As we head into the busy summer months of travel, Flair CEO Stephen Jones doesn’t expect the kind of airport chaos we saw last year.
Jones told BNN Bloomberg Wednesday that his airline is in a “much better place” now compared to last summer, when some of Canada’s airports earned the dubious distinction of being among the most delayed or cancelled in the world.
“It’s going to be very different,” he said. “By any measure, and using a Canadian term, I think last summer was an absolute gong show, but things are very different now.”
“I think we’re in for a really big summer of travel.”
Jones said 82.1 per cent of Flair flights in May arrived within 15 minutes of their schedule and expects flights to achieve upwards of 95 per cent capacity this summer.
A recent report from the Canadian Transportation Agency found Flair had the most complaints with 15.3 per 100 flights between April 2022 and March 2023, followed by Sunwing (13.8) and Swoop (13.2).
Jones, however, called the statistics “a little bit misleading.”
“If we look at the actual numbers of complaints, we had 239. I think Sunwing had 880, WestJet and Air Canada had more than 3,200,” he said.
“When you think an aircraft has 189 seats, one bad flight can skew those numbers.”
Jones added his airline has since invested in a contact centre, which can now address CTA complaints in about a week.
“The best way to stop complaints is to run a really efficient airline and get your operation running smoothly, so that’s where we’ve been focusing,” he said.
With files from The Canadian Press
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