Good morning from Calgary International Airport!
My name is Alex, and welcome to another trip report.
I’m here at YYC absurdly early this morning to fly to Toronto with WestJet’s Boeing 737-800.
First things first though, this was filmed all the way back in February of 2020,
since it was part of my UK trip to fly on Air Transat’s A310.
So, some things here are automatically a bit out of date, but given it's a flight
in their then-relatively new 737 Premium seats, it is still an interesting one.
I’ve talked plenty about these seats in earlier WestJet Premium videos, and long story short,
they’re a very nice upgrade from WestJet’s older “euro-business”-style Premium seats.
That morning, I also had the chance to check out the Chinook lounge in Concourse A,
which has since been replaced by WestJet’s new Elevation lounge, which opened later that year.
At this time of morning, they didn’t have much to offer as far as hot food went, but didn’t
have much time before boarding started anyway, so I ended up just grabbing a muffin to go.
I will miss the views that this lounge had though,
and I’m curious to see what they’ll end up using this space for.
Today’s flight to Toronto will be operated by this 6 year old Boeing 737-800,
registered as Charlie Foxtrot Uniform Sierra Mike. Like all of WestJet’s 737-800s,
this was delivered fresh from Boeing, and is still flying around today.
I’ve only flown WestJet Premium before on mainly shorter flights between Calgary to Vancouver,
so I was curious to see what WestJet would offer on this 3.5 hour flight. Let’s go check it out!
My seat for today is 3A, in the last row of WestJet’s Premium cabin.
If you’re like me, you’ll be happy to know that the legroom here is excellent,
with plenty of space to stretch out.
Waiting at each seat was a water bottle, and plenty of reading material in the seatback pocket.
These seats also offer some storage in the centre armrests, and in-seat power.
The tray tables are found in the outer armrests, and fold out nicely across the whole seat.
These enormous headrests are adjustable as well.
Once boarding was complete, a cabin crew member came around with menus
for the 12 of us in Premium. It’s also printed in French on the other side.
For me, today’s flight was originally booked in Economy, but if there’s room,
WestJet usually offers a fairly generous paid upgrade option at check-in,
depending on how long the flight is. It’s usually about $60 per hour of flight time,
at least domestically, so that worked out to be an extra $180 or so on this flight.
So, let’s see what the next 3 hours have in store!
Here’s our departure from Calgary, off of runway 35L.
After that great-sounding departure,
our cabin crew member serving Premium came around taking orders for drinks and breakfast.
As the sun rose, these wet towels were handed out.
That was followed by the usual (at the time) WestJet wax placemat and cutlery,
and my cup of coffee with a Biscoff.
A couple minutes later, the breakfast plate appeared, and I went for the pancakes.
This came with some yogurt, fruit, and a chocolate pastry.
The yogurt and pastry were both tasty enough, as was the fruit,
and the pancakes were actually pretty good.
Our cabin crew member did warn me that the dish was hot,
but maybe a bit too hot. One pancake on the end was a little bit crispy, but overall,
I really enjoyed this, and it was nice to get a bit of a larger meal on the 737.
In the seatback pocket, WestJet had their usual contents. There’s a safety card,
Air sickness bag,
The WestJet Magazine,
And a WestJet MasterCard pamphlet.
Remember when airlines had physical in-flight magazines? I honestly kinda
miss these. Hopefully 2022 is the year they come back!
You’ll notice one seemingly glaring omission to
these seats - and that’s the lack of in-flight entertainment screens.
However, WestJet does have free-to-use streaming-based
entertainment through their mobile app.
While obviously not everyone’s cup of tea, I’m told it saves a considerable amount of weight,
and that’s why the 737 family all has that form of media instead.
The 787s remain the only WestJet aircraft with actual seatback screens.
The selection is pretty good though, with plenty of movies and TV series to watch,
as well as in-flight wifi being available for purchase. There’s also a moving map.
WestJet’s 737-800s have 174 seats in two classes.
In the back are 162 Economy seats in the usual 3-3 configuration.
For those in need of extra legroom, the first four rows of Economy class have more space,
and row 4 right behind Premium looks to have the best of them all!
There’s also the two exit rows in the middle.
Up front are 12 Premium seats in a 2-2 configuration.
Premium is separated from Economy by this plastic divider above the seats,
as well as a curtain, which stayed open throughout the whole flight.
The forward lavatory on the 737-800 is typically reserved for Premium passengers,
and it’s not a bad size by any means. However I
try to avoid these on 737s, since they have much less headroom than those in the rear.
In order to presumably fit the new Premium seats in though, they’ve replaced the aft lavatories
with some slightly narrower ones instead. Not amazing, but still perfectly usable.
Back in Premium, the cabin crew came around plenty of times with more drinks,
as well as this snack box with some popcorn, almonds, chocolate, and some Tic Tacs.
For the rest of the flight though,
I caught up on some sleep ahead of my very exciting connecting flight in Toronto.
With some amazing views of Lake Huron, we began our descent,
and here’s our arrival into Pearson, landing on runway 05.
Overall, I really enjoyed this flight with WestJet.
The cabin crew were so nice as usual, the food was pretty good,
and of course, these new seats are very comfortable.
At this point, I think the 737 Premium cabin refits are completely done,
as far as I know, and you’d likely be getting these seats no matter what.
For me personally, I would definitely pay to upgrade to Premium again.
Maybe not at the time of uploading this, while there’s still some unfortunate cost-cutting
going on, but certainly when things are a bit more stable. Booking Premium to begin
with is a bit more expensive compared to booking economy and then upgrading.
On certain flights, I think it’s a good deal. Like I said before though,
it’s most appealing on domestic flights - the upgrade prices go up quite a
bit for transborder and international flights, especially the Dreamliner ones.
Just a month before this flight, I was flying with WestJet from Calgary to Atlanta,
and with that flight being maybe another hour longer,
the Premium upgrade price was double what I paid for this one.
My assumption there is that that price is targeted at Americans
or anyone else coming from a country with a more favourable exchange rate.
Regardless, this was a good flight with pre-covid WestJet,
and it was a pleasure to finally fly in their new Premium seats on the 737-800.
Thank you very much for watching this trip report with WestJet, and I’ll see you next time!