Summary

  • WestJet Group announces significant expansions to 2024/2025 Winter Schedule, adding 36% additional capacity to Winnipeg flights.
  • WestJet will offer 16 million seats to 63 holiday destinations this winter, increasing intercontinental capacity by 48% and total capacity by 9%.
  • Winnipeg’s winter capacity boosted by 36% with 21 nonstop WestJet destinations, new routes to Montreal, Fort Lauderdale, and San Jose del Cabo.

Airline executives are an optimistic bunch by nature, so it was unsurprising that amid the CrowdStirke outage and looking at fatal blue screens, Canada’s WestJet Group announced significant expansions to its 2024/2025 Winter Schedule, adding 36% additional capacity to its Winnipeg flight schedule.

A busy WestJet Winter

Yesterday, as its operational teams worked feverishly to recover from the weekend’s outages, WestJet Group released details of its 2024/2025 schedules, which offer more seats to the sun than any other Canadian airline. The Group will operate 320 nonstop routes to 63 popular sun destinations in the US, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America this winter.

WestJet planes.

Photo: WestJet

The WestJet Group, which includes WestJet and Sunwing Airlines, will offer 16 million seats to 37 domestic, 21 transborder, 42 sun and three intercontinental destinations this winter. Total capacity will increase by 9% year-on-year (YoY), intercontinental routes will increase by 48%, domestic by 15%, transborder by 5%, and Latin-Caribbean by 3%.

Related

WestJet Fuels Growth Strategy With 3 Boeing 737 MAX 8s

With a busy 2024/2025 Winter schedule coming up, Westjet is adding another three Boeing 737 MAX 8s this year.

WestJet Group Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer John Weatherill said that adding more seats and affordable fares across its entire network will give Canadians choice and flexibility this winter.

“Our winter schedule is building on our ambitions to ensure Canadians benefit from a comprehensive network of affordable domestic air service while providing seamless access to cold-weather escapes to the most popular sun destinations.”

Westjet operates 71 unique routes among its more than 323 domestic daily departures and is adding more domestic capacity in Winnipeg (44%), Regina (24%), Saskatoon (27%), Edmonton (32%), Kelowna (14%), Vancouver (16%) and Calgary (6%). It will offer more than half of all domestic air service operating in the West within and between Alberta and British Columbia and fly more unique routes between Eastern and Western Canada than any other airline.

WestJet Boeing 737-8CT "Magic Plane" C-GWSZ.

Photo: Welshboy2020 | Shutterstock

International capacity is also rising, with WestJet offering nonstop, year-round service to Tokyo and daily connectivity to Paris and London via its hub in Calgary. It will operate 63% of all flights between Canada and Hawaii and increase capacity to Latin Caribbean destinations from Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, Kelowna, Victoria and Winnipeg.

Largest ever Winnipeg Schedule

Winnipeg, the capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba, will have overall winter capacity boosted by 36% compared to winter 2023/24. Passengers departing from Winnipeg Richardson International Airport (YWG) can connect to 21 nonstop WestJet destinations with 24 daily departures (in peak season), including new routes to Montreal, Fort Lauderdale and San Jose del Cabo.

Related

WestJet Fuels Growth Strategy With 3 Boeing 737 MAX 8s

With a busy 2024/2025 Winter schedule coming up, Westjet is adding another three Boeing 737 MAX 8s this year.

WestJet will increase domestic frequencies on nine key routes to and from Winnipeg, including Edmonton, Regina, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Saskatoon, Thunder Bay, Toronto and Montreal (YUL). It will operate 46 weekly flights from YWG to Calgary, 20 to Toronto, 16 to Edmonton, 12 to Saskatoon and 11 to Vancouver.

WestJet 787-9 taking off

Photo: Heather Dunbar I Shutterstock

The Winnipeg winter schedule contains transborder connections to seven US destinations, including new nonstop weekly flights to Fort Lauderdale. The most connections are to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, with five weekly flights; Phoenix, with four weekly flights; and Los Angeles and Orlando, with three weekly flights.

To help locals escape the long, cold winter, WestJet has direct transborder flights from Winnipeg to Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Orlando and Palm Springs. For something a little more exotic, the choices include San Jose del Cabo, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Montego Bay and Huatulco.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *