Toronto: Air Canada is beefing up its existing Asian routes to lure Canadian families, while making plans for new destinations to tap into the growing middle class in emerging economies such as China and India.
The country’s largest airline plans to announce Tuesday that it will deploy the 251-seat Boeing 787 Dreamliner on service between Vancouver and Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and also assign the 787 on the Vancouver-Shanghai route.
Air Canada has been relying on aging Boeing 767s, which each seat up to 211 passengers, on those two transpacific routes. But later this year, the carrier will begin bolstering its Asian schedule amid industry predictions that travel demand will surge in Asia over the next decade.
The long-term growth potential for Air Canada and other global carriers goes beyond the largest hubs.
“We’re not talking about the obvious Asian cities that have already been developed,” Air Canada chief executive officer Calin Rovinescu said in a wide-ranging interview aboard the Dreamliner during its launch flight from Everett, Wash., to Toronto.
“There are many cities in China where there are millions of people, and the middle class there is starting to fly for the first time, starting to afford air travel.”
19/05/14 Brent Jang/The Globe and Mail
To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline
The country’s largest airline plans to announce Tuesday that it will deploy the 251-seat Boeing 787 Dreamliner on service between Vancouver and Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and also assign the 787 on the Vancouver-Shanghai route.
Air Canada has been relying on aging Boeing 767s, which each seat up to 211 passengers, on those two transpacific routes. But later this year, the carrier will begin bolstering its Asian schedule amid industry predictions that travel demand will surge in Asia over the next decade.
The long-term growth potential for Air Canada and other global carriers goes beyond the largest hubs.
“We’re not talking about the obvious Asian cities that have already been developed,” Air Canada chief executive officer Calin Rovinescu said in a wide-ranging interview aboard the Dreamliner during its launch flight from Everett, Wash., to Toronto.
“There are many cities in China where there are millions of people, and the middle class there is starting to fly for the first time, starting to afford air travel.”
19/05/14 Brent Jang/The Globe and Mail
