WestJet Doubles Down After Customer Claims Price Gouging Amid Air Canada Strike

The Air Canada strike by its flight attendants last week lasted 4 days, which left passengers stranded and looking for alternatives. One of the major alternatives was WestJet, which is Canada’s second-largest airline by fleet size.

Although WestJet has a large focus on service on the “west” side of Canada, with its main hub in Calgary, the airline still has fair coverage over the rest of the country. The airline also offered extra flights within Canada during the Air Canada strike to help stranded passengers find their way.

However, many passengers found WestJet airfares to be high due to the sudden excess supply of passengers looking for WestJet air tickets, which pushed up prices.

One passenger stranded in the UK took to X to complain:

This passenger was looking to rebook a return flight from Edinburgh to Toronto on WestJet, with departure day 4 days away. The listed price was 2,514 CAD.

The post gained traction online, and WestJet actually responded to the passenger, defending its prices:

“Airlines use tiered pricing based on seat availability. As lower-priced seats sell out, fares rise incrementally until the flight is full. A sudden price jump can happen if a few people book at once, like a family or group.”

This is pretty much standard practice in the airline industry, and it makes sense. The “Don’t wait until the last minute, because those tickets will go up!” conversation refers to exactly this.

Air Canada strike or not, that same flight today, booking 4 days out, is still not that much cheaper. The flight comes in at 1,867 CAD. It’s certainly cheaper than the 2,500 CAD fares during the strike, but it’s not a “Wow, tickets are quadruple what they usually are” kind of difference. The difference is that flexibility could help you find a cheaper ticket, as not all travel dates 3+ days out have the 1,867 CAD price tag, but that could also change quickly as last-minute bookings are made.

Ultimately however, booking last-minute flights is always going to be expensive, whether there’s a flight attendant strike going on or not. In WestJet’s case last week, this fact, coupled with the excess supply of passengers looking for seats, drove up demand, thus the higher fares.

Either way, the original post and WestJet’s response sparked debate in the replies. Some users, including the OP, claimed that WestJet missed a golden opportunity to earn loyal customers for life, and should’ve capped fares and help out stranded Air Canada passengers.

At the same time, other users claimed this was just simple economics, as the algorithm naturally moved towards market equilibrium given the sudden excess supply of passengers looking to book WestJet tickets.

I do think some assistance with fares in the event of a natural disaster is valid. However, from WestJet’s perspective, a supply shortage in airplane seats resulting from a strike involving your competitor could be a more complicated situation. They ultimately do not owe anything to Air Canada passengers.

Ultimately, I think this Air Canada strike was a difficult situation for everyone. No matter what WestJet did with their fares, passengers would have been left stranded. WestJet is the only airline in Canada to have been able to somewhat offer additional capacity, but even it could not handle the number of passengers looking to rebook from Air Canada. WestJet has a finite number of airplanes and its own schedule to run, and it also has the obligation to serve and rebook its own passengers first.

Additionally, leisure passengers, who are price elastic more than anything, will still very likely book with whoever is offering the cheapest ticket, even if WestJet capped fares in an attempt to look morally right to a number of passengers. Goodwill is quite hard to come by in the airline industry, both from a passenger standpoint and an airline standpoint.

Whatever the case may have been with this strike, I ultimately think that this should be a wake-up call for Canada to have another bigger player in the Canadian airline industry. I’ve been saying for some time now that I’d love to see WestJet take a bigger stage and expand some more internationally. The recent SkyTeam partnerships are a good start.

Featured image by the author.