Airlines
Air Canada Celebrates New Routes
Air Canada continued celebrating its 11 new routes with an agent appreciation event in Toronto last night (April 6) at the top of the Manulife tower. Front and centre were new routes to the likes of Warsaw, Budapest and Prague, along with Seoul, Korea; but there is also new service to London and US destinations like Washington, DC, Jacksonville and Salt Lake City. Air Canada VP of Global Sales Duncan Bureau (pictured) noted that the airline has invested $9 billion in new aircraft and jokingly asked the 100 or so guests to each leave $10 at the door to help pay for it. “A...
Spotlight on Portugal
Representatives from Visit Portugal and 25 Portuguese tourism partners were in Toronto yesterday (April 6) for round table sessions to meet with travel agents, tour operators and buyers. “We started in Vancouver and that was really exciting because that was the first time ever there had been a Visit Portugal event in Vancouver,” William Delgado, country manager, Canada, for the Portuguese National Tourist Office, told PressToday. “We had a very good reaction and very good turn out there as well.” Portugal saw 15.5 million visitors in 2015, including 155,000 Canadians, which...
Brussels Airlines Now In Canada
Star Alliance member Brussels Airlines is now flying from Toronto (Pearson) to its home base in Brussels five times a week, and onwards to other destinations in Europe and Africa. Toronto is Brussels Airlines' first destination in Canada. The flight leaves Toronto every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 6:30 p.m., arriving the next morning in Brussels at 7:50 a.m. local time. The flight to Toronto leaves Brussels Airport at 10:30 a.m. and arrives at Pearson at 1:20 p.m. local time. The new service is operated with Airbus A330 aircraft equipped with Brussels Airlines...
AC Set to Resume Full Brussels Schedule
With the re-opening of Brussels Airport, Air Canada will resume its regular daily flights between Montreal and Brussels as of tomorrow (April 7) and between Belgium and Canada on April 8. Air Canada's rebooking policy remains in place for customers who purchased an Air Canada ticket no later than March 22 and whose itinerary includes a flight to, from or via Brussels Airport (BRU) between March 22 and April 14. Travellers scheduled to travel during the affected time period may contact Air Canada Reservations to change their flight free of charge to another date between now and April...
Porter Joins UATP Community
Porter Airlines is continuing to enhance its corporate travel base by becoming a UATP (Universal Air Travel Plan) Merchant. “The corporate travel market is thriving within our network of routes,” said Michael Deluce, Porter executive vice-president and chief commercial officer. “UATP is a payment option that makes the travel experience easier and more efficient for many of our corporate travellers.” From its base at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Porter flies to 23 destinations in Canada and the US. (http://www.UATP.com,...
IATA Picks de Juniac For Top Job
The International Air Transport Association's (IATA) board of governors has unanimously approved to recommend Alexandre de Juniac, chairman and CEO of Air France-KLM, to succeed retiring director general and CEO, Tony Tyler. With confirmation by the IATA Annual General Meeting to be held June 1-3 in Dublin, Ireland, de Juniac will take up duties as the head of the association after a short handover period. “The IATA board of governors is very pleased to recommend Alexandre de Juniac to lead IATA. Under Tony Tyler’s leadership IATA has grown stronger. This has been achieved by...
Air Canada Partners in Biojet Initiative
Air Canada will participate in Canada's Biojet Supply Chain Initiative (CBSCI), a three-year collaborative project with 14 stakeholder organizations to introduce 400,000 litres of sustainable aviation biofuel (biojet) into a shared fuel system at a yet to be determined Canadian airport. Previous Air Canada biofuel flights used biojet that was segregated and loaded separately into an aircraft via tanker truck. By contrast, CBSCI's objective is to start developing a more efficient operational framework that will introduce biojet into a multi-user, co-mingled airport fuel supply...
WestJet to Open New Brunswick Contact Centre
WestJet will open a contact centre in Moncton, New Brunswick, an initiative designed to enhance service for its French-speaking guests. The new facility will open in September and over the next four years will create more than 400 primarily home-based jobs, two-thirds of which will be full time. “We've always taken our responsibility to provide our signature friendly, caring and stress-free service in both of Canada's official languages seriously,” said WestJet president Gregg Saretsky. “A second call centre based in Canada's only officially bilingual province, in a city known...