Canada Jetlines, the latest airline to enter the crowded field, set to take off

The next airline hoping to pose a threat to the country's Air Canada-WestJet duopoly has landed its inaugural flight. Canada Jetlines' first flight departed out of Toronto Pearson International Airport Thursday morning and arrived in Calgary International Airport to speeches and a ribbon cutting ceremony. The new startup airline, headquartered in Mississauga, Ont., is offering service between Toronto's Pearson International Airport and Calgary International Airport twice weekly. Canada Jetlines bills itself as an "all-Canadian, value-focused leisure carrier." While Toronto-Calgary is its only scheduled route right now, the company's chief commercial offer, Duncan Bureau, said the airline plans to service the leisure market both domestically and trans border with flights to the Caribbean and the Americas. The airline currently has one Airbus A320 and a second to join in December, with plans to expand the fleet to 15 Airbus A320s by 2025 at a rate of five aircrafts per year, said Bureau. Canada Jetlines is the country's newest, but not first, airline to emerge in the wake of the pandemic. Edmonton-based Flair Airlines has been aggressively expanding in the last year and a half, and now serves 36 airports with 85 routes and a fleet of 18 aircraft. Calgary-based Lynx, formerly known as Enerjet, launched last spring and said at the time it hoped to operate nearly 90 flights a week on nine routes by June, all within Canada. WestJet also operates its own subsidiary low-fare airline, Swoop, which launched in 2018 and offers service to destinations in Canada, the US, Mexico and the Caribbean. While these competitors operate under a low-cost, no-frills model, Canada Jetlines aims to differentiate itself with service to the premium leisure market, said Bureau.<br/>