Airfares on selected routes across Canada are climbing amid the upturn in travel demand and rise in fuel prices.
Raymond James Ltd.'s domestic airfare index, released Wednesday, shows that a WestJet Airlines Ltd. basket of ticket prices, booked Feb. 15 for late March travel, was up 46 per cent from the same period in 2010. The airfare index at Air Canada jumped 34 per cent, according to the sampling.
For one-way tickets on the Toronto-Vancouver route, for instance, WestJet charged $229 in the latest survey, compared with $149 a year earlier.
The Raymond James index tracks six-week advance prices, excluding taxes and various fees, on key domestic routes to help gauge general trends. WestJet one-way fares for Toronto-Vancouver travel in late March were $194 in 2008 and $164 in 2009.
"It appears that Canada's airlines are prepared to test these price sensitivity limits," Raymond James analyst Ben Cherniavsky said in a research note.
On Wednesday, the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies joined a chorus of criticism against government-imposed taxes and fees that have driven up domestic and trans-border fares, warning that an increasing number of Canadians are flocking to bargains at U.S. airports.
In 2009, 2.3 million U.S.-bound air travellers in Canada drove to an American airport for their flight instead of departing from Canada.
This year, it is expected to exceed 2.5 million passengers.
Brent Jang