Good morning from Toronto, Ontario! My name is Alex,
and this is the inaugural flight of Canada Jetlines.
Canada Jetlines is the country’s newest airline,
based here in Toronto, and markets themselves as a leisure carrier.
They’re currently operating out of Terminal 3 here at Pearson,
and their very first revenue flight will be a 3-hour one across the country to Calgary, Alberta!
Now, you may have heard the name “Canada Jetlines” here and there over the past little while,
and that’s because they’ve been in various stages of starting up over the past 10 years.
I made a video at the start of this year talking about their history in more detail,
but long story short, the original version of Jetlines had ambitions to become an
ultra-low cost carrier. For various reasons, including, but definitely not limited to,
matters involving Canada’s Competition Bureau, they just weren’t able to get off the ground.
A couple years of hard-to-explain business things later, Jetlines
re-emerged as a separate entity from that previous iteration,
pivoting from the original low-cost carrier vision to a leisure airline one instead.
They took delivery of their first plane back in February,
and the plane in question is the one operating today’s historic flight,
a 12-year-old Airbus A320, registered as Charlie Golf Charlie Juliet Lima.
This A320 was originally delivered to Avianca in 2010,
and then flew with Pegasus in Turkey from 2016 up until 2021.
At the moment, this is Jetlines’ one and only plane, but a second one is apparently being
prepared for delivery, and they’re hoping to grow to a fleet of 15 A320s by 2025.
It’s definitely not every day you get to fly on an airline’s first ever flight,
and Jetlines is also a bit more unique in that they’re maybe the
only new Canadian airline in recent years to fly Airbuses. Considering the flight
was also selling for as low as $99 one way, being here was a no-brainer for me.
Jetlines says they’ll eventually expand to more destinations in the US, Mexico,
and the Caribbean, which would put them squarely in competition with Sunwing and
Air Transat. Speaking of which, a friend pointed this out and now I can’t unsee it,
but the livery does look a bit like a hybrid of Sunwing and Transat.
To be fair, I think that’s kind of what they’re going for in general anyway,
and the branding is pretty distinctive.
The face on the tail is apparently named “Frank”,
and he appears throughout their branding in a couple fun different ways.
All things considered, this is a very special day for a lot of reasons,
and that was made clear at the gate!
With that, let’s go see what Canada Jetlines has in store!
Jetlines’ Airbus A320 seats 174 passengers in an all economy configuration,
and my seat for today is 2F, right at the front.
As far as all-economy A320s go,
this is predictably a little bit tight! As regular viewers will know,
I tend to make most airline seats look much worse than they actually are, so keep that in mind.
Fortunately, and just as I was expecting, 2F also has this excellent view of that orange CFM56.
Surprisingly enough, Jetlines has these USB power ports at every seat,
along with a fairly small seatback pocket, which I’ll take a look at later.
There’s also a QR code at every seat with a link to,
also surprisingly, some in-flight entertainment.
As far as the legroom situation goes, the crew did offer to move me to an aisle seat,
which was much appreciated, but this would be a very short video otherwise,
so I decided to tough it out here, at least for now.
I’ll take a more detailed look around the rest of the cabin once we’re airborne, so please
enjoy the very first commercial takeoff on board a Canada Jetlines flight off of Pearson’s runway 23.
Given how long the name “Canada Jetlines” has been around for,
it feels pretty surreal to actually be flying on one of their planes!
These very clearly brand new seats were made by German seat manufacturer Recaro,
and are similar to WestJet’s just without the headrests.
As expected, there’s a sturdy tray table that folds down, slides, and rests at a decent height.
In the seatback pocket was an air sickness bag, and a crisp,
brand new safety card for Jetlines’ A320.
I do wonder why they had the safety cards in the pocket below rather than
in the dedicated slot at the top. I’d argue it looks a bit nicer up there!
There’s also a plastic coat hook on the side of each seat.
