Ottawa-Fredericton route saw average fares for one-way trips rise 106 per cent to US$186 between January 2019 and January 2023, according to Cirium. Over the same period, monthly flights fell 60 per cent after Air Canada pulled out, leaving just Porter to ply the corridor.
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