Air Transat resumes operations after six-month pause

Canada’s Air Transat resumed flying on 30 July after a six-month pandemic-driven pause. The Montreal-based leisure carrier, a unit of Transat AT, says on 30 July that three flights are scheduled for the first day of operations: a round-trip between Montreal and Punta Cana, Mexico, and a flight from Montreal to Vancouver. “It is with great joy and excitement that we return to the skies after these long months of suspension,” says CE Annick Guerard. The flights kick off the airline’s summer schedule, which will build to 24 routes to 16 destinations in Canada, the USA, the Caribbean, Mexico and Europe. Transat halted operations in January after the Canadian government of Justin Trudeau asked the country’s airlines to temporarily suspend flights to southern beach and resort destinations – places popular with Canadians during the country’s long winters. That move devastated carriers’ usually lucrative spring break business, hitting Transat particularly hard. In April, the airline broke off a planned tie-up with cross-town rival Air Canada. The deal, announced in 2019, was approved by shareholders twice – as conditions of the deal, including the share price, had changed – but was then shot down by the EC over competition concerns.<br/>