Air Canada is planning to reduce its flights in July and August, according to a statement from the company’s president, as the airline continues to deal with “customer service shortfalls.” “Regrettably, things are not business as usual in our industry globally, and this is affecting our operations and our ability to serve you with our normal standards of care,” Michael Rousseau wrote. The airline will be reducing its capacity as summer travel comes to a peak and pandemic-related restrictions on travel continue to lift. In an emailed statement to CTV News Channel, an Air Canada spokesperson said the company will be reducing its schedule by an average of 154 flights per day for July and August. Prior to this change, Air Canada said it was operating around 1,000 flights per day. The routes most affected are flights to and from Toronto and Montreal airports. The changes will reduce the frequency of these flights, and will primarily affect evening and late-night flights on the airline’s smaller aircraft. The spokesperson also said the airline will be temporarily suspending routes between Montreal and Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Kelowna, and Toronto and Fort McMurray. International flights will remain mostly unaffected, except for timing changes that the spokesperson said would reduce flying at peak times. “To bring about the level of operational stability we need, with reluctance, we are now making meaningful reductions to our schedule in July and August in order to reduce passenger volumes and flows to a level we believe the air transport system can accommodate,” the statement reads. While Rousseau acknowledges this will have a “negative impact on some customers,” he said he hopes giving this notice to the public of the airline’s reduced schedule will allow travellers to make other arrangements.<br/>
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The respective CEs of Kenya Airways and South African Airways see the chance to unlock the potential of greater air connectivity within Africa as the reward as they work on developing plans for a pan-African operation. The two airlines teamed up in November last year to sign a strategic partnership agreement which envisaged the creation of a pan-African airline group, potentially by 2023. That would likely involve a holding company structure similar to that of European airline groups like IAG, a move recently adopted by Latin America carrier Avianca in linking up with Gol through the planned Abra Group. ”This is my pet subject and it is my pet subject because I truly believe it is going to be a game-changer in the African aviation space,” Kenya Airways chief executive Allan Kilavuka says, when asked about partnership plans. ”We are trying to push back on fragmentation of aviation in Africa, because it is very, very fragmented, and the market right now is quite small. It is 2% of aviation and if you compare that to the population that is Africa – which is about 16% – it is disproportionate. How do you grow from 2% to closer to 16%? You do that by making the airlines more viable. And how do you make them more viable? You make them scalable, and that is why we are talking to South African, and actually quite frankly, others as well.” His counterpart at SAA, interim CE John Lamola, similarly enthuses about the potential such a partnership could have. He also highlights the relatively small size of the African aviation market, the lack of connectivity and infrastructure challenges in certain countries. ”Within that context we have partnered with Kenya as a first start,” he says. ”We have left it to the politicians to talk about the Yamoussoukro Declaration, they have all these things in their political control, and after all these years, we are still not there.”<br/>