Before the inflight service starts,
let’s take a look at those gift bags that were handed out during boarding.
In there was a Jetlines branded keychain, a pen, a baggage tag,
and a lanyard. Airline goodies like these always make me happy, and this was no exception!
Around this point, the Director of Sales and Business Development for Jetlines very
kindly offered to move me to a seat with more legroom, and I happily took him up on that!
That seat ended up being 1F, a bulkhead seat just a row up, right next to Mr. Eddy Doyle,
Canada Jetlines’ CEO. I had a great chat with him talking about the industry,
Jetlines’ history, and the kinds of hurdles they had to overcome just to get here today.
Pretty soon, the onboard service started, and having flown to Toronto
that very morning on the redeye from Calgary, I had some much needed coffee.
I also bought a breakfast sandwich from the buy-on-board menu, and this was very tasty!
Considering this is a startup, the onboard offering is impressive,
although the prices do feel a bit steep.
Speaking of the onboard experience,
Jetlines even offers a wifi-based in-flight entertainment system.
There, you’ll find a couple movies, TV shows, and games. The selection might be a bit limited
but at least there is something, and I’m sure they’ll add more eventually. The system worked
pretty smoothly with the exception of the moving map, and you could also find a digital version
of the menu here too. Again, the amount of work that’s gone into this is commendable.
Like I said before, Jetlines has 174 seats on their A320s,
in an all-economy configuration. That means legroom is pretty standard across the whole plane,
but there’s still the usual overwing exit rows and the bulkhead row at the front.
However, I’m told the first row of seats (ordinarily) can only be booked
with the two highest fare classes - a JetFlex or a JetLines fare.
I ended up going with the cheaper JetPlus fare with a normal seat,
since I didn’t really need any of the extras, and didn’t want to pay that much more for the legroom.
That said, I do see the reasoning behind keeping those specific seats for those higher fares,
but I think they could make that clearer when they’re spelling out the differences
on the website. Something like another bullet point saying “Extra legroom seats included”.
But anyway that’s just a very me-specific thing that
I noticed and probably won’t be much concern to anyone with normal legs.
The lavatory in the very back of the plane is fairly average.
It was decently clean and had enough space to move around.
As we crossed the prairies, the crew also came around with a second service about an hour before
landing, offering both buy-on-board and more complimentary drinks. Again,
pretty impressive for a non-legacy carrier, though if I recall correctly,
I think most of the others do at least two drink services on flights of this length anyway.
With that, this historic flight came to a close, and here’s the arrival into Calgary!
So, that was the inaugural flight of Canada Jetlines, and honestly, I was pretty impressed!
First and foremost, their onboard offering is very solid. Having a proper buy-on-board
and actual in-flight entertainment from day 1 is a pretty big deal.
I feel like that’s the sort of thing that sets airlines apart from one another,
and in the case of Jetlines, it’s very clear the amount of effort that’s gone
into making them more of a higher-value carrier.
Now obviously, the regular seats could be slightly uncomfortable for taller folks like me,
but I am told that you should be able to book the exit rows with any fare,
you’d just have to pay more depending on which one you pick.
I did still fit in the seat regardless, and they’re perfectly fine for anyone that’s a
bit more normal-sized. If anything, they’re also slightly more comfortable in terms of
width since the A320 fuselage is a bit wider than the many 737s that cross the country.
There was one small hiccup that I’ll mention, and it’s that their online
check-in system wasn’t working so everyone did have to go to the counter to get printed
boarding passes. However, Jetlines’ customer service was super proactive,
and both sent me an email regarding that, and even phoned me too.
All in all, Canada Jetlines is a fresh and welcome new entrant into the Canadian airline sector,
and I really enjoyed flying with them especially after following their journey over the years.
I wish Jetlines the very best of luck,
and I’m looking forward to watching them grow in the future!
Thank you so much for watching this special day with Canada Jetlines, and I’ll see you next time!