Air Canada expects to return to close to pre-pandemic levels of demand by the end of 2023, a top executive at the firm has claimed.
Kiyo Weiss, the airline’s sales director for the Asia-Pacific, believes that capacity on routes between Canada and the region she oversees will double by the end of the year, with numbers continuing to rise through the course of next year. At present Air Canada is only running at 30% of 2019 capacity on routes between Canada and the Asia-Pacific.
Weiss also claimed that the firm is considering the addition of a new destination in the Asia-Pacific region, offering no clues as to where the destination would be but saying that a decision would be made “within a month or so”.
The aviation industry was one of the most affected by the outbreak of Covid-19, with unprecedented restrictions on travel seeing the sector grind to a halt. Passenger numbers have slowly risen as a number of pandemic measures have been lifted around the world, but the industry is still having to counter passenger hesitancy along with rising costs due to increased fuel prices.
Air Canada is seeking a larger market share in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asian countries. This week the airline resumed direct flights between Montreal and Tokyo’s Narita airport more than two years after cancelling flights on the route due to the pandemic.