Press release:

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-r...rotection.html

Delete

If you try and booking anything all flights show sold out. So they are not taking bookings.

Official, on the it website it says ops ending Sunday.

Looks like the flair/lynx merger were too risky for flair to pull the trigger on. And flair loves taking stupid risks.

They were until 25 minutes ago. Hours after they made this decision. Wonder how much more money they managed to screw people out of in that time? I know the people will get it back from their credit cards, eventually. Will be a hardship for many though, who may have booked travel several months down the road and will likely have to wait until after those dates to get credit card refunds and in the meantime, need to outlay that again to buy the flights with someone else, likely at now an even higher fare than earlier today.

I wouldn't want to be somebody on vacation in Cancun right now looking at having to spend thousands of dollars on last minutes flights with another carrier.

Well the good news is that their loads were crap.
Bad news, they are shutting down at the very end of the University/College reading week.

I have family who flew out west for the weekend and I booked them on Flair back in january. They asked why not Lynx, my reasoning is because I was skeptical based on their crappy loads.


Media outlets are starting to pick up the story. I'm sure it'll be a big fuss tomorrow. I think its nice of them to continue flying until Sunday instead of wrapping ops up at midnight tonight. It would definitely be much more chaotic if that were the case.

Yeah, I'm not sure Flair is that much better:

Flair cancels flight and refuses to rebook BC student on competitor
Megan Devlin
Feb 21 2024

A student from Abbotsford, BC, had a rough time flying home for reading break this weekend when Flair cancelled her flight at the last minute and refused to rebook her on a competitor’s route leaving the same day.

Jessica Quiring told Daily Hive she arrived at the Calgary airport around 12:30 pm Sunday but didn’t see her flight on the board. She went to the Flair counter to ask what gate she should proceed to and saw a crowd of customers.

“They’re telling us that our flight is cancelled. That it’s not coming. And we’re confused because we haven’t gotten any communication — any email about it,” she said...

....Then, about half an hour before the flight was supposed to take off, Quiring finally got Flair’s cancellation email. But the next available flight wasn’t until Tuesday — and she was supposed to be home Sunday.

After an hour on hold with Flair, a telephone agent told Quiring there was nothing the airline could do. That was despite Quiring reading out Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations stating large carriers are obligated to rebook customers on the next available flight with which it has a commercial agreement....
https://dailyhive.com/canada/flair-c...ent-competitor

How ironic she was rescued by Lynx.

Flair wouldn't or couldn't...? :runaway:

Flair couwouldnt!

As posted on another forum, here is the link to creditors arrangement act filed by Lynx. http://cfcanada.fticonsulting.com/ly...22,%202024.pdf

Lynx was receiving default notices from both the GTAA, Delta, and Montreal aero this week, allowing these companies to seize Lynx assets as of this weekend. "Flair Transaction" was listed several times throughout this file, but I don't think Flair wanted to put on debt that looks like is worse then theirs.

I mean, is anyone surprised? Instead of running underserved routes they preferred to be the 5th or 6th airline to run a specific route. Good bye and good riddance.

If they don't have enough cash to pay for fuel and ground handling upfront I'd say there's a decent chance they won't be able to operate to the 26th.

Or staff saying "fuckit"

Coincidentally Lynx’s flight attendants had just voted to unionize with CUPE.:rolleyes:

People being happy an airline going away, one that was super cheap to boot, always surprises me.

Westjet offering some relief fares with Lynx going away.
https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/news/2...ter%3A20240223

Here's the thing I don't understand. YUL is owed over $1 million and YYZ is owed over $2 million by Lynx among other parties owed money. This isn't exactly chump change. CRA is owed over $70 million by Lynx. Does this sound familiar? I'm assuming no one will get anything back as the planes are leased and office furniture doesn't amount to millions of dollars that can be used to pay off the debts.

If I were YYZ or YUL or any other private company, wouldn't I demand up front cash payment from Flair immediately? Starting tomorrow? After I was just burned by Lynx? Of course I don't know if any of the private entities are owed money at this point and I don't know if there are allowances in these contracts to force Flair to pay for services up front. But you would think that any prudent business would take the steps I mentioned or else they will be the last one standing in the bankruptcy line trying to get money back. Flair has no fixed assets either I believe so it seems like a question of when not if and the demise might have been accelerated due to Lynx.

