Flair Airlines today announced that it will launch non-stop flights to Mexico City from Vancouver and from Toronto starting Oct. 27.
The flights from each of the Canadian cities are set to be three times per week, with the ones from Vancouver leaving on Mondays, Fridays and Sundays at 5:10 p.m. Return flights leave Mexico City’s Benito Juárez Airport on Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays at 12:45 a.m. Round trips are expected to start in the at $261.
The plan is for the flights to operate year-round.
Flair is not the only airline set to increase flights between Vancouver and Mexico.
Air Canada in May said it would launch weekly round-trip flights between Vancouver and Huatulco, Mexico starting on Dec. 7 and running until April 12. Flights are on Sundays. The airline has previously flown to Huatulco from Toronto but not from Vancouver.
Flair airplanes have no business class section but Wilk said his airline offers deals for travellers who want to book three seats in a row to give them more space. He said he expects some business travel to take place on its Vancouver-to-Mexico-City route.
Travel by Mexicans to Canada started to steeply decline following the Canadian government at the end of February 2024 requiring most Mexican visitors to have visas. The number of Mexicans entering Canada through B.C. entry points continues to decline on a year-over-year basis, according to Destination British Columbia, which has data up to May.
Flair CEO Maciej Wilk told BIV yesterday that he is not concerned with filling planes on Mexican routes.
“We have highly successful routes to Guadalajara, to Puerto Vallarta and to Cancun,” he said. “The visa requirement is what it is but we do not have problems with filling up our aircraft in and out of Mexico. I’m not concerned.”
Indeed, Wilk, who lives in Vancouver, is optimistic about his airline’s future.
Flair executives have long said that they have a goal of having 50 planes, up from what is now 20 Boeing 737-800s. Wilk said he believes his airline could have a handful of new aircraft in each of the next two years to reach a total of 30 planes by 2027. All planes are the same model so they can be swapped into different routes seamlessly.
Instead of providing a timeline for when the airline will have 50 aircraft, Wilk said he is “convinced that there is room for at least 30 to 40 aircraft.”
He touted his airline’s 99.4 per cent completion rate so far this month. That means only 0.6 per cent of its flights have been cancelled.
“Our dear friends from WestJet, they have got a 97.5 per cent completion rate, so that’s an enormous difference,” he said, citing what he said was Cirium data.
Flair’s on-time performance so far this month is 73 per cent, which Wilk said was better than other major airlines, which are in the range between 69 and 72 per cent.
“We are consistently delivering exceptionally high load factors,” said Wilk, who moved to be the company’s permanent CEO from being acting CEO earlier this month. “It is 89 or 90 per cent that we usually see month over month, not only in the peak summer season, like right now, but also in the in the lower season.”
Court documents last year showed Flair owed the federal government $67.2 million in unpaid taxes related to import duties on its planes.
That prompted the federal government to get a court order to seize and sell Flair property.
Wilk said Flair has resolved differences with Revenue Canada.
“We are in constant communication with the government,” he said. “We have an established payment plan, and we are following this payment plan.”
Speculation about financial trouble at Flair arose in March 2023, when Lessor Airborne Capital Ltd. suddenly confiscated four of Flair’s then-22 planes in the middle of the night because the airline was behind on lease payments, prompting a wave of flight cancellations and customer complaints.
Wilk said there is no chance now of planes being confiscated because lease payments are being made.
“That was a completely different situation and a completely different company, than we are today,” he said of the 2023 plane confiscations. “However, this has happened, and this has this ripple effect until today because people remember.”
He added that “the sheer fact that a lot of leading companies that aren’t our current partners are engaging with us in discussions, I think that tells the whole story. Our credit, our credibility, again, is higher than ever before.”
Flair is officially based in Edmonton although four of eight members of its executive team are based at 602 West Hastings Street in Vancouver. The company in June expanded to larger space on the same floor of that building to better accommodate its approximately 50 Vancouver staff.
“The team is growing,” Wilk said. “We are bringing more and more functions into Vancouver.”
