WestJet Shutting Down Sunwing Airlines Brand

Westjet simply tried to use the same strategy of a lower cost airline within an airline that many other airlines have used and which Air Canada still does with Rouge.

Westjet's pilots said they wanted the strategy to end and the company agreed, likely because they realize the strategy really wasn't that successful - which is true for most airline within airline models.

WestJet will be stronger and more efficient as a single brand

ONEX might be tidying up WS in order to sell it on. Keeping the Sunwing Vacations brand was a requirement to get the takeover approved. WS will see some interesting changes going forward.

Agreed. I have never believed in the LC airline within traditional airline model, as I think (insert airline name) should just better manage its core cost base. There would also seem potential to actually increase costs with the model as it requires dual operational overheads.

I do give credit to Qantas and Jetstar for somehow achieving success with the model, but there's no other dual operation airline that's had the same level of success...not that it stops airlines from keep trying. I'd love to read a case study on Qantas/Jetstar.

Eh, since they’re still keeping the Sunwing Vacations brand, it’s not a big deal to be honest. Sunwing always seemed like it was much more of a vacation packages company than an airline anyways and the airline was just a secondary thing meant to take travelers to and from their own resorts and nothing more. Not to mention it operated much more like a charter airline than a scheduled one (most routes and schedules were very infrequent or outright unpredictable especially outside YYZ, their fleet grows and shrinks drastically between the winter season and the rest of the year, plus operating out of the largely abandoned midfield terminal at YYZ). Many people don’t understand that it’s not a normal LCC like Flair even though it’s advertised as one in certain places. From what I heard the airline itself always had a really poor reputation largely because of that.

There are a "few" examples of airline within an airline working, like the aforementioned Air Canada/Rouge, Qantas/Jetstar. Others worth mentioning are Singapore/Scoot, IAG's Iberia/Vueling/Level (and the un-marketed IB Express), SWISS/Edelweiss (and the rest of the confusing constellation that is Lufthansa Group). The typical structure is a full service mainline carrier with a low cost, more leisure focused carrier. The problem tends to be when there is too much overlap in the carriers that they steal each others market share and become competitors. The market has to be large enough and segmented enough for both carriers to coexist. Finally, there is a cost in differentiating the carriers. Most often a mainline carrier will try to stave off a low cost entrant by starting their own "low cost subsidiary" with a cheaper labor contract - but then they lose focus on their primary carrier. In this example with WestJet - they can consolidate their market share as the spill carrier and AC alternative and avoid complicated labor agreements by consolidating under a single marketed carrier. Ultimately, even most "full service" carriers truly operate a hybrid model, as the true full service is typically only given on long-haul widebody service, subsidized by domestic and/or intraregional service with little differentiation between carriers.

There goes good fares. With little to no low cost competition who wins?

Wonder what this means for TUI in Europe as they used to partially own Sunwing and use their planes during the summer. My local airport has had a number of Sunwing planes in a hybrid TUI / Sunwing paint job based there.

The ones with Sunwing tails just get repainted back into the normal Tui livery.