WestJet CEO talks prairie flights, cancellations on visit to Regina

Without air travel, people in Saskatchewan would be incredibly isolated – even more so than they already are.

But, as many who have dealt with cancellations or frequent rebookings in the past year can attest, the flight situation isn’t always perfect.

WestJet is the major player in Saskatchewan’s skies right now, and on Wednesday, the company’s CEO, Alexis von Hoensbroech, made a stop in Regina for the first time. He met with local politicians and business leaders to talk about air travel and the plan going forward.

The airline CEO called Regina an impressive place and one of the strongest growing cities in Canada, with lots of emerging opportunities. He said he heard loud and clear that there’s desire to increase connectivity across the border.

“That’s certainly something that we’ll take away and see what opportunities arise. We understand that this is one of the big things this community needs,” said von Hoensbroech.

WestJet’s CEO says reliability has improved greatly over the summer. (980 CJME file photo)

WestJet currently offers 14 direct flights out of Regina, including three to the U.S. and six to sunny destinations. The CEO said there are also a number of connecting flights to Calgary, which can get a person from Regina to nearly 100 different cities around the world.

“And this is actually a pretty good proposition for people, both private people and businesses in Regina, to go get to and from where they need to go,” he explained.

However, von Hoensbroech explained, at the moment the Queen City doesn’t have enough passenger volume to justify more direct flights.

“We will always try to create opportunities, and we know that whenever we open a direct route this will usually also create some additional demand, so we are aware of that,” he said before pointing out that direct flights are expensive to operate, so WestJet also has to be cautious.

In the past year, trust has plummeted between travellers and airlines, particularly after the mess around the holidays last year which saw all kinds of flights cancelled and people stranded.

The CEO said trust is built with reliable service, and this year WestJet has seen a very reliable summer.

“There have been very, very few flight cancellations and delays compared to what we saw last year,” he said.

He said the company has managed to rebuild after the pandemic, and has hired about 5,000 employees to help deliver a reliable service to passengers.

The passenger is at the centre of everything WestJet does, according to von Hoensbroech, and he said the company wants to have happy guests.

“It’s the nature of the business that not every day everything is perfect, but the entire industry – and we as WestJet – we have greatly improved our operations stability over the last year, especially this summer,” said von Hoensbroech.