The Canadian national carrier, Air Canada has stated it is seeing an increase in its new domestic flight bookings. The surprising revelation the airline’s chief financial officer on Tuesday at a National Bank event for analysts and investors.
"I think you’re seeing across the industry improvements in bookings and certainly at Air Canada we’re seeing that as well," CFO Michael Rousseau said, adding: "But that’s focused primarily on domestic business, point to point within Canada."
The airline's shares jumped up 4.2% by the afternoon on the back of Rousseau's remarks and is a vast contrast to the warning last week that more job losses at the firm were on the way before the end of the month.
Rousseau believes business people's desire to meet clients face-to-face would, with the help of the carriers loyalty programme, assist with getting business travel demand up again, despite of many Canadian firms adopting a 'work from home' ethos and mentality.
In another prediction, Rousseau estimates it will take at least three years to get back to the pre-COVID traffic levels. However, the green shoots of recovery are starting to show through, with the increased demand for domestic travel.
However, he was unusually silent about the proposed take over of Air Transat, which is currently being considered by authorities in both Canada and the European Union.
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