Good afternoon from Calgary International Airport!
My name is Alex, and I’m off to Victoria with Lynx Air.
Lynx Air is Canada’s newest ultra-low-cost carrier,
and started operations back in April with 3 new Boeing 737 MAXs.
I was on board that inaugural flight, and now 4 months or so later,
I figured it was time I gave them another try.
Our gate for today is A14, and waiting for us there was this brand new Boeing 737 MA-
oh. That’s a funny looking Lynx Air plane.
Flying us to Victoria today is actually this Canadian North Boeing 737-300, registered as
Charlie Golf November Charlie Oscar. Needless to say, there’s a bit of a story behind this.
Throughout July, Lynx Air had been occasionally sub-chartering planes
due to delays with getting more new 737 MAXs. As far as I could tell,
one of those routes consistently getting non-Lynx planes was Calgary to Victoria.
I needed to get to Victoria anyway for another trip, so I rolled the dice on the aircraft type,
and lo and behold, I got this email shortly after checking in!
I do have to give Lynx credit here, they gave a lot more detail than I would’ve expected,
right down to the extra note about Canadian North’s safety record.
So, as odd as it might seem to pick a flight purposely because it’s… not
what you usually get, for the aviation enthusiast in me, it makes perfect sense!
Plus, I’m a huge fan of Canadian North anyway,
they’re one of my favourite airlines in normal service,
and to get something a little bit different, PLUS their special CFL livery, had me super stoked!
This livery first rolled out back in late 2014, and features the 9 teams of the Canadian Football
League, with the West division on the left side and the East division on the right.
Out of Calgary, Canadian North doesn’t do any scheduled flights from the main terminal.
They normally do oilfield charters out of their own terminals on the southeast side
of the airport, so all in all, this is a real treat! Let’s go check out the CFL 737!
My seat for today is right in front in seat 1F,
and this might be the best bulkhead seat I’ve ever seen!
For whatever reason, the forward bulkhead on Canadian North’s 737-300s are a bit staggered,
leaving the right side with way more legroom than the left!
Trust me, I sat in 1A on another not-really-Canadian-North flight
operating for Air Transat back in 2019.
I’ll go through all the details after we’re airborne, but it’s pretty standard
as far as bulkhead seats go, with fixed armrests and no storage in front, as usual.
With that, let’s go to Victoria! Here’s the departure from Calgary, off of runway 35L.
As always, the Rockies never fail to blow me away whenever I’m flying westbound out of Calgary.
In this row, the tray tables fold out from the armrest and rest just a bit low.
The crew quickly came around with the standard Lynx onboard service,
which was complimentary water and nothing else.
I didn’t expect to see Canadian North’s old pre-merger logo on the napkins though!
One thing that Lynx emphasizes, at least during their inaugural,
was that food would not be available on board and that you should buy some in the airport.
I did just that and had a now-slightly squashed and very much overpriced turkey wrap.
In the seatback pocket was a single safety card and the usual air sickness bag.
Now I rarely have opinions on safety cards but this feels like a bit of a
downgrade from the version with the animals that predated the merger with First Air.
Obviously it still gets the job done, but is much less cool to look at!
Canadian North’s 737-300s seat 136 passengers in the usual all-economy layout.
The aft lavatory is pretty typical of most 737 classics,
with just enough space, and was kept nice and clean.
As we reached our top of descent, the views just refused to quit!
There’s nothing quite like a flight over the Rockies on a sub-contracted 737 to remind
you that you live in a gorgeous part of the world. Or at least, in the province next to it.
It is kinda interesting that a lot of carriers can’t seem to get MAXs fast enough now with time
to be painted, as we’ve seen with 2 Flair MAXs being delivered in Air Europa colours,
plus the Lynx Air MAX in basic Norwegian paint.
This summer in general seems to have been a lot busier for airlines than anticipated,
both in terms of crew and airplane availability.
To be clear though, that’s a phenomenon that is most definitely not limited to Lynx. For
a couple weeks, KF Aeroflyer was doing some flights for WestJet’s low cost subsidiary,
and as I’m uploading this, they’re also operating for Air North, too.
I’m sure Lynx is less than thrilled to have to spend extra money on these
flights because of late MAX deliveries, but I also have to assume that there’ll be some
sort of compensation from Boeing or the leasing company themselves.
With these beautiful sunset views over Vancouver,
here’s the arrival into Victoria, landing on runway 09.
So, that was a… not quite typical flight with Lynx Air, or rather, “Lynx…adian North”, I guess.
Around the world, the ultra-low-cost carrier experience is generally pretty similar
since you really just pay for a flight and very little else.
That was certainly the case today, but the added twist of it being a Canadian North
plane made this much more interesting, and so I for one was very glad that the swap took place.
Still though, Lynx deserves a lot of credit for being clear with their communication,
as well as Canadian North for being ready to step in! These types of flights may
become quite a bit more rare though, since Lynx has finally gotten a fourth and now a 5th MAX.
But yeah, a memorable flight and not in a bad way at all. I’d happily fly another one of
these flights again, and if there happen to be any other… notable substitutions in the future,
I’ll definitely try and get on board!
Thank you so much for watching this… not-so-easy to explain flight and I’ll see you next time!