It was pointless. Anyone who booked with them will dispute it with the credit card company and should get a refund.

The only reason to keep the booking system open was they simply are not that well organised and staff likely lose all motivation if your told your losing your job.

Maybe because people realize they could only be super cheap by stiffing suppliers and their employees? People who would rather have a healthy industry even if it means fewer players.

I’m pretty selfish tbh. They never started service in YOW so it doesn’t affect me personally. Maybe if they based the planes in underserved airports starving for direct flights (that are also sustainable), they may have faired better. But no, a 6th (?) carrier doing YVR-YYZ is much more important :koko:

I know someone who her and husband and two kids had booked YOW-YVR for July. Now she'll have to scramble and hope for a refund and book with another airline.

Which is unfortunate. I hope they are able to manage a semi-decent price or if they are flexible, go another time. Other than instances like that, YOW is unaffected.

Duncan Dee, the former COO of Air Canada (who has retired to Grand Barachois NB) has issued this statement regarding the demise of Lynx:

Since he has retired, he has complete freedom to speak his mind. It would appear the airline industry in Canada is a sick oligopoly, used as a government cash cow, designed to protect existing carriers, and hostile to ULCC start-ups. American airlines avoid Canada whereever possible.

It gets even more "gross" when you consider the bailout cash companies like AC have gotten over the years.

It does affect you, Porter now has more room to increase prices for Western Canada flights, especially those to Calgary. It also allows them to increase prices to Vancouver as they know Lynx will never be there.

Canadians pay the highest airline fees per km in the rich world. Ottawa tends to be on the higher end to boot with its limited service. That will just continue.

YVR - YYZ represents 25% of Canadas population, with fairly high fares. They can't ignore that.
Canada is geographically spread, but population is concentrated. the Top 10 cities in Canada (and there metros) represent about 65% of the population. In the USA its about 30%. Based on this they all need to start serving the same cities since that's where everyone lives and travels to. You can't fill a Thunder Bay to Regina flight very often.

You are in Ottawa, look at Porter, doing the same type of market expansion as Lynx did just with a eastern Canada perspective compared to a Western Canada one. If you think Lynx was poorly executed, do you equally believe Porter will fail as there strategy of route expansion is fairly similar - serve the most in demand routes first.

Except Porter has been at this for almost 20 years, Lynx 2. Porter focused on the low hanging fruit for years before branching out. They managed to get themselves a profile and reputation amongst the travelling public, some stable financial footing and the ability to make a business case for their expansions. Even WestJet stuck to the west for several years before becoming a cross Canada carrier. I do think Lynx would have been fine had they only stuck to YYC-YVR/YYZ for a while before adding in a bunch of other cities so early on in their history.

Well yes and no. Operating only YYC-YVR/YYZ would not be a sustainable model for the prices they were charging and having an insane amount of competition. I know enerjet was originally entrenched in YYC, but Lynx’s main failure (in my opinion) was trying to entrench themselves in westjet territory. Had they focused on YYZ or some other smaller markets, they may have been able to see better margins, but unfortunately, they were getting trumped by westjet out west, and expanding into YUL rapidly.


Flair had a good fitting in YHM and had a pretty good base up until swoop kicked them out. Now flair has retrenched themselves in YKF and have very good brand awareness their.

I don't admit to be an expert on Porter but everything I read makes your "Porter has been at this for almost 20 years" a little simplistic. They have been around but really have not competed with anyone except themselves when they had Billy Bishop almost entirely to themselves. Even then they only had to worry about one type of aircraft the Q400. On top of that, I feel that AC and WS are not paying attention to PD yet. At some point AC will jump on PD if it feels it's getting to big. They'll offer quadruple Aeroplan miles, lower prices and so on to weed out PD. Porter is now playing in the big league and will also have to contend with US carriers for any flight offerings to the US for example. People have also said that they're prices aren't even necessarily cheaper than AC or WS so it will be interesting to see what happens.

