Porter, Transat move to suspend all flights as border closes to contain COVID-19

Advertisement

Advertise with us

MONTREAL - Porter Airlines has joined Transat AT Inc. in moving to suspend all flights while Air Canada is suspending most of its international and U.S. transborder flights in response to governments closing the border.

Read this article for free:


By clicking the button above, an account will be created and you will begin to receive some of our recommended newsletters. You may opt out of any newsletter by visiting your Email and Communication Preferences page or by clicking "unsubscribe" at the bottom of any email.

or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $1.44 a week*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles

*Billed as $5.77 plus GST every four weeks. After 52 weeks, price increases to the regular rate of $19.95 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional

$1 for the first 4 weeks*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles
Start now

*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/03/2020 (2416 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL – Porter Airlines has joined Transat AT Inc. in moving to suspend all flights while Air Canada is suspending most of its international and U.S. transborder flights in response to governments closing the border.

Porter said Wednesday it will cancel flights on all 29 of its planes at the close of operations Friday, with plans to resume service June 1.

CEO Michael Deluce said the move will trigger layoffs.

Air Transat chief executive Jean-Marc Eustache gets set to start the company's annual meeting, Thursday, March 12, 2020 in Montreal. Transat AT Inc. says it will start the gradual suspension of Air Transat flights until April 30. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
Air Transat chief executive Jean-Marc Eustache gets set to start the company's annual meeting, Thursday, March 12, 2020 in Montreal. Transat AT Inc. says it will start the gradual suspension of Air Transat flights until April 30. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

“A temporary suspension of all flights allows the public health crisis to diminish and then time to restart our operations,” Deluce said in a statement. “It is regrettable that this situation requires us to issue temporary layoffs across the business.”

Rebooking fees will be waived, Porter said.

Earlier Wednesday, Transat announced it will gradually suspend flights until April 30, halting sales for departures over the next six weeks for routes to most destinations in Europe and the United States.

The travel company, which owns Air Transat, says repatriation flights will operate during the next two weeks to bring Transat travellers back to Canadian soil.

Julie Roberts, who heads CUPE’s airline division of 15,000 flight attendants as well as its Transat component, said the union has not been informed of layoff numbers yet.

“We just know it’s going to be massive layoffs,” she said, adding that they seemed unavoidable given the widespread groundings.

“Air Transat is saying until April 30, but will the pandemic be under control by then? There’s no way to say.”

The wind-downs at Porter and Transat come as the U.S.-Canada border will be closed to non-essential traffic in both directions “by mutual consent.”

It also follows massive scalebacks by Canadian and global airlines.

Air Canada said the majority of international and transborder flights will be gradually suspended by March 31 while it still intends to serve “a small number” of international and transborder destinations from select Canadian cities after that date.

Its transborder network will be reduced to 13 airports from 53. Continued service will be to New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Houston, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale.

Air Canada’s international network will be cut to six airports from 101 as it continues to help citizens return home and support the movement of needed goods and cargo. It will operate a limited number of international “air bridges” between one or more of its Canadian hubs and the cities of London, Paris, Frankfurt, Delhi, Tokyo and Hong Kong from April 1 until at least April 30.

Its domestic network will serve all provinces and territories as the number of airports is reduced to 40 from 62 during April.

WestJet Airlines Ltd. has halved its domestic capacity and cancelled all transatlantic and U.S. routes for 30 days starting this Sunday, chopping 155 flights on Wednesday alone. Sunwing Airlines Inc. has scrubbed all southbound flights from its schedule until April 9.

The head economist at the International Air Transport Association said Tuesday that revenue losses around the world are already surpassing the trade group’s worst-case projection of US$113 billion and threatening to send multiple airlines into bankruptcy.

Transat says a date for a full halt to operations will be announced soon.

“This is an unprecedented situation, beyond our control, which is forcing us to briefly suspend all of our flights to contribute to the effort to fight the pandemic, protect our customers and employees and safeguard the company,” Transat CEO Jean-Marc Eustache said in a statement.

“We are doing everything we can so that this has as little impact as possible on our employees and customers, whom we make sure to bring back home.”

Sales are halted immediately between the Caribbean and Mexico with flights to continue for a few more days to allow repatriation.

Sales will temporarily remain open between Montreal and Paris and Lisbon as well as between Toronto and London and Lisbon to allow as many repatriations as possible, Transat said.

Desjardins Securities analyst Benoit Poirier estimates Transat’s cash burn rate at about $60 million per month, “assuming 25 per cent of total operating costs are fixed in the context of the entire fleet being grounded.”

With more than $1 billion in cash on hand, or “in trust or otherwise reserved,” Transat has enough flexibility on its balance sheet to ride out the turbulence, he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 18, 2020.

Companies in this story: (TSX:TRZ, TSX:AC)

Report Error Submit a Tip

More Stories

Carrying a torch for tiki

Eva Wasney 5 minute read Preview

Carrying a torch for tiki

Eva Wasney 5 minute read Monday, Nov. 15, 2021

A paper tiki mask is the only indication that the door it’s affixed to leads somewhere other than a dive bar. Ring the doorbell and walk through the kitchen, however, and you’ll be transported to an island-themed lounge that’s equal parts kitschy and comfortable.

