Air Transat is a Canadian leisure airline based out of Montreal,
and is one of the few operators of widebody aircraft in the country.
Now, I say, widebody operator but they’re not exactly flying any of their heavies at the moment.
As a leisure airline, their business is heavily focused on vacation travel as
opposed to domestic flying, and so their recovery has been a little bit slower.
There’s been quite a bit of change in their fleet over the last year or two,
and I suspect there could be more to come,
but I thought it’d be worth taking a look at the Air Transat fleet as of September 2021.
Starting off with their narrowbody operations - according to the Canadian Civil Aircraft Register,
Air Transat has 7 Airbus A321-200s. These seat around 190 passengers,
depending on the aircraft use. According to Air Transat, domestic flights will have
the first two rows reserved for Club Class, with the middle seats blocked.
On international flights though, they’ll use all the seats in an all-economy configuration instead.
Interestingly, one of these aircraft is actually in full Thomas Cook livery in Montreal, although
it never entered service with them. At least one of these A321s has been flying some revenue
flights recently, though the others are presently parked in Montreal, in various stages of storage.
Moving on to the newest type in the fleet - 10 Airbus A321neoLRs,
with the first delivered to Air Transat in May of 2019.
These particular planes seat 199 passengers,
with 12 in Air Transat’s Club Class, and 187 in Economy.
The addition of these A321neos was first announced in 2017,
and these 10 are long-term leases. In 2018 though, Air Transat announced that they had
signed another agreement to lease seven more A321neos, to be delivered between 2020 and 2022.
These seven aircraft would replace some of their A330s whose leases would be expiring during that
time, although this agreement might’ve changed since. As you’d expect though,
these newer aircraft have been doing the vast majority of Transat’s flying recently.
Next up are 15 Airbus A330-200s, seating between 332 and 345 passengers. As usual,
there are 12 seats in Club Class, no matter which layout, and either 320 or 333 Economy Class seats.
Unfortunately, all 15 of these aircraft are currently parked in various locations around
the world . As of the time of uploading, 3 are in Montreal, another 3 in Toronto,
1 in Hamilton, 1 in Marana, and 7 in Rio De Janeiro.
And finally, the largest aircraft in the Air Transat fleet is a single Airbus A330-300,
seating 12 passengers in Club Class and 334 in Economy for a total of 346 passengers.
Like the A330-200s though, this one is unfortunately stored as well, in Montreal.
Air Transat did actually have 4 of these airplanes for quite a while, but the other
3 were all exported to the US and their Canadian registrations cancelled this past spring.
However, those 3 airplanes were configured in an even higher-density layout with a total capacity
of 375 passengers. Although Transat didn’t officially announce the -300 model’s retirement,
it’s entirely possible that they don’t see the need for an airplane with that many seats anymore.
Curiously, Air Transat still has 3 Airbus A310-300s on the Canadian
Aircraft Register as well, despite the type’s confirmed retirement in spring last year.
Most of those airplanes are now being parted out at Montreal Mirabel Airport.
There is also one 737-800 registered to Air Transat, and they operated quite a few of
those just a few years ago, but these have been progressively phased out in favour of
an all-Airbus fleet. They did also operate some 737-700s on lease from ASL Airlines
France up until late 2019. Air Transat doesn’t list the 737 on their website anymore either,
so it’s not terribly likely that they’ll be flying that one again.
Not including those still-registered A310s or that 737, that brings Air
Transat’s total number of aircraft to 33, again, at the time of uploading.
We’ll see what the future holds for the rest of those A330s, but for now,
it’s safe to say that the A321neos will be especially important for Transat going forward.
Thank you so much for watching, to my good friend Mark Brandon for some of his Transat footage,
and I’ll see you next time!