Leisure airline marks three years of operations on Canada Day

MONTREAL, June 30, 2016 /CNW Telbec/ - Air Canada Rouge is celebrating its third birthday July 1, having grown since its inaugural flight in 2013 into an international leisure carrier with 1,600 employees, a fleet of 44 aircraft and a network of 100 routes touching five continents.

"After three years of rapid growth, we will mark our third birthday on Canada Day by proudly operating 123 flights carrying more than 23,000 customers. Air Canada Rouge was first introduced as a leisure carrier in 2013 to serve Mexico, the Caribbean and select destinations in Europe. With investments in our fleet, network, and product, as well as our unique approach to on-board service, Air Canada Rouge has grown to play a key role within Air Canada," said Benjamin Smith, President, Passenger Airlines at Air Canada.

"Air Canada Rouge has surpassed our expectations and has become integral to our international growth strategy. Its popularity with leisure travellers and the efficiencies of its innovative business model are enabling Air Canada to effectively compete for vacation traffic and open new markets around the world."

In the past two months alone, Air Canada Rouge has begun offering service on seven new international routes including service from Toronto to Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, London-Gatwick, and Glasgow; Vancouver to Dublin; and Montreal to Casablanca, Air Canada's first regularly scheduled flight to Africa, extending Air Canada's global network to six continents.

Along with new routes, below are some other milestones Air Canada Rouge celebrated in its first three years:

• The airline now operates a fleet of 44 aircraft including 20 Airbus A319 aircraft, 19 Boeing 767-300ER aircraft, and 5 Airbus 321 aircraft
• The Premium Rouge cabin on the Airbus 319 fleet was fully refurbished to include larger seats in 2x2 configuration
• Extra carry-on space was added to the A319 fleet with the installation of newly designed overhead bin doors
• Rouge's in-flight entertainment system has seen upgrades across the entire fleet, with new iPads available onboard for customers, and improvements have been made to the content that now include hundreds of movies including new releases, TV shows, music and destination content.

At its inception, Air Canada Rouge had a fleet of two Airbus 319 aircraft and two Boeing 767-300ER aircraft.  Its network included 14 routes from Toronto and Montreal to the Caribbean and Europe. On its launch day – Canada Day, July 1, 2013 – Rouge operated five flights with 775 customers.

Air Canada Rouge fun facts at three years:

• 11 million customers served - and counting
• 1,120 Rouge Crew (our name for Flight Attendants), with 330 hired since January 2016
• 480 pilots, growing to 500 by end of summer
• Over 6,600 children's faces painted with onboard face painting kits
• About 8,800 puppets created from air sickness bags
• Over 143,000 signature buttons such as "Happy Birthday!" and "First Flight!" distributed to customers celebrating special occasions onboard

For more information, visit www.flyrouge.com or to book a flight visit www.aircanada.com. Visit Air Canada Rouge on Facebook at www.facebook.com/aircanadarouge.

About Air Canada

Air Canada is Canada's largest domestic and international airline serving more than 200 airports on six continents.  Canada's flag carrier is among the 20 largest airlines in the world and in 2015 served more than 41 million customers.  Air Canada provides scheduled passenger service directly to 64 airports in Canada, 55 in the United States and 87 in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America. Air Canada is a founding member of Star Alliance, the world's most comprehensive air transportation network serving 1,321 airports in 193 countries.  Air Canada is the only international network carrier in North America to receive a Four-Star ranking according to independent U.K. research firm Skytrax.  For more information, please visit: www.aircanada.com, follow @AirCanada on Twitter and join Air Canada on Facebook.

Attn. Photo Editors: Photos are available for download: http://www.aircanada.com/en/about/media/rouge/photos.html

SOURCE Air Canada

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