Arajet latest entrant to Canada's crowded budget airline market

Arajet, a discount airline based in the Dominican Republic, is set to launch flights between that country and Toronto and Montreal this fall.<br/>The announcement by the year-old carrier marks the latest entrant to an already crowded field of low-cost airlines, and comes two weeks after US budget carrier Breeze Airways made a pitch to Quebecers bound for Florida. Unlike many low-price players, Arajet CEO Victor Pacheco said his strategy will bank on a hub-and-spoke model that connects passengers from far-flung airports via the airline's hub of Santo Domingo, his home country's capital. As proof, he said well over half of the 10,000-plus Arajet tickets sold to Canadians so far are for other destinations in the Caribbean and Central and South America, to be reached via connecting flights from the Dominican Republic. "The ULCCs (ultra-low-cost carriers) are mainly point-to-point airlines," Pacheco said. "We're bidding on connections. And if we didn't have that, it would be very difficult then to compete with Canadian carriers." Though no other airlines fly direct between Santo Domingo and Canada, Air Canada, United Airlines and American Airlines all touch down there regularly. Meanwhile, rapidly expanding discount carriers try to woo Canadians with cheap flights to an array of sunny destinations. By the end of next year, Flair Airlines aims to beef up its fleet to 26 planes from 21 now, and Lynx Air to 17 aircraft from its current nine. The latter's inaugural flight only took off in April 2022, while Flair launched in late 2017, illustrating Canada's increasingly congested skies of late. Canada Jetlines also flies to a handful of sun destinations, while Porter Airlines -- though not a budget carrier -- plans to grow its fleet to 79 by 2025 from 46 currently. "I think the pie is growing," Pacheco said. "Competitors do react to us, they lower prices as well. And that means that now more people have access to travel even with them."<br/>