Canadian airlines are increasing the number of seats available to sunnier destinations this winter, although the capacity growth will be muted compared to last due in part to constraints from the grounded Boeing 737 Max aircraft.
Despite tempered capacity growth, snowbirds and vacationers make up an important market for Air Canada, WestJet, Sunwing and their fourth competitor, Transat A.T. Each captures roughly a quarter of the booming market . The combined company would capture 48 per cent of the sun destination market, not quite reaching the 50 per cent threshold the Competition Bureau uses as a screening mechanism to evaluate whether a company can abuse its market dominance. But it would have “significant” concentration of seats in Quebec with 69 per cent of the market share, Doerksen noted.