Flair Airlines Strong Performance Continues In July
Originally published on Airways
Canadian ultra-low-cost carrier Flair Airlines (F8) has announced it continued its robust operational performance with the release of its statistics for July. The Edmonton-based airline announced its completion factor and on-time performance over the course of the month. Furthermore, Flair Airlines released additional metrics describing the airline’s performance.
Over the entirety of July, F8 demonstrated strong numbers, which were well above industry averages in the three key performance indicators, including on-time performance, load factor, and completion factor.
Canada’s third-largest airline reported a 99.3% completion factor in July. This statistic is an important performance indicator, indicating the percentage of flights that were successfully completed compared to the canceled flights. In July, F8 canceled just seven flights per thousand flights, with five of those cancellations occurring within 24 hours. In comparison, Air Canada (AC) canceled 71 per thousand flights, WestJet (WS) canceled 22 flights per thousand, and Porter Airlines (PD) canceled 94 per thousand flights.
Flair Airlines also reported an on-time performance of 71.1% of all flights. This measures the flights that arrive at their destination within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time. That said, F8’s July performance was lower than its performance in June, where it reported an on-time performance of 77.4% of all flights. Still, Flair’s on-time performance in July dramatically exceeded that of competitors such as Lynx Air (Y9), AC, WS, and PD.
Lastly, F8 reported that the load factor, which is the percentage of seating capacity that is filled by passengers, remained strong in July, with 88% of all available seats being sold. This translated into 481,808 passengers flown by F8 in July, up from the 436,112 passengers flown in June. This further demonstrated the strong demand for Canada’s busy summer travel season.
The Chief Executive Officer of Flair Airlines, Stephen Jones, spoke about the impressive metrics. He stated, “Getting Canadians where they want to be, safely and on time, remains our top priority. To that end, we’ve added flexibility to our scheduling this fall, including adding spare aircraft time and increasing scheduled flight times to further enhance our on-time performance.”
Adding, “As we continue to work on maximizing our aircraft utilization and maintaining our position as a leader in on-time performance, our customers will benefit from lower fares.”
Flair Airlines Boeing 737-8 MAX C-FFEL | Photo: Liam Funnell/Airways
Flair Continues to Meet Its Demand Goals
The comments by Jones come just a few months after executives at F8 spoke about their vision for the airline. One metric that was super important for Flair was keeping load factors high, which they have done. Flair reported a 90.3% and 89.5% load factor in April and May of this year, respectively.
As F8 continues to grow its operation, it will continue to utilize the Boeing 737 product line. F8 has multiple Boeing 737 MAXs on order and is expected to receive three additional Boeing 737-8s by the end of the summer season. They will employ these new aircraft, as well as their 18-strong 737 fleet, to expand their route network, especially across Canada, and they will connect previously unconnected cities together.
Flair prides itself on being Canada’s only and first independent ultra-low-cost carrier—Swoop (WO) is owned by WS. The airline was initially founded in 2004 under the name Zoom Airlines (Z4) but later ceased operations in 2008. Then, in 2017, the airline was revived under the name F8 and began flying again in 2018. Over the past few years, F8 has rapidly grown its route network, serving more than 20 destinations across North America.
