When planning a special five-week, overseas family vacation to celebrate her birthday and other milestones, Kelly Gillease was willing to splurge a bit on travel expenses to kick off the June trip.
Airline prices for a direct flight to Paris from San Francisco, where she lives, were around $4,500 US for three one-way economy tickets. Then Gillease noticed a deal to pay an extra $500 US per person to travel in business class, which included lie-flat seats.
“The differential was not very large to get a much nicer experience,” said Gillease, who works in marketing. “We thought it’s worth it to kick off the trip and get lie-flat seats and pay not much more money than what we would have paid to fly economy direct from San Francisco.”
The family bought the tickets to help ensure they were well-rested upon landing in Paris, where they would be for only four hours before travelling on to Corsica, a Mediterranean island in France. Their itinerary also included stops in Denmark and Norway, before spending the final two weeks on an African safari.
The catch? They had to make a connection in Calgary and fly with WestJet.
When Gillease chose to hub her international voyage through Calgary, she became part of a trend that has seen an increase in American travellers, mostly from the west coast, who are flying with WestJet to overseas destinations.
A record number of Americans flew with WestJet to Europe this summer. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)
Record figures
This summer, 86,000 passengers on international flights with WestJet began or ended their journey in the U.S., which is a record high for the airline.
The number of Americans on WestJet’s transatlantic flights is up nearly 70 per cent compared to last summer, the airline said.
All of WestJet’s flights to Asia and Europe are based out of Calgary. The airline operates year-round or seasonal flights to Tokyo as well as European cities like Edinburgh, London, Rome, Barcelona, Dublin and Paris.
There are a variety of reasons for the rise in U.S. passengers flying through Calgary, including an increase this year in the number of international flights by WestJet.
Those extra seats come at a time of high demand, high prices and few available seats on many U.S. and European airlines on flights across the Atlantic Ocean, which has created an “extremely strong” air travel market, said John Grant, the chief data analyst at OAG, an aviation analytics firm.
“The continued post-pandemic ‘revenge-spend’ phenomena is in existence,” said Grant, who is based in the United Kingdom. “The strength of the U.S. dollar has encouraged more U.S. visitors to Europe.”
Grant added that people will often opt for a indirect flight because they think they can get a cheaper fare. “And sometimes they can.”
WestJet has increased the number of overseas flights over the last decade. (Tiphanie Roquette/CBC)
Soaring costs
The number of seats on flights between the U.S. and Europe is only three per cent lower this summer compared to 2019, said Hayley Berg, the Boston-based lead economist for Hopper, an airfare finder app.
But fares for those flights are up sharply as airlines cash in on consumer cravings for trips abroad. The average ticket price for a round-trip transatlantic flight in June was $1,054 US, a nearly 17 per cent increase compared to 2019, according to Berg.
“We have seen very high airfare throughout the summer. I would say from the perspective of June and July, it was the highest airfare that we’ve seen from the U.S. to Europe in the last five or six years at least,” she said.
Following the pandemic disruptions to the industry, some American and European airlines no longer operate transatlantic flights or haven’t brought back as many routes. The industry also faces labour challenges, relatively high jet fuel prices and limitations at some airports.
WestJet has cut several region routes in Canada but added more international seats out of Calgary.
“WestJet has seen an increased demand for U.S.-based transatlantic travel that exceeds all years prior to 2023,” WestJet spokesperson Julia Kaiser said in an e-mailed statement.
“This increase, alongside significant demand of our Canadian-based guests, has resulted in WestJet adding transatlantic flights and destinations by welcoming Tokyo-Narita to our network and increasing service to Paris to a year-round cadence.”
Choosing Calgary
The number of U.S. travellers is “very important for WestJet, no doubt about it,” said Grant, the analyst with OAG.
Calgary is a good connection from many cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, but it’s still a relatively small international hub airport, Grant said.
“It’s also about price and you’re dealing with people at the most price-sensitive point in the market. They don’t have brand loyalty to WestJet, they have brand loyalty to their personal income and expenditure. So it would be folly to place more and more capacity on the basis purely of the connecting markets,” he said.
