Air Canada’s Statement on Yellowknife

The Voice of Canada News:

We are closely monitoring the devastating events in the NWT, and increasing our Yellowknife flights to help people get to a safe region. This is a complex and evolving situation, and we remain in contact with NWT government officials to provide support. We have deep roots in Yellowknife as our regional airline partner Jazz has employees who together with their families live in this community. They are working hard to assist people during this difficult time.

For Thursday, August 17, we added two extra flights, doubling the normal frequencies to four. We have also substituted a larger 169-seat Boeing 737 for one of those flights to provide extra seat availability. For Friday, August 18, Air Canada has also added an extra B737 flight in addition to the usual two flights, and we will continue evaluating opportunities for adjustments.

At this time, there will be no flights to or from Yellowknife on Saturday, August 19 due to the government evacuation order. We plan to operate as the situation permits.

With respect to pricing, there have been postings in social media about fares being elevated. This is not correct as we proactively at the earliest possible time put in place a cap to limit fares for Air Canada’s direct flights out of Yellowknife.  

The examples on social media are aggregated fares by websites which are not in line with what we are offering on our non-stop flights from Yellowknife. For example, some involve several stops and other carriers, with some trips lasting as much as 21 hours, when a normal non-stop Yellowknife-Calgary flight is two hours.  We endeavour to get these aggregated fares corrected where possible – however, customers should always ensure they are purchasing the non-stop fares directly from the aircanada.com website or from a travel agent to avoid the multi-leg routings.

We also monitor the pricing on aircanada.com to ensure that the capped fares continue to display as intended. Sometimes it requires taking steps to correct fares manually when they may not display as they should due to certain technical factors. Rest assured, we get these corrected as soon as possible, and we refund passengers who inadvertently purchase a fare before it gets corrected by our team.

At this point, flights for the next few days are fairly full, and we continue monitoring the situation closely and will adjust our schedule as we can. We have also put in place a goodwill policy for customers to change their flights booked for travel up to August 30, or to obtain a full refund.

Thank you for your patience as our people are working hard to get you to a safe destination. We will be ready to fly you back home as soon as it is safe to do so.