Air Transat to drop Shannon Operations

Air Transat is dropping its Shannon operations as part of its transatlantic programme for summer 2015 but is retaining up to four-weekly Dublin-Toronto Airbus A310 flights (one via Montreal). Its Shannon traffic was down 30% this year on last. It also operated four services a week to Dublin in summer 2014, and in addition to the weekly A330 routing Toronto-Dublin-Shannon-Toronto, it operated three A310s per week, one of which routed via Montreal. Air Transat is continuing to develop its 2015–2017 strategic plan which will make further changes to operations as well as to its fleet and expects to generate another CA$20 million (€14.14 million) in 2014, as well as in 2015. It is withdrawing from Frankfurt-Calgary and Vancouver. However it will offer more flights between the UK-Canada next summer. Air Transat operates a fleet of nine Airbus A310-300s, eight A330-200s, four A330-300s, and five 737-800s. It has also an agreement with Transavia France for the seasonal leasing of additional 737-800s, with F-GZHA, F-GZHB and F-GZHD currently in service. The 737 fleet will rise further due to two additional winter seasonal leasing agreements. These are for two 148 seat Boeing 737-700s and two 189 seat 737-800s from Europe Airpost and Travel Service Airlines respectively. Air Transit also signed a long-term agreement with ILFC for four ‘permanent’ Boeing 737-800s.