I understand their game plan. They have "supposedly" a large enough bank roll for now that they are willing to lose tons of money on routes (to YYC for example) in order to get their brand noticeable and for people to take a chance on them. I hope they succeed. They offer a couple of flights to YEG and I believe those loads are better than their YYC loads so we'll see. I think they have a much better chance than Flair to succeed so I actually hope that Flair fails sooner than later so they have a chance.

But you get free beer!!!!

This is why YOW is and will be a big part of their ops. AC and WS can do what they can on many routes out of YYZ, but unless they beef up service to YOW on many routes Porter will enjoy a much larger slice of the pie than they do at YYZ (and in some cases, a monopoly).

Look at YYZ-MCO for instance. You have AC 4x daily (with a fifth on Saturday), two of which are mainline (usually widebodies). You have 2-3x daily on WS. On the ULCC side you have Jetlines flying it a few times a week, and Flair is daily to SFB. Porter's daily E2 is a drop in the bucket of the overall capacity on that route.

Meanwhile over at YOW, they only compete with 2x weekly Rouge, 2x weekly Westjet and 3x weekly Flair to SFB, making their daily flight account for about 45% of the weekly capacity out of Ottawa to Orlando (north of 60% if you exclude SFB). They're the only direct options to Orlando on Wednesday and Sunday. They'll be continuing it daily in the summer, the only carrier to serve the route in that time.

Edit to add: Porter is actually adding a second YOW-MCO flight for the peak March Break season on Fridays and Saturdays, from MAR02 until MAR23 (so seven additional frequencies per direction over this time). They are not doing this out of YYZ.

There's an interesting operational analysis post on airliners.net that might answer some of those questions:

Friday Feb 16th, heading into a long weekend for most folks in Canada, was not only a bad day at 777 Partners, but also a messy day operationally for Flair....

....(Flair) OTP was 44.1%, with 9% of sectors incurring delays greater than 5 hours, including a YYZ-YWG r/t that ran 9 hrs late. If you were on one of Flair's 38 delayed flights yesterday, the average delay was 2hrs 12 mins.

There were at least a couple of OTP shenanigans where Flair recovery flights with new flight numbers that arrived hours after the original sched time were listed as arriving "on-time". Tsk Tsk.

Flair generated 1,025,219 asm's per tail on the day.
Lynx managed 963,312 asms with a near equal asl of 1,434 miles, utilization of 11hrs 11 mins and OTP of 59.4%
Porter's chronically under utilized fleet tapped out at just 454,030 asm's, an asl of 1,216, utilization of 7hrs 42 mins and OTP of 59.8%. That's easily the highest daily utilization we've seen for Porter so far in 2024. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that utilization dropped back to about 7hrs 10 mins today, (Saturday)....

https://www.airliners.net/forum/view...=200#p24165519

I feel that Lynx's departure might increase fare prices on WS/AC/PD. With Flair being the sole Canadian ULCC now, they have their own market and I'm sure AC/WS/PD can battle it out as bigger players charging more than F8. When it was Y9 & F8, they are probably stealing more of the big player business hence they needed to compete for heavily, but now that its just F8, they might just leave em.

Yes, Flair is most likely to attract the kind of customer who rolled the dice on Lynx. :P

The most interesting thing to me in the airliners post I quoted is Porter's shockingly low a/c utilization. Not sure how sustainable that is.

I think that is a certainty.

Even a short flight like Halifax to St Johns, Lynx had some $69 OW fares over summer, with most being at $150.

Porter and AC are at $650+ RT, so you now are stuck with a much bigger fee - all for a 90 minute flight.

Some summer routes between YVR and YYC have jumped 50-150 (RT) dollars depending on the day IN July.

YVR - YWG are now 800 + on AC/WS, up $100-$300 over last 24 hours. Only cheap flights left are on Flair at $290.

Toronto is still fairly well priced from Western Canada with no real changes.

Saw a post on redflagdeals that someone already had their flight to Florida cancelled this weekend. Sounded like YVR-MCO. They rebooked YVR-SFO-IAD-MCO tomorrow (14 hour travel day), but managed to get MCO-DEN-YVR going back.

