Flair Airlines has leased two new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, increasing its fleet from 18 to 20.
Flair made the announcement at a press conference at YVR airport on Wednesday. It came after the budget carrier lost access to four planes earlier this year due to financial disputes with lessors.
Flair Airlines President and CEO Stephen Jones told Daily Hive he is confident the spat would not happen again.
“All of our leases are up to date. There’s been a lot of talk about, you know, slow payments, all of our lease payments are up to date. And we’ve got great relationships with our lease source,” said Jones.
The new aircraft came from a separate aircraft operating lease company this time, SMBC Aviation Capital. Flair has already received the first aircraft on June 13, and the second aircraft will be delivered this summer. The new planes are expected to enter service in the summer.
The Edmonton-based carrier added its goal is to grow its fleet to 50 aircraft by 2027 at the latest.
Flair previously set a plan to bolster the capacity to 27 aircraft during the summer of 2023. Jones said they have since brought down the growth target.
He insisted its fleet was wrongfully and illegally seized back in March, and Flair is suing the lessors, Airborne Capital Inc. and three other affiliated leasing firms for their action.
The controversy has resulted in multiple flight cancellations and reroutes. Some customers vowed never to fly with Flair again.
@FlairAirlines fail. No notice on cancelled flight YEG to PSP. Next flight not til Tuesday. Have to sell @BNPPARIBASOPEN tickets. But I appreciate the food voucher that expires Monday. Ah, the friendly skies.
— Dave Jamieson (@jamieson1260) March 11, 2023
@FlairAirlines woke up to find my flight home this morning was cancelled. Will you be sending more information? All I got was an email for a free hotel stay, with a link that didn’t work. Had to search to find my flight info was cancelled. That’s pretty unacceptable.
— Terri (@sk8rchick209) March 11, 2023
That is not the only challenge impacting the low-cost airline. Flair received the most complaints in the past year out of any airline in Canada. That’s according to data from the Canadian Transportation Agency between April 2022 and March 2023.
Jones claimed that the number is misrepresented.
“We look at those absolute numbers, we actually had the lowest number of complaints,” Jones said. “We could have one bad flight with 189 seats and generate a lot of complaints. Or not, you might have one complaint from a flight or 199 complaints. So it’s not a great statistic.”
Jones said the airline reached loads of 90% in April and May, and “people are really buying into the availability of low cost airfares.”
Though Swoop airline, Flair’s major competitor, announced earlier this week it will be shutting down and integrating with its parent airline WestJet at the end of October 2023.
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