The FINANCIAL — WestJet on February 13 announced a significant investment in Quebec’s travel and tourism market with increased service and new routes to and from Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport as well as Quebec City’s Jean Lesage International Airport. Overall, the airline is adding 105 more flights per week in the province, a capacity increase of 74 per cent.
“Our unique brand of great service and low fares has been embraced across Canada for more than 20 years and today, WestJet is here to offer more choice and competition to the Quebec market,” said Bob Cummings, WestJet Executive Vice-President Commercial. “The people in Quebec have traditionally been served by a legacy carrier and WestJet believes this significant additional investment in the province will give leisure and corporate travellers a choice in airlines and bring lower fares to more than 8.2 million Quebecers. We look forward to flying hundreds of thousands of travellers to and from this beautiful province to enjoy the area and conduct business. As always, we are committed to making air travel in Canada better.”
“The City of Montreal is pleased with the increased frequency of WestJet flights. The year 2017 marks Montreal’s 375th anniversary and this announcement is perfectly timed to help to promote our city internationally while creating local jobs”, said Harout Chitilian, Vice-President of the executive committee of the City of Montreal, responsible for information technology, smart city, administrative reform and youth.
Starting June 15, WestJet will begin point-to-point service for the first time within the province with four daily flights between Montreal and Quebec City. On March 15, WestJet will launch twice-daily service between Montreal and Halifax. And, on October 15, WestJet will begin twice-daily service between Montreal and Boston.
In addition, the airline will also increase its number of non-stop flights between Montreal and Vancouver from six per week to 12. WestJet’s operations between Montreal and Calgary will increase from 14 flights per week to 19. The airline’s Quebec City and Toronto service will add one more daily flight for a total of three. With the addition of WestJet’s new services the airline will operate 195 weekly departures from Montreal and 50 departures from Quebec City by October 2017, according to WestJet.
“I want to thank WestJet for its confidence and support to develop Montreal-Trudeau as a hub,” said Phillipe Rainville, CEO of Aeroports de Montreal. “With these three destinations, WestJet will now offer an average of eight additional flights per day and 33 per cent more seats departing from Montreal, which is excellent news for our passengers.”
All three new routes will be operated by WestJet’s regional airline, WestJet Encore and its fleet of Canadian-made Bombardier Q400s. WestJet is proud to support this iconic Canadian company based in Montreal and flies the fourth largest fleet of Q400s in the world. By mid-2018, the regional airline will have a total of 45 aircraft.
Routes to Vancouver and Calgary will be operated on WestJet’s fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft featuring the enhanced Plus product and WestJet Connect, WestJet’s Wi-Fi connected, inflight entertainment system.
