Air Canada celebrates launch of Rio, Panama routes

Air Canada's international network continues to grow with service between Toronto and Rio de Janeiro beginning Dec.11, 2014, followed by a new Toronto-Panama City route taking off Dec. 17, 2014.

To mark the milestones, the airline hosted its top travel trade partners for a special celebration last evening, surprising two lucky winners with tickets to the new destinations.

"We are convinced that the market will do incredibly well and that we'll be able to increase frequency, and hopefully do a daily service," said Duncan Bureau, vice-president, global sales, Air Canada. "We're only going to be able to do that with all of your help."

Service to Rio

Three-times weekly year-round flights to Rio de Janeiro, a business and leisure hub, mark Air Canada's second destination in Brazil, with existing daily non-stop service to Sao Paulo.

The service will be provided with a Boeing 767-300ER aircraft with 24 International Business Class and 187 Economy seats.

Service to Panama

All flights on Air Canada's Toronto-Panama City route will offer a Business Class cabin, complimentary seatback entertainment throughout the aircraft, Aeroplan accumulation and redemption. The service is scheduled to be year-round, three-times weekly (Wednesday, Friday, Sunday).

It will be provided with an Airbus A319 aircraft with 120 seats.

The airline says that both routes are timed for convenient connections with interline partners from respective in-destination hubs, plus to its network at Toronto Pearson Airport.

In all, there will be about 3,000 seats a month to Panama City and 5,000 to Rio de Janeiro.

Air Canada recently announced impressive improvement in load factor for September 2014 vs 2013, at 84.7 per cent, versus 83.2 per cent the previous year, representing an increase of 1.5 percentage points on a system-wide capacity increase of 7.3 per cent. On this additional capacity, system wide traffic for September increased 9.2 per cent.

"We're continuing to see great load factors, great revenue numbers and we just couldn't do it without you," Bureau said.