Air Canada held its investor day this week, and it had a 162-slide presentation going through all of its plans. While the main goal of this plan was presumably to help analysts with insomnia to finally get some sleep, there were also some real nuggets of information in there. To me, the most interesting of all was about the airline’s plans for its low-cost subsidiary Rouge.
Rouge has had something of a tortured history. And by that, I mean it has tortured anyone who has had to sit in regular economy on those Airbus narrowbodies with their 29-inch pitch. Really, Rouge was built as a labor exercise, but unlike what the US carriers did, Rouge actually had a labor cost advantage. For that reason, it has had staying power.
The airline started flying in 2013 with a negotiated cap of 25 Airbus narrowbodies, 25 Boeing 767-300ERs and a thousands of weird hats. These airplanes were cast-offs from Air Canada which were densified. Rouge grew fast toward that cap with service starting from the Toronto hub and almost immediately being followed by Montréal. Those remained the most important markets for the airline as it built up its footprint heading south to warmer climes plus flights over the Pond with those 767s.
By 2017, that cap was changed to allow the narrowbody fleet to grow along with mainline to a higher number. You can see where narrowbody flying starts growing in 2018 below and when the 767s start phasing out.
Air Canada Rouge Departures by Fleet Type
Data via Cirium
In the early days, Vancouver grew in prominence in the Rouge network. It pushed into leisure routes to places like Las Vegas and Honolulu, but inexplicably it was also sent on key business routes to Los Angeles and San Francisco. That plan never made any sense, and the LA/SF flights were gone within two years.
In July 2019, the airline’s route map looked like this.
Map via Cirium
This map underwent an extreme makeover during the pandemic. The 767s disappeared, and so did all flying over the Atlantic. The more recent map focuses solely on shorter-haul flying in the Toronto and Montréal markets. Here’s what that looked like in July 2024:
Map via Cirium
This is now going to change yet again, and the big headline is that a new third base is coming. Meet the new base, same as the old base… Vancouver is back, baby.
Air Canada says it will open a Rouge base in Vancouver by 2026 at the latest. On slide 71, it showed this map with all the potential opportunities for new routes in the system.
via Air Canada
There is no Europe in the plan, and that makes sense because the widebodies that disappeared during the pandemic are not coming back. But you will notice some relatively long flights on here. That brings us to the new fleet plan.
Air Canada’s investor deck says it has 41 airplanes in the Rouge fleet today, but this Air Canada page says there are 18 A319s, 15 A321s, and 5 A320s. Regardless, all of these are going to disappear, mummified in maple syrup and fed to the polar bears. (Correction: Air Canada tells me that the 30 A320/A321s will go back to mainline, and only the A319s will be fed to polar bears.) In their place, Rouge will now get the entire Air Canada 737-8 MAX fleet.
This may seem kind of strange. After all, the MAX had opened up some new and interesting routes for Air Canada, including Toronto – Shannon. Next year, Montréal – Porto is scheduled. But if those routes are going to work, they’ll need to be transferred to another airplane. And that other airplane is either a widebody or the incoming A321XLR. The latter is where I’d put my money. That airplane is better suited to these longer flights anyway.
There will eventually be 53 MAXs in the Rouge fleet which is no insignificant growth plan from where it stands today. From Vancouver, those will be good airplanes to fly to Hawaiʻi and Latin America. And while we don’t know how many seats they’ll have on them just yet, we do know that Air Canada says these aircraft will have 20 percent lower unit costs than the Airbus Rouge fleet. So it lowers the bar to make the airline profitable.
As a customer, this doesn’t seem like good news on the surface, but it all depends on what these airplanes do. Will they replace mainline on existing routes or just create new route opportunities? If it’s the latter, then it’s nice to have that choice. It may even result in some destinations that don’t exist from Vancouver today. But we won’t know for probably a year what’s in the plan.
In the meantime, get those knees ready for the squeeze. What’s bad news for knees, however, is at least good news for your ears. You can take solace in the fact that the MAX is quieter than the Airbuses that ply the skies today.
- Updated on Dec 19 at 2:03pm to note that the A320/A321 aircraft will go back to mainline and will not be retired.
29 comments on “Air Canada Rouge Grows Again, Swaps Its Fleet”
Soooooo….in a nutshell…the legacy mainline AC brand will be reduced to business heavy European markets and Asia. Air Canada will be Rogue, regional and a few old school legacy maple leaves.
The Rouge A321s are supposed to go back to AC mainline. It’s only the 319s and 320s being retired. Plus, AC still has some A220s on order for mainline. So I think this is still net growth for both brands.
I love how easily Rouge is misspelled as Rogue. Perhaps more appropriate anyway. You’d think branding people would have figured that out, right?
https://media1.tenor.com/m/L96YVRfe9gUAAAAd/bob-and-doug-beauty-eh.gif
I rather call it Air Canada Ruse as that is what this is.
There’s a Rouge dot that’s SAN and another that’s PSP. What’s the other one? SNA or LAX? I wish it wouldn’t be LAX!