“This is just from people’s houses, like my mom’s,” says Allan Pineda, pointing to the wood carvings, water-buffalo horns and rattan furniture decorating the room. “A lot of the stuff you see in here, you’d see in a Filipino’s house back in the day — like second-wave immigrants in the ‘60s and ‘70s, they’d bring this stuff home (from the Philippines).”

Pineda is a local chef and part of the team behind the Bahay Kubo Tiki Bar, a pop-up Filipino drinking and dining experience hosted weekly at an undisclosed Winnipeg establishment.

The details are hush-hush because the temporary eatery is meant to operate like a speakeasy. The dinners are an offshoot of Baon Manila Nights, which Pineda started as a way to highlight Winnipeg’s Filipino culinary scene.

Read
Monday, Nov. 15, 2021

Election results: School trustees 2026

Staff 1 minute read Preview

Election results: School trustees 2026

Staff 1 minute read Friday, Oct. 23, 2026

Below you’ll find live 2026 election results for school trustees in Winnipeg divisions.

We can display results only for wards in which Winnipeg voters cast a ballot; we do not have access to live results reporting for school boards outside of Winnipeg.

 

Read
Friday, Oct. 23, 2026

Meteorologist behind Rob’s Obs is moving weather station to Ontario

Ben Waldman 7 minute read Preview

Meteorologist behind Rob’s Obs is moving weather station to Ontario

Ben Waldman 7 minute read Monday, Jun. 13, 2022

In a Winnipeg winter, there are always at least two certainties: it will be cold, and it will snow. A third certainty: the people will talk endlessly about how frigid the temperature is, and argue about how much snow is cloaking their driveways. Is it colder than it ever has been? Is there more snow today than the same time last year?

Rob Paola likely knows the answers to those questions.

Paola possesses no super powers. He is but a man with a metre stick and 40 years of professional meteorological experience, in the midst of a lifelong love affair with Mother Nature, a most turbulent mistress who rarely, if ever, reciprocates.

Each year when snow begins to fall, Paola heads outside his Charleswood home to figure out how much. He sticks his ruler in the ground, grabs his clipboard, and clicks his pen. In neat script, he records the temperature, what time precipitation began, how deep the powder is stacked. Then, he shares his data and insights online with thousands of followers who want a clear answer to the eternal questions: Why is this happening? When will it stop? How much snow has fallen in the city of Winnipeg?

Read
Monday, Jun. 13, 2022

The landscape that taught us to see

Stephen Borys 6 minute read Preview

The landscape that taught us to see

Stephen Borys 6 minute read 2:01 AM CDT

The white pine stood at the edge of the lake, leaning out over the water, its branches bent by years of wind and weather. Beyond it stretched an expanse of blue water beneath a clear sky, a distant tree line and other pines rising along the rocky shoreline. From the deck above, the landscape seemed both expansive and remarkably still.

I had been looking at it for only a few moments when Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven entered the picture. Not literally, of course. But once the association appeared, I could not unsee it. The pine became The Jack Pine and The West Wind. The surrounding rocks, water and sky called up A.Y. Jackson, Arthur Lismer, Franklin Carmichael and Lawren Harris. A landscape I had been looking at all weekend suddenly became part of a visual history Canadians have carried with them for more than a century.

Perhaps that is the Group of Seven’s greatest achievement. They did not simply paint the Canadian landscape. They changed the way we see it.

I was at the lake for a quiet weekend, reflecting on the cultural, community and development projects that occupy much of my work through Civic Muse. Increasingly, I see these pursuits as part of the same conversation — place and identity, how we understand it, care for it and decide what is worth carrying forward.

Read
2:01 AM CDT

Opera singer David Daniels no longer in singers’ union following sexual assault guilty plea

The Associated Press 2 minute read Preview

Opera singer David Daniels no longer in singers’ union following sexual assault guilty plea

The Associated Press 2 minute read Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — Countertenor David Daniels is no longer a member of the union for singers following his guilty plea to a charge of sexual assault.

The 57-year-old and his husband, Scott Walters, pleaded guilty to sexual assault of an adult, a second-degree felony, in Houston's Harris County District Court on Aug. 4. Their accuser was aspiring opera singer Sam Schultz.

They both were sentenced to eight years’ probation and required to register as sex offenders.

American Guild of Musical Artists spokesperson Alicia Cook said Wednesday that Daniels is no longer a member of the union.

Read
Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023

Brian Bowman wins mayoral battle

Aldo Santin and Mary Agnes Welch 6 minute read Preview

Brian Bowman wins mayoral battle

Aldo Santin and Mary Agnes Welch 6 minute read Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014

In the end, it wasn’t even close.

A mayoral race that was supposed to be a head-to-head battle between privacy lawyer Brian Bowman and former NDP MP and MLA Judy Wasylycia-Leis turned into a rout on election night. Wasylycia-Leis, the experienced politician, had held what looked like an unassailable lead for months, but Bowman, the outsider who promised Winnipeggers a better, prosperous future, chipped doggedly away at it.

“I’m excited to tell you that positive change is coming to city hall,” Bowman told roaring supporters at the Inn At The Forks after making his way into the small ballroom accompanied by his wife and two young sons.

He said he hadn’t expecting such a landslide victory, but had believed that the campaign was building momentum.

Read
Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014