by Jim Byers
Last updated: 3:45 PM ET, Thu January 14, 2021
The pandemic and ongoing travel restrictions are forcing Air Canada to suspend some of their most popular flights, at least temporarily.
In a memo sent to TravelPulse Canada, Canada's largest airline outlined the details of the 25% capacity reduction they mentioned in a Wednesday statement. The list contains 44 temporarily suspended flights, including 12 domestic, 10 trans-border (USA) and a full 22 international routes.
Popular flights that are being temporarily discontinued include Toronto-Quebec City, Montreal-Orlando, Toronto-Tampa, Vancouver-Puerto Vallarta, Montreal-Barbados, Calgary-Maui, Toronto-Paris and Toronto-Saint Lucia.
It's a blow to Air Canada workers and to Canadians, as well as tourism workers in the Caribbean and around the world. It's also a difficult pill to swallow for beleaguered travel agents, who now have a lot fewer destinations they can sell. But airline officials say they've been left with no choice.
Effective Jan 23, this is a list of the stations closed and routes suspended until further notice:
Additional airport stations closed in Canada:
Fredericton NB, Gander NL, Goose Bay NL, Yellowknife NWT, Kamloops BC, Prince Rupert BC
Additional domestic routes suspended
Fredericton-Montreal
Gander-Halifax
Goose Bay-Halifax
Kamloops-Vancouver
Ottawa-Calgary
Ottawa-Vancouver
Prince Rupert-Vancouver
Quebec City-Toronto
St. John's-Toronto
Victoria-Calgary
Winnipeg-Calgary
Yellowknife-Edmonton
Transborder routes suspended
Calgary to: Maui
Montreal to:Denver, Houston, Orlando
Toronto to: Houston, Orlando, Tampa, Washington (Dulles)
Vancouver to: Honolulu (until April), Maui (until mid-February)
International flights suspended
Montreal to: Barbados, Casablanca, Cozumel, Samana, San Jose (Costa Rica), Santa Clara, Turks & Caicos, Nassau, Sao Paulo, Puerto Vallarta
Toronto to: Cozumel, Curacao, Ixtapa, Los Cabos, Paris, Saint Lucia, Santa Clara, St. Vincent, Zurich
Vancouver to: Los Cabos, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta
Air Canada on Wednesday said it will have to reduce capacity by 25% and lay off 1,700 workers due to a lack of demand.
Since the implementation by the Federal and Provincial Governments of these increased travel restrictions and other measures, in addition to the existing quarantine requirements, we have seen an immediate impact to our close-in bookings and have made the difficult but necessary decision to further adjust our schedule and rationalize our transborder, Caribbean and domestic routes to better reflect expected demand and to reduce cash burn. We regret the impact these difficult decisions will have on our employees who have worked very hard during the pandemic looking after our customers, as well as on the affected communities," said Lucie Guillemette, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Air Canada.
WestJet last week reduced capacity by 30% per cent and announced layoffs and furloughs for 1,000 workers.
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