Air Canada’s acquisition of Air Transat has been in the works for almost 2 years. After all the hurdles that they had to go through to get to this point, only to end in a cancellation of the buyout.
The agreement required various regulatory authority approvals. It got stuck at the European Commission (“EC”). In short, the EC will not approve the acquisition for several reasons including negatively impacting customers.
In what looks like a very long and drawn out takeover (merger, buyout), however you want to call it, the Air Canada purchase of Air Transat took another step towards reality. Our first post about this topic was back in the spring of 2019. Two years later, it looks like this is finally becoming a reality with the Federal Government approval.
The reason I am writing this post today was because I wanted to share my thoughts on takeovers that decrease the competition in Canada.
Today we are updating the current status of all the major Canadian based airlines. I keep wondering if all of them will survive past this pandemic.
Each airline have taken their own approach on how to handle the pandemic. Several airlines have completely halted all flights. Some airlines have minimal flights.
Note that we have a COVID-19 Updates page that is continually updated.
I was hoping that it would be not come to this. But airline layoffs are real. Personally, I really thought that there would be more “leave without pay”, so that they can retain their employees and slowly bring them back. But maybe there is more to the story if they want to cut their ties. I guess they can always hire them back later?
Anyway, here’s the current count to date. May airlines are careful to say that these are temporary layoffs, so the door is open for people to come back.
As you probably know, I have rarely written about Air Transat, due to a bad experience (which I got a lot of heat for). But a more relevant reason is because they do not have any loyalty programs associated with it. And the theme of our site is “maximizing rewards for Canadians”. All that may change once the full agreement passes. Until then, we can only speculate what will happen. I was actually quite surprised to find out that Air Canada wanted to purchase Air Transat, since Air Transat is considered more of a low cost, charter airline. So what value would it bring to Air Canada, other than buying out the competition, like how Air Canada bought out Canadian Airlines back in 2000.
A few days ago, Air Canada and Air Transat announced that they are in exclusive negotiations for Air Canada to buyout Air Transat.
I’m somewhat torn by this announcement. So I’ll share my pros and cons regarding this deal.
It has been a sad week for travellers. As a result of the tragedy, Air Canada and many other airlines are offering a free rebooking.
In today’s post, we are going to introduce Air Transat, a Canadian airline based in Montreal, Quebec. Its major hub is Montreal-Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport.
This is a pretty fun article, ranking the top 100 airlines worldwide. There award is determined by airline customer surveys globally. The top 3 airlines in 2015 ended up being:
Paris is definitely a popular destinations for Canadians, especially for those living in the province of Quebec. So undoubtedly, there are fair number of options to choose from throughout the country. Furthermore, there are two airports operating out of the…