Canada 's Flag Carrier And Largest Domestic, U.s. Trans Border Market

Canadian based airline may find it hard to find strong support from US and International customers

This report was made up for the purposes for pursuing our client and make him understand why he should invest in our company. This report will contain a swat analysis, strengths and weakness, vision statement, mission statement. These are going to a sure that we has a company aren’t only advertising our strengths but we will also show our weakness and things that need to be improved. The history of WestJet and the current points will also be shown, from when WestJet was founded and too, what’s WestJet’s main focus now will be shown in this analysis for our client. Another thing west jet wants to represent is all of the financial resources and the finical information for our client and of course a company overview will be provided has well.

As mentioned above Westjet WestJet offers high quality customer service, WestJet offers flights to over 30 cities in North America, including some of the cheapest airfares to destinations such as Hamilton, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and more. WestJet has recently expanded its service into the

Air Canada is Canada 's largest full-service airline and the largest provider of scheduled passenger services in the Canadian market, the Canada-U.S. trans-border market and in the international market to and from Canada. In 2010, Air Canada improved its reputation as one of the world’s leading international air carriers. Significant progress was made on executing and delivering on its four key priorities and this, coupled with improving economic conditions, allowed Air Canada to record operating income of $407 million in 2010, a $677 million improvement from 2009. Air Canada’s financial strategy is to continue to improve both the level and sustainability of its

However, despite the correct decision to privatize, the company continued to have troubles. The financials of the newly privatized airline were unreflective of the successful stock offerings. “Air Canada reported losses of C$74 million in 1990 and C$218 million in 1991, and it reported that it had nearly two million fewer passengers in 1991 than in the previous year.” These failures were blamed on the effects of the economic recession and the decrease in travel due to the war in the Persian Gulf. However, it was clear that competition with international carriers was a major cause. To elaborate, the airline industry is considered to be a cyclical industry, meaning that it is directly affected by the business cycle. As such, during times of

Air Canada has been in the business of air transport for an extended period of time. Due to the experience and the exposure of the carrier in the field, it has made a commendable progress through many strategies as well as customer proximity. One of the approaches taken by the airline involves the identification as well as an implementation of cost reduction initiatives in a bid to increase revenue from its operations (Air Canada, 2016). It is also attempting to connect with the existing carriers across the world to connect the current customers to the international world. This approach has been adopted to increase its competitive advantage over other existing airlines.

Westjet came into the air travel business in 1996, offering fares up to 50% cheaper than there competition. They strived for an excellent relationship between the employee and the employer by creating an ecstatic, friendly work environment. Westjet is one of the most successful airlines as it did start out with the most start up capital any airline has ever experienced, as well as keeping their debt to a minimum. With such commercial success, Westjet was questioned with their actions towards Air Canada as one of the founders employed a travel agent to find out certain information about Air Canada which gave them a competitive advantage so they knew exactly what price would be a noticeable difference, which would attract

The number of rivals that Air Canada would have would depend on the location of the airports. The major competitors for Air Canada are American Airlines Group, Delta Air Lines, WestJet Airlines, and Porter Airlines. The quality of these other airlines depends on each of their planes, some of Delta Air Lines planes are a lot bigger so they can offer a lot more than Air Canada. Air Canada offers a lot of services as they have a lot of flights that fly from city to city in Canada unlike Delta or American air lines. Air Canada competes a lot with WestJet and Porter airlines in Canada. Rivalry is more intense at bigger airports around Canada. For example, Charlottetown only has three different airlines that currently fly here every week. Where in Toronto they experience a lot more air traffic so more airlines can offer better deals to fly somewhere from Toronto to anywhere in the world where Charlottetown. If people in Charlottetown can find a better flight from Moncton or Halifax they might

• WestJet owned 28% of the domestic air market share in 2004 vs. 25% in 2003.

In order to assess the corporate governance performance in WestJet over the long term, we are looking into three different fundamental corporate governance issues:

As a company, WestJet does not show a lot of weaknesses. However,the lack of international and Trans-Continental flights in the world of rapidly rising economies, international business and marketscould be count as a weakness. Customers may not be provided with the international destination they are looking for and could be turned to competing airlines. When higher-class travellers are looking to fly with some added comfort and special service, WestJet does not provide any sort of first class seating which can be a factor of lost business. However, December 2012 WestJet launched“premium economy” class flights program, which is designed to satisfy particular customer’s demands with extra legroom and services. Travelers have also dissatisfied with the fact of lack ofseats for larger passengers, becauseWestJet airplane’s seats aren’t big enough. Moreover, some passengers do not agree with the complimentary snacks only being served on flights two or more hours in length. In addition, Due to small crafts WestJet may become a victim of stereotype of low-cost, low-fare, and short-haul scheduled air carrier only.

WestJet develop their IT operation early and force them get the lead in the aviation businesses. However, as the global economic and the change of people’s demand, the strategic plan of WestJet need to be change to follow the change of the world. Compare with other aviation business, the IT structure of WestJet is small and keeps running on their pervious operation before Smith join into the organization. There are some risks coming out if WestJet continue these IT operations.

For instance, Canada's federal government has delegated the responsibility for airports to local authorities. As a result, many Canadian airports have transformed into brighter, cleaner, and more modern facilities that have become more expensive to operate 3. Canada’s airports have spent more than $9.5 billion on improvements since 19922. According to the CEO of Transat A.T. Inc, “it costs three times as much for an airline to land in Pearson Airport in Toronto as at Charles-de-Gaulle in Paris” 2. Such high landing fees have made Pearson and other major Canadian airports less desirable landing destinations; increasing costs for airlines, and as a result, often increasing prices for consumers. Pearson Airport is West Jet’s “second-largest hub and main connection point in Eastern Canada” and almost half of its destinations are to Canadian airports2, Such high costs of landing in major Canadian cities require that WestJet finds more ways to cut costs and remain the cost leader in its industry.

This was evident with the purchase of Canadian Airlines, in 1999 (The National, 2003). With the purchase of this airline, Air Canada also inherited their estimated eight billion dollar debt (The National, 2003). Also inherited from the merger, were underappreciated employees and under trained employees who lacked morale (The National, 2003). In 2003, Air Canada filed for bankruptcy (The National, 2003), this was due to the large financial deficit, the economy and the underappreciated/paid employees. Although, this was a difficult time for the airline, this truly marked the change in how the airline is structured. In 2005, it marked the true return of Air Canada, they reached record breaking revenues and far exceeded anyone’s expectation, including their own. Currently Air Canada, is the largest Canadian Airline, which has a lot to do with their change in business strategy.

➢ Unique Corporate Culture: The main competitive advantage that WestJet had was their unique culture. Even the executives and pilots help the customer whenever necessary; encourage employees to share suggestions for improvement. They maintained the policy of Care for People.