The Easter bunny delivered more than chocolate eggs to Air Canada this holiday weekend. It also delivered a key milestone to the airline - one it’s been watching and waiting for as a key indicator of travel recovery.
"We were very pleased to have had 100,701 customers board our planes on April 15, 2022, as travellers steadily return,” said Kevin O'Connor, Vice President of Air Canada's Systems Operations Control, in a statement.
Virgilio Russi, Vice President International Sales at Air Canada, told Open Jaw, “It’s very exciting for us - we’ve been waiting to reach this milestone for a while.
“The whole commercial branch has been watching the numbers every week waiting for this day to come.”
The airline attributes the surpassing of the milestone to pent-up travel demand, and O'Connor also noted, “It is also significant that we passed this milestone smoothly, indicating Air Canada has recovered operationally from COVID-19's effects and is prepared to safely and conveniently transport customers during the busy summer ahead."
The company revealed in its media release that the last time Air Canada carried more than 100,000 customers in one day was 13MAR 2020 - just as the pandemic was declared.
Just a month later, passenger loads fell as low as 2,175 on 23APR 2020, as global air traffic ground to a virtual halt.
Prior to the pandemic, Air Canada says it carried on average nearly 150,000 pax daily, with a single-day record of 187,000 pax in AUG 2019.
“We (the whole commercial team, and operations) have been rallying around this milestone,” Russi told Open Jaw.
“Hopefully moving forward 100k pax days will happen often.”
