With new aircraft arriving from Boeing and Bombardier, Air Canada and its low-cost subsidiary Air Canada Rouge have announced several changes to their fleets. The expected changes will see modern and more efficient planes replace the current aging aircraft types in their fleets.
The aircraft replacement concerns Air Canada"™s Embraer 190s and Air Canada Rouge"™s narrowbody fleet. On the mainline Air Canada side, all remaining twenty-five Embraer EMB-190IGWs will be removed from service by mid-2019. "Our expectation is that we will sell them into the marketplace," CEO Calin Rovinescu said.
The Embraer regional jets, Air Canada"™s smallest aircraft, will be replaced by Airbus A319-100 in the short term, and then by the new Bombardier CS300 aircraft as they enter Air Canada"˜s fleet. This is expected to happen in late 2019. The airline has forty-five of the Canadian-built short to medium-haul aircraft on order with the manufacturer.
"We have made decisions to accelerate the removal of the Embraer-190s from our mainline fleet. To do this we will retain the A319-100 aircraft a little bit longer than initially planned at the bridge to the deliveries of the Bombardier CSeries scheduled to commence in late 2019. The Airbus 319 aircraft typically has a lower CASM (Cost per Available Seat Mile) than the Embraer-190," Air Canada Chief Financial Officer Mike Rousseau said.
Whether the switch from Embraer to Bombardier benefits passengers remains to be seen. All of Air Canada"™s Embraer jets had extremely generous seat pitch and width, even in economy class, and a 2-2 configuration. Their comfort may be hard to beat, even by the new CS300, which feature a 3-2 configuration.
On the Air Canada Rouge side, the situation is more significant- both in terms of numbers and in terms of marketing strategy. The low-cost Rouge is expected to convert its entire narrowbody fleet to a high-density, single-class layout. This more clearly distinguishes the brand Rouge as the low-cost carrier from the mainline Air Canada brand…