For Gillease, who had flown with WestJet several years ago, the flights from San Francisco to Calgary to Paris were a “lovely” experience in terms of food, customer service and comfy seats, she said.
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Unfortunately, upon arriving in Paris, her husband’s luggage didn’t turn up. Missing was a large backpack with belongings they specifically packed for the safari, including hiking shoes.
At one point, the bag was marked as permanently missing and they didn’t think they would ever get it back, said Gillease. But after three weeks, it arrived in Europe — just in time for the family’s flight to Africa the following day.
The family is waiting to be reimbursed for expenses connected with the lost bag. Still, Gillease would fly with WestJet again from the U.S., though she’d hesitate to check any luggage.
“I would fly them again if I just had carry-ons because the flight experience was so nice,” she said.
TORONTO – Roots Corp. may have built its brand on all things comfy and cosy, but its CEO says activewear is now “really becoming a core part” of the brand.
The category, which at Roots spans leggings, tracksuits, sports bras and bike shorts, has seen such sustained double-digit growth that Meghan Roach plans to make it a key part of the business’ future.
“It’s an area … you will see us continue to expand upon,” she told analysts on a Friday call.
The Toronto-based retailer’s push into activewear has taken shape over many years and included several turns as the official designer and supplier of Team Canada’s Olympic uniform.
But consumers have had plenty of choice when it comes to workout gear and other apparel suited to their sporting needs. On top of the slew of athletic brands like Nike and Adidas, shoppers have also gravitated toward Lululemon Athletica Inc., Alo and Vuori, ramping up competition in the activewear category.
Roach feels Roots’ toehold in the category stems from the fit, feel and following its merchandise has cultivated.
“Our product really resonates with (shoppers) because you can wear it through multiple different use cases and occasions,” she said.
“We’ve been seeing customers come back again and again for some of these core products in our activewear collection.”
Her remarks came the same day as Roots revealed it lost $5.2 million in its latest quarter compared with a loss of $5.3 million in the same quarter last year.
The company said the second-quarter loss amounted to 13 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Aug. 3, the same as a year earlier.
In presenting the results, Roach reminded analysts that the first half of the year is usually “seasonally small,” representing just 30 per cent of the company’s annual sales.
Sales for the second quarter totalled $47.7 million, down from $49.4 million in the same quarter last year.
The move lower came as direct-to-consumer sales amounted to $36.4 million, down from $37.1 million a year earlier, as comparable sales edged down 0.2 per cent.
The numbers reflect the fact that Roots continued to grapple with inventory challenges in the company’s Cooper fleece line that first cropped up in its previous quarter.
Roots recently began to use artificial intelligence to assist with daily inventory replenishments and said more tools helping with allocation will go live in the next quarter.
Beyond that time period, the company intends to keep exploring AI and renovate more of its stores.
It will also re-evaluate its design ranks.
Roots announced Friday that chief product officer Karuna Scheinfeld has stepped down.
Rather than fill the role, the company plans to hire senior level design talent with international experience in the outdoor and activewear sectors who will take on tasks previously done by the chief product officer.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Mediated talks between the union representing HandyDART workers in Metro Vancouver and its employer, Transdev, are set to resume today as a strike that has stopped most services drags into a second week.
No timeline has been set for the length of the negotiations, but Joe McCann, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1724, says they are willing to stay there as long as it takes, even if talks drag on all night.
About 600 employees of the door-to-door transit service for people unable to navigate the conventional transit system have been on strike since last Tuesday, pausing service for all but essential medical trips.
Hundreds of drivers rallied outside TransLink’s head office earlier this week, calling for the transportation provider to intervene in the dispute with Transdev, which was contracted to oversee HandyDART service.
Transdev said earlier this week that it will provide a reply to the union’s latest proposal on Thursday.
A statement from the company said it “strongly believes” that their employees deserve fair wages, and that a fair contract “must balance the needs of their employees, clients and taxpayers.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