It’s a loaded comparison when you pull numbers like that. How full are the big 3 flights when you sampled those fares? If the flights are getting close to full the prices will be higher. That’s the nature of travel. If Flair is nearly empty of course it will be low. Let’s face it airlines can’t survive when they charge $100 for a flight. Most of that is fees/taxes/surcharges etc. that doesn’t leave much for the airline

I'm currently seeing round trips flights for this route on WS being $300-350 for around half the time up until May, and roughly about $100-200 more for the rest of the summer.

I vehemently reject the assertion that there's a huge untapped demand for travel within Canada if only flying was somewhat cheaper.

Indeed, the failure of Lynx seems to indicate this. They offered ridiculously low fares (I saw sub $200 for Toronto-Calgary return in late 2022) and they still couldn't fill the planes enough to make money, which is how ULCC airlines work. Pack 'em in like sardines and make it the bus of the sky, like Ryanair.

It doesn't work because flying generally is the cheapest bit of travel right now within Canada and the US, unless one has a place to stay.

For all the bloviating about fees and taxes on air travel, who better to pay for the costs of air travel other than flyers themselves? I suppose we could shift some of the Canada Health Transfer to subsidize airports and their ancillary costs, but I view indirectly subsidizing someone's trip to Cancun a waste of money. You have money to stay drunk on a beach for a week? You can fund the airport improvements and security. My flights to nice places should reflect the costs of me taking those flights.

Lynx's model (and the sketchy ULCC model writ large) is such misery and risk for such low reward as to be nearly pointless. Hence, I avoid them like the plague, because my vacation is much less enjoyable when I have to worry about my travel plans beyond the uncontrollable effect of weather. Apparently it's been too long since we learned this here.

Canada is a bad environment for ULCC flying for reasons not to be rehashed. Perhaps flying should more accurately reflect its true costs so people are more cognizant of that. I'm not unsympathetic to those who need to travel across the country on a budget, but if can only exist on the backs of half-baked startups and the piles of investor money chucked willy-nilly into the fire, it's probably not really a good idea.

I'd also add that it is funny that the same people who advocate action on climate change can often turn around and bitch that climate-damaging air travel is too expensive. :rolleyes:

Wow. But I think you’re right.

Everyone wants to believe they are subsidizing everyone else. Regardless of whether that is the case. It might be a bit much to reflect costs accurately, but I do think it’s more accurate than people want to think.

I don’t have a problem paying the mortgage on the airport facilities we’ve built. I do find it funny these ULCC’s haven’t been willing to focus on secondary airports, or even to make passengers walk the tarmac to bring down costs.

Overall, I agree with you. I prefer that flyers pay for the facility/airport fees. As someone who flies multiple times a year, I'm just fine paying the taxes/fees. My experience has been that Canadian airports overall are much better kept than their US counterparts. I would prefer public spending to pay for intra-city public transport.

Personally, I am not a fan of the ULCC model and would not fly one. I am rooting for Porter though, to become a third strong carrier in Canada.

A lot of you are saying that airports should not be subsidized. But will you also say that public transit should not be subsidized? It is an industry that runs at a loss everywhere and it isn't always the solution for every city and situation. Here in Edmonton we are on a light rail transit spree that boggles the mind. We are not a downtown centric city like maybe Toronto or Vancouver yet the subsidies keep on coming to provide light rail transit to and from downtown. Why should I subsidize a person that wants to work downtown and not pay for parking? See it works both ways. But this conversation would never end lol.

I will be curious how well Porter does in YOW. Many people compare YEG to YOW and I can tell you the "Edmonton based" airline Flair is not really based much here at all. They have tried a bunch of different flights from here and get smacked all over the place and pull out. Pretty soon our Flair flights will be YEG-YVR, YEG-YYZ and YEG-multiple maritime locations. The last one is a money maker since WS and AC seem to charge $1 million dollars to fly from Alberta to the Maritimes. WS also seems to have attacked Flair where it can. AC doesn't seem to be doing that with Porter... ...yet. Now it is true that PD will try and connect people at YOW so we will see how that goes and their prices aren't necessarily lower than AC or WS. Flair's "business plan" involves no connections and low (unsustainable) prices which is quite different. It will be an interesting couple of months ahead. Based on all the data provided about Flair on airliners.net from knowledgeable people, I don't see how Flair's demise isn't upcoming.

