Air Canada will resume some routes to Jamaica, Mexico and Barbados in early May after Canadian airlines stopped all flights to solar destinations in January at the request of the federal government. However, Air Transat will not resume the flight until June.
Jared Harckman, vice president and director of the Aviation division at the ICF consulting firm, assures that once the Covid-19 pandemic “is under control and travel restrictions are relaxed in the world, the first sector that will begin its recovery will be that of pleasure trips”.
In a report released March 21st, Harckman adds that there are already some signs of aviation recovery in Latin America. “There is already an increase in flights to beach destinations such as Los Cabos with a 30% growth in flights published for summer 2021 compared to 2019. Latin America is indicated as the region that could have the best recovery rate worldwide thanks to the tourism from the United States and Canada ”, assures the expert in route, fleet and marketing strategies for airlines in the United States and Mexico.
Time to take flight
On January 29th, the government of Justin Trudeau announced that as of January 31st, flights from Canada to Mexico and the Caribbean would be suspended to prevent a further spread of the coronavirus and required mandatory quarantine of travelers in a hotel at your own cost. “With the challenge we face from Covid-19, both here and abroad, we came to the conclusion that this is not the time to travel,” Trudeau said.
According to government data, the contagion rate of COVID-19 by people arriving to Canadian territory was less than 2% at the time, so Trudeau’s government decided to relax the policy of no flights to tourist sites in Mexico and El Caribbean. In addition to flights to solar destinations, Air Canada also suspended some routes to the United States and other countries earlier this year.
Air Canada has already announced that it will operate three weekly flights from Toronto to Mexico City beginning May 3rd and a weekly flight from Toronto to Kingston, Jamaica and Bridgetown, Barbados, beginning May 5th and 9th, respectively.
The Canadian airline plans to restore some routes, including Vancouver-Tokyo from May 1st, Toronto-Hong Kong for May 6th, and Toronto-Bogota from May 7th.
Air Transat will not take flight … yet
For its part, the also Canadian Air Transat has no plans to restart its flights until mid-June as a result of the Canadian government’s restrictions to slow the spread of the pandemic.
In a press release, Jean-Marc Eustache, president of Transat, explained that they will resume flights when the European volume recovers during the summer, “which will probably be in mid-June.”
Air Transat connects with Cancun from eight cities in Canada, of which only three intend to restart in mid-June, while the rest, has considered sales for the months of November and December of this year, and some will even be reactivated until 2022.
The company has also announced that it is working to secure its financing in the event that the acquisition agreement is canceled by Air Canada.
By Silvia Méndez