WestJet delays merger with Sunwing Airlines to 2025
WestJet has pushed again its deliberate integration of Sunwing Airlines, a transfer that represents a setback for the Calgary-based firm after buying the leisure service final yr.
In an e-mail, WestJet stated it would weave the low cost airline’s fleet into its personal by late April, six months after the mixing date initially set for Oct. 26 of this yr.
Both airways will proceed with “business as usual” on their winter flight schedules, stated spokeswoman Madison Kruger.
The longer timeline comes as pilot shortages proceed to plague the business.
The postponement is due partly to pilot coaching, stated Rick Jones, WestJet’s interim head of route planning, at a convention in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
But union turbulence can also play a task.
“With safety, people and guests at the forefront, the WestJet Group intends to integrate as much of Sunwing Airlines as possible by its original October 2024 date. The WestJet Group expects unionized operational team members will be integrated in a phased approach to meet training and aircraft transition schedules by April 27, 2025,” Kruger stated.
Wrangling over employee seniority for pilots slated to fly below the identical banner stays a degree of competition, stated John Gradek, who teaches aviation administration at McGill University
“There is a union issue there,” he stated.
The two units of pilots are represented by totally different labour teams — the Air Line Pilots Association at WestJet and Unifor at Sunwing.
“You’ve got a 20-year captain on Sunwing who’s going to be integrated into WestJet. Does he have the equivalent of a 20-year captain at WestJet, or is he going to the bottom of the pile?” Gradek requested.
“This is the same thing that Air Canada went through when they got Canadian Airlines 25 years ago.”
Neither union replied instantly to requests for remark.
WestJet acquired Sunwing’s important airline and trip divisions final May in a significant consolidation of the Canadian aviation market. Sunwing Vacations will proceed as a separate model.
Meanwhile, WestJet faces extra indefinite delays on dozens of pending Boeing plane deliveries after a panel blowout on a 737 Max aircraft flown by Alaska Airlines in January that prompted a halt to manufacturing growth on the U.S. plane maker.
WestJet has signed multibillion-dollar offers with Boeing for a minimum of 65 planes — 50 of them 737 Max 10s — by 2029 in a transfer the service known as a “game-changer” that would scale back gasoline prices and “underpin” its progress.
However, the Max 10 has but to obtain remaining certification and, after the panel incident, U.S. regulators stated they’d halt manufacturing growth at Boeing till a full investigation was full — a course of that might take over a yr.
This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed May 21, 2024