I don’t disagree that there is a basic service aspect. I don’t think that necessarily means the gov’t pays for the airports.

Back before the all-in pricing was put on airline ticket prices, I remember people complaining about taxes. I remember looking at the details on my receipts. People were complaining about fuel surcharges (which went to the airlines) as a “tax.” Or the airport authority charges. The airlines didn’t like to correct them on that. People complained about Canada, and didn’t realize that a bunch of the taxes listed (US immigration and agriculture inspection and US passenger or terminal tax) were from the US, because the US is smart enough to know it’s more palatable to tax international than domestic travel, and because they were trying to recover costs from international travel that are paid by gov’t (subsidies, even if that word is unpopular) domestically.

When Westjet announced YYT-LGW service, some communities in Labrador complained that was the wrong move - that government should focus on fixing the very high cost to fly regional flights to the north. Of course it wasn’t government directing LGW. And there is a drastically different economy of scale for even a 737 on LGW versus a 10 seater. But they weren’t wrong that government has some responsibility to make sure basic services are provided.

I’m not in favour of making a trip to Cancun $100 cheaper. I’d be more in favour of developing a way for government to support essential service. Not just from Labrador, Lynn Lake, or Aklavik, but Dryden or Lloydminster and even making sure short regional hops between major centres like YQR-YEG maintain some service, because in a lot of cases it’s become harder to go between nearby places than further flung ones.

Large airports that can run off user fees don't need to be subsidized. I'm not opposed to government subsidies for smaller airports/to maintain routes to places for example in the north. Public transportation should absolutely be subsidized because it provides so many benefits to a city. So many North American cities are soulless, isolating, and unhealthy places because of the reliance on sprawling single-family homes. This type of development is not sustainable for many reasons and we are starting to see that with the massive infrastructure costs coming due. Denser, more walkable cities are much healthier, more vibrant, and infrastructure costs are spread out to more users. To your credit, expansion of public transit lines needs to adapt to moving more people around the city, rather than simply from outlying areas into downtown.

PD is putting an extra 8 or 8 YYZ-FLL flights though. They’re also adding an extra YOW-FLL rotation on Sundays for 5 weeks. Looking at the fares on both routes the next 4 weeks, they’re either entirely full or close to it.

If you count YYZ & YTZ as single market city code YTO, PD's #2 station since day 1 has been YOW. That does not appear to be changing anytime soon.

A PD insider on Skyscraper's Ottawa section in the YOW thread that an internal company memo said the long-term plan is for PD to grow to 100 jets and that the breakdown of the equivalent in aircraft at each base will be:
-YYZ: 35 aircraft
-YOW: 25 aircraft
-YVR: 25 aircraft.
-YUL/YHU: 15 aircraft

If you assume the YVR base will do all YVR-YYZ/YOW/YUL/YHU flying, and even with the YOW base covering some YHZ/YYT flying, that's a lot of new capacity and routes still for PD to bring to YOW in the next 5 years + the Dash 8 flights at YOW.

In addition to the obvious of increased frequencies on existing routes, future E95 routes will probably be (either year-round or summer or winter seasonal) YYJ, YLW, YQR, YXE, YYT, YYG, YDF, MIA, TPA, RSW and/or SRQ, LAS, SFO, LAX, PHX, SEA, plus whatever non-transborder sun destinations they serve.

I really think PD at some point will pick up 8-10 additional used DH4s for additional YOW and YUL/YHU feed. So then add 1-3 DH4 flights/day to YQB, YUL, YHU (eventually they will need to connect Ottawa and Montreal 2 or 3 times a day for feed to/from both - charge $99 one-way vs AC's ridiculous $500 and you'd even get a tiny bit of O&D back), YQY, YSJ, YHM, YKF, YXU, YQG and YSB (add PHL & CLT and a DFW E95 route if an AA codeshare ever happens) + work with TS to base a pair of 321LRs at YOW for mostly Europe in summer, mostly south beyond PD's reach in winter and it's not hard to see how YOW could handle YEG's present day ~8 million pax per year within 10 years.