HkCaGu – No clue, but my money is on Orange County. I think they learned their lesson on LAX.
Cranky,
Unless you’re referring to the old Airbuses the newer ones are quite than the MAX’s.
Angry Bob – The fleet today is A320ceo family, not neo.
The slide showing the size of the various North American hubs in terms of Atlantic + Pacific capacity was quite illuminating. Some surprises on there.
So the max 8 has longer legs than the 321 (presumably) ceo?
That was a tremendous amount of flying to Europe. Guessing they weren’t all daily flights but still a very large amount of destinations. How much of that was absorbed into Air Canada classic and how much went the way of the dodo bird?
Bill – Yes MAX 8 has longer legs than the ceo, but it is nothing compared to what the 321XLR can do.
And yeah, a lot are gone. Here are Europe routes that flew on AC or Rouge in Jul 2019 but not on AC or Rouge in Jul 2024.
Calgary – Frankfurt Montreal – Bordeaux, Budapest, Marseilles Ottawa – Franfurt, London Toronto – Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Glasgow, Milan, Porto, Prague, Warsaw, Zagreb Vancouver – Paris, Zurich
How is it that Tango failed but Rouge is doing ok?
phllax – Well, Tango was just about a no-frills product, but it still used the more expensive Air Canada labor. Rouge uses cheaper labor.
Rouge has minimal labo(u)r cost advantages as the flight attendants are the only group that is “separate” from the AC mainline. Pilots, mechanics, etc… all fall under the AC mainline contracts.
Are the pilots part of the cheaper labor? Is the cost to convert all the A320 pilots to 737 max pilots substantial or peanuts?
I’d love to know what the thought process was behind “Rouge”. Or “Tango”, or “Jazz”, for that matter.
(A friend of mine just bought a Nissan Rogue and she spells it Rouge all the time. Easy typo to make both directions.)
The real winner here is Porter, which continues to rub its little paws together in anticipation of current AC passengers facing sqeezification and seeing “no middle seats! free beer and wine and better snacks!”
You mean why the word “Rouge”? French for red, the country’s (and the airline’s) colour.
They’re words that work acceptably en anglais and in french. It’d really suck for AC to pick a brand that doesn’t work easily in both languages. Just imagine “Waterfalls” would become “chutes”, ad nauseum.
Cranky’s jibes about the knee-crushing lack of legroom on Rouge is sadly based in reality. I had the displeasure of ending up on a Rouge A319 from Montreal to QC thanks to my mainline AC flight being cancelled. The flight was merely less than an hour and it was excruciating. The aircraft was worn, a little dirty and uncomfortable as hell. And, there was zero service. I cannot imagine flying a route like Toronto-San Jose, CR under those conditions. It was really bad.
You talked about knees and ears, but what about the wallet ? when talking about this Rouge or Spirit you and many aviation pundits are quick to dismiss the benefit that this airlines are to maaaany common price conscious travelers that do not mind a 5-7 hours flight to Colombia or Hawaii with tight space and not reclining seat and a delicious $5 ramen noodles, vs. and awful premade (2 days ago) sandwich in the Deltas of the world… this budget airlines are God send for families traveling in group that have to buy 4 tickets at a time for a family trip…. we are a segment that need to cater too… please do not discount that… and we are many, and in the many there are profit to be made.
As long as you are short or young…
A pitch of 29” doesn’t work for me for any trip that is longer than an hour.
So, in looking at the new Rouge map, and their (re) establishment of Vancouver as a base, are they looking to level up YVR to compete against SEA and what Alaska just announced there? With the exchange rate the way it is, it could be that with Rouge flights, it might be cheaper for Pacific Northwest folks to fly up to Vancouver to go to places like Honolulu or resorts in Mexico.
I thought that usually worked the other way, Canadians crossed the border to fly from US cities like Plattsburgh and Bellingham.
That’s how I understood it. It had something to do with the taxes levied on airline tickets in Canada.
Yup that’s right. US airport taxes are lower, which is one of the reasons why Southwest famously hasn’t flown to/from Canada (even though they could definitely compete with UA/AC on many routes).
I wonder if taxes aren’t as bad when you fly from the USA through Canada and to another country? Air Canada does show up on searches to Asia and Europe.
that typically applies to fliers who go cross border to fly to other US destinations – example BUF-MCO – and save the US and Canada fees imposed for flying over the border. For International flying, that does not apply.
That said, this past summer I was heading TPA to SEA and instead connected through CLT to YVR which was significiantly cheaper than connecting through to SEA.
Air Canada couldn’t sell Pacific Northwest – Hawaii itineraries connecting through YVR – it’s a cabotage violation that carries heavy fines if done unintentionally.
It seems like Rouge will be used for any mainline operation to non-business destinations. It also makes WestJet look like a slightly better option too since they have one more inch of pitch. It makes sense to use the A321s for hub to hub and business centers, the A220s for hub to medium cities and the regional planes to all the tiny cities they serve. Canada seems like a difficult place to serve because there are a few huge cities and many spread out rural places.