Air Canada has shared an update about its progress in the last couple of months on improving operations and reducing delays. The airline struggled to keep pace with the travel volume and was under stress by mounting delays and dissatisfied customers. But its latest statement suggests that things are improving.
Post-COVID travel resumption has been a mixed bag for several airlines. It has been great to see revenues climb to offset the heavy losses made during the pandemic, but a massive surge of travelers lining up to board planes has taken many carriers by surprise.
Air Canada, too, was caught off guard as passengers returned in huge numbers, with travel demand increasing five-fold from last year. The airline went from experiencing a two-year lockdown to having 80% of 2019 capacity in a matter of months.
In June, Air Canada canceled around 8% of its scheduled flights for July and August, or about 154 flights a day, equating to approximately 378 million available seat miles (ASM). But it has since been taking several steps to make amends and fix the cracks that began to show with the resurgence of travel.
On August 17th, Air Canada gave an update about the changes it has made in the last two months to reduce congestion and delays. Michael Rousseau, President and Chief Executive of Air Canada, said,
"Earlier this summer, I committed on behalf of everyone at Air Canada that we would do everything possible to restore our company's industry leading standards of customer care. Among other things, this included innovation at the airport, operational changes and significant schedule adjustments and today these are yielding demonstrable improvement in the metrics that matter most to our customers. While I am very satisfied with the progress to date, and I thank our employees for their unrelenting efforts, we all continue to work hard on behalf of our customers to complete our recovery."
Follow Simple Flying for all the latest aviation news.
From June 27th to August 14th, the Air Canada family (including Air Canada, Air Canada Rouge, and Air Canada Express) carried almost 6.4 million passengers. In an official statement, the carrier said that it made the following improvement:
The airline operates nearly 1,100 flights and carries around 135,000 passengers daily. It has also re-introduced most of its grounded airplanes and continues to hire more workers to ease operations.
While a lot still needs to be covered, it seems that the worst is over for Air Canada.
What are your views on this? Please leave a comment below.