There's no reason why PD can't grown YOW from the 36 daily (on weekdays) departures in summer 2024 to 70-90 daily in the next 3-5 years. YOW will never be in the big leagues, but I think long-term will be what PDX is to AS in relation to SEA - a very important #2.

PD are really committing to YOW. There's long been ground staff and an F/A base, now there will be a pilots base, more F/As and 200 new maintenance positions + terminal staff. That'll be at least 500 employees eventually.

All this assumes the PD has the war chest to finance all this expansion plus the jet startup losses. The OMERS pension plan seems to believe in the plan. PD are definitely well capitalized to knock out Lynx and Flair (1 down, 1 to go) to be the only viable #3.

All I can say is, thank goodness for PD since they seem to be YOW's last hope. 25 frames is quite a large amount to base. Along with 150 (not including the 200 maintenance hub employees) new FA and Pilot base should be PD's second largest base behind YTO since YVR and YUL/YHU are getting 100 each. I don't see PD running Dash-8 feed into YYZ so any additions on that end should come to YOW. I also wouldn't be surprised if in the future PD transfers some of those frames from YYZ to YOW due to the intense YYZ competition. The OIAA seem to be very happy an optimistic about the future of YOW.

I'm hoping it doesn't stop there though. Increased other carrier partnerships along with an alliance may be able to get BA to YOW and hopefully TS will consider European operations in the future as both PD and TS can feed each other in YOW. I personally am currently looking to completely phase out AC and WS for my travel needs. So far, it's working quite well with whatever PD is currently doing along with AF's surprisingly quick capacity increases that have been happening over the last 1/2 a year.

Flair seems resilient, but I do not know how much longer that resilience will last. I'm almost certain Jetlines won't last. In my perfect world, the Canadian market will have the big 3 along with one ULCC to keep prices tamed even though I would not consider using it.

I do wonder however, how will YHZ be a "hub" for PD as they have announced with no E2's being based there?

:previous:

I kinda think Porter plans on Ottawa as being a hub-of-sorts for connecting flights from Atlantic Canada.

Moncton for example will soon be serviced 3x daily by Porter. One of these flights is direct to Billy Bishop, while the other two go to Ottawa (one transiting to Billy Bishop).

Porter bases their jet fleet out of Pearson, so Billy Bishop is not good for long distance connections, but, Ottawa is. I like Porter. I wouldn't mind making connections in Ottawa. Certainly less hectic than Pearson.

Anecdotally from my personal connections with people who live in Toronto, and judging by comments on social media, there seems to be a market for those completely unwilling to go through YYZ and YUL. For example, I know someone who would rather start in YTZ and connect in YOW instead of using a direct in YYZ. I am most likely bias being my home airport, but YOW truly is a stress free and modern airport. I adore being there. It’s not perfect of course, every airport has it’s flaws.

I think Porter may be well suited to YOW. Not trying to be bottom of the barrel, a market with more income than average, significant business origin/destination traffic, traffic generated from destinations all over the country. But we’ll see - my understanding is they aren’t operating nearly enough flight hours to have a hope of spreading lease costs out enough to make money yet, while at the same time taking on aircraft at a rate higher than either they or the market can absorb.

Westjet looks a lot like Alaska. Not quite a regional, not quite a leisure carrier, not quite an alliance carrier, not quite a network carrier, not quite a local one or two city carrier, but a little bit of all of it.

We have long distances and low population density. The economies of scale don’t add up to a Ryanair possible here. Fuel and lease costs drive it, and not the things ULCC’s can use to reduce costs.

We have very seasonal markets. What is really missing is a carrier that provides the seasonal swing capacity. Yes, Flair, Lynx, even Porter were trying to do a little, but less of their focus than the trunk routes. Transat has been less focused on that these days too. Canada 3000 used to trade aircraft with Air 2000 in the UK to move capacity between countries for each peak season.