To start with, Westjet is virtually unknown by the European public or the travel trade. They don’t offer any business class, airport lounges or any business travel amenities such as priority baggage handling or priority boarding. Air France and KLM have had code sharing agreement with most carriers in Canada such as Air Canada and First Air for decades. You can be sure that a Business Class passenger flying from Amsterdam on KLM will prefer flying on AC business class for its connection than back-of-the-bus with Ma, Pa and the family on Westjet.

Second, AF-KL must entertain its mutually beneficial code-share agreement with Air Canada and other mainline carriers to keep access to all of Canada from Vancouver to Sept-Iles including many destinations Westjet will never serve. On the other hand, AF-KL benefits also from inbound traffic from Air Canada connecting to AF-KL‘s short and long-haul Network.

Also, Westjet is up to a bad start and will upset their new passengers. In a statement, they picture how the connection will take place. To summarize, no through check-in, no through baggage check will be offered… a service offered for decades when connecting between AC and AF-KL.

I think that Westjet will be able to catch a few low yield passengers booking on the Company website but that’s about it!

Is this a wise decision? Well, if you desperately need to save money and cut our cost, I believe this is a right move considering what would be the alternative.

A CROP survey made in Canada for a major airline in early-2000, showed that frequent flyer, in a majority, do not really care that much about in-flight amenities. The most important criteria of choice, in ranking importance, were the availability of non-stop flight and schedule, pricing, frequent flyer awards, reliability and reputation of the operator and finally in-flight service. Lounges and ground services were among the least important criteria of choice.

There is no doubt that a great in-flight experience is a great way for an airline to differentiate itself from the crowd but it seems that when times require some cost saving, it is a more rational choice for executive management to cut on flight attendants or the quality of a meal rather than reducing flight frequencies, gateways or even frequent flyer benefits.