Calgary airport becoming a connection of choice for U.S. travellers heading overseas

When planning a special five-week, overseas family vacation to celebrate her birthday and other milestones, Kelly Gillease was willing to splurge a bit on travel expenses to kick off the June trip.

Airline prices for a direct flight to Paris from San Francisco, where she lives, were around $4,500 US for three one-way economy tickets. Then Gillease noticed a deal to pay an extra $500 US per person to travel in business class, which included lie-flat seats.

"The differential was not very large to get a much nicer experience," said Gillease, who works in marketing. "We thought it's worth it to kick off the trip and get lie-flat seats and pay not much more money than what we would have paid to fly economy direct from San Francisco." 

The family bought the tickets to help ensure they were well-rested upon landing in Paris, where they would be for only four hours before travelling on to Corsica, a Mediterranean island in France. Their itinerary also included stops in Denmark and Norway, before spending the final two weeks on an African safari. 

The catch? They had to make a connection in Calgary and fly with WestJet.

When Gillease chose to hub her international voyage through Calgary, she became part of a trend that has seen an increase in American travellers, mostly from the west coast, who are flying with WestJet to overseas destinations. 

This summer, 86,000 passengers on international flights with WestJet began or ended their journey in the U.S., which is a record high for the airline.

The number of Americans on WestJet's transatlantic flights is up nearly 70 per cent compared to last summer, the airline said.

All of WestJet's flights to Asia and Europe are based out of Calgary. The airline operates year-round or seasonal flights to Tokyo as well as European cities like Edinburgh, London, Rome, Barcelona, Dublin and Paris.

There are a variety of reasons for the rise in U.S. passengers flying through Calgary, including an increase this year in the number of international flights by WestJet.

Those extra seats come at a time of high demand, high prices and few available seats on many U.S. and European airlines on flights across the Atlantic Ocean, which has created an "extremely strong" air travel market, said John Grant, the chief data analyst at OAG, an aviation analytics firm.

"The continued post-pandemic 'revenge-spend' phenomena is in existence," said Grant, who is based in the United Kingdom. "The strength of the U.S. dollar has encouraged more U.S. visitors to Europe."

Grant added that people will often opt for a indirect flight because they think they can get a cheaper fare. "And sometimes they can." 

The number of seats on flights between the U.S. and Europe is only three per cent lower this summer compared to 2019, said Hayley Berg, the Boston-based lead economist for Hopper, an airfare finder app.