WestJet’s new jets, Jet2 cuts 2M winter seats, Austrian tests low-cost Dubai route.

Despite Canada’s current love affair with the USA (not), WestJet places an order for a mix of B787 and B737 aircraft, which will provide room for network growth in the coming years. There are no dates for those deliveries, and anything can happen before then; after all, it’s the Canadian market.

Aena is the latest supplier to come under the scrutiny of hashtagRyanair, with a slight increase in airport charges resulting in millions of seats being dropped for the winter programme. The good news for hashtagAENA is that a national strike in France is planned for Wednesday, so guess where the airline's latest complaints will be directed...

Jet2.com and Jet2holidays' announcement of dropping two million seats this winter in the face of market softness is a bit of a worry. Is the market heading for a dip, or are Jet2 just carefully managing capacity and protecting revenues? Probably a bit of both, and only time will tell.

And Austrian Airlines is trialling a low-cost service to hashtagDubai this winter. Experiments like this tend to get messy, create brand confusion, and although it’s apparently a spare aircraft, could better uses have been found? Only one winner in this initiative, and that’s the Dubai hotels….as if they need any help!