Air Canada & partners celebrate the holidays

Air Canada celebrated the holiday season last night with a few close travel partners, capping a strong 2015 for the airline.

The annual tradition topped off a banner year for the carrier, while providing travel industry members with a chance to catch up after the busy fall season.

“Meeting with industry colleagues and catching up with the trade and meeting key decision makers here, it’s a wonderful way to start off the Christmas season,” Arend Roos, managing director at Vision Travel, told PAX.

For Air Canada, the last 12 months were marked by a number of milestones, including the launch of new international routes such as Delhi and Dubai, as well as continued growth. The latest bit of good news for the airline came just before the festivities got underway, with Air Canada announcing a record load factor of 78.6 per cent for November, representing a year-over-year increase of 10.8 per cent from the 77.7 per cent reported in November 2014.

Duncan Bureau, Air Canada’s vice-president of global sales, told PAX that the strong year, marked by ever-increasing performance levels, was due in part to the support from the airline's travel partners.

“We’ve just had month after month of performance levels we haven’t seen at Air Canada before,” Bureau said, “and we’re very happy with the results year-to-date and we’re extremely excited about the support we’re getting from the travel trade.”

Looking ahead to 2016, the coming year promises to be another strong one for the carrier. In addition to recently-announced increases in its transborder service as well as international routes coming online in the New Year including Vancouver-Dublin and Vancouver-Brisbane, Bureau hinted at more announcements in the coming months.

“When we’re adding new fleet at the pace we are currently,” he told PAX, “there’s going to be some exciting things that we’ll announce next year and we’re looking forward to a really strong 2016.”

PHOTO: Of Air Canada: Caroline Johnson, manager - business development, Western Canada; Duncan Bureau, VP - global sales; Bambina Marcello-Weinberg, director - business development; Tracey Bellamy, director - global accounts; Nadia Lefebvre, manager - corporate sales.