Air Canada CEO hopeful as revenue climbs back toward pre-pandemic levels

Air Canada sees hope on the horizon as revenues soared over 2020 levels last quarter, despite continuing to operate far below pre-pandemic capacity and at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. Domestic leisure bookings have started to rebound, but business travel remains down across the board amid the persistence of remote work. "We're witnessing a strong rebound in VFR (visiting friends and relatives), and leisure traffic remains strong, specifically within North America, across the Atlantic and to sun destinations," COO Lucie Guillemette told investors on a conference call Tuesday. "We were pretty confident that come 2022 corporate Canada returns to their offices and business travel should return. But no doubt that for us, business has lagged a little bit." Revenue nearly tripled year over year to $2.10b in the quarter ended Sept. 30 alongside an 87 per cent boost in capacity. But revenue and capacity remained more than 60% and two-thirds below Air Canada's third-quarter figures in 2019 respectively as COVID-19 fallout continues to damage carriers' bottom lines. "There's no textbook on this type of recovery, or any in the history. There's no doubt we're very encouraged by what we see. And there's no doubt that the length of the recovery has moved in from the consensus of 2025 to at least 2024 and maybe 2023," CE Michael Rousseau said.<br/>