WestJet’s Care-antee logojet by Dave Subelack
Recently I blogged about the challenges facing the top brass at WestJet. In the time that has passed a couple of interesting things have happened.
A change at the top
Sean Durfy’s resignation announcement has paved the way for Gregg Saretsky to assume the reins as CEO. While this caught me by surprise the reason given – the desire to spend more time with his family – seemed perfectly plausible. However, the cynics of this world were not quite so willing to accept this, with a number of people choosing to believe he was shown the door for the less-than-elegant adoption of the new reservation system. You could forgive the cynics for their speculation as CEOs have been at the centre of upheaval at WestJet in the past. Whatever the case may be I think it’s a win for all concerned. Durfy gets to live life at a smell the roses pace for a while. WestJet benefits from the experience and energy of a new CEO who already understands the inner workings of the company and has a stellar track record to boot. It’s great to see somebody with a sincere passion for aviation leading the charge – there are far too many “suits” running the show at other carriers.
A new dance partner
For years we’ve heard about potential tie-ups between WestJet and Southwest. It’s one of those stories that just won’t go away – murmurs about codeshares and ground handling agreements seem to flare up periodically and then vanish as quickly as they appeared. WestJet themselves have fueled this fire on a number of occasions with ambiguous statements declaring interest but only ever offering vague timelines. Personally I’ve always felt that the synergy potential between WestJet and Southwest is overblown. Though they were founded on similar business models WestJet is for all intents and purposes a full service carrier. It seems I’m not the only one with this mindset; this weekend WestJet went public with the fact that they are courting Delta with a view to drumming up US traffic through codeshares. WestJet is set to receive 5 slot pairs at LaGuardia (subject to regulatory approval) which will allow them to exchange traffic with Delta. Indications are that theses slots are to be used for flights to Toronto and Montreal. The folks at Delta must be happy about this; additional feeder traffic to LaGuardia (where they are trying to grow their presence) without using any of their own planes and crews and without signing a capacity-purchase agreement. All of this in exchange for slots they would likely have been forced to give up anyway. Talk about getting something for nothing.
Walk. Don’t run.
Despite WestJet’s friendly demeanor towards Air France/KLM and this new cozying up towards Delta I remain confident that they are not positioning themselves to enter SkyTeam – there’s simply not enough in it for either party. SkyTeam currently plays second fiddle to the Star Alliance in Canada and adding WestJet would do little to change that. What it would do is tie WestJet’s hands in terms of partner opportunities with OneWorld carriers. It’s far more likely that they will cherry pick codeshare partners from both SkyTeam and OneWorld under the “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” mantra with a view to building a robust codeshare network à la Alaska Airlines. Did I mention Saretsky used to work there?
