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1. For the 12-month period, January to December 2011, for the scheduled and charter services, the major Canadian air carriers reported a 3.8% increase in passengers and a 5.2% growth in passenger-kilometres compared with the same period in 2010. WestJet reported that total passenger-kilometres flown rose 8.2% during the period, while the operations of Air Canada increased 4.2%.
2. In 2011, both Air Canada and WestJet reported their highest volume of scheduled passenger traffic in August. It is also during that month that Air Canada posted the highest number of passenger-kilometres flown in its scheduled operations; however, it was in March that WestJet posted its highest monthly result, the number of passenger-kilometres flown slightly exceeding the August level. During the 12-month period, the average passenger trip length ranged between 3,080 kilometres in November and 3,509 kilometres in July for Air Canada, while it ranged between 1,603 kilometres in September and 1,773 kilometres in March for WestJet.
3. In 2011, Air Canada and WestJet increased their system capacity, as measured by available seat-kilometres, for their scheduled services, by 4.4% and 8.8%, respectively when compared with 2010. The capacity of both Air Canada and WestJet increased in all months—for Air Canada, the increases varied from 1.0% in November to 12.7% in April and for WestJet, they varied from 4.6% in November to 12.8% in March.
4. Both Air Canada and WestJet reported a slight deterioration in their scheduled passenger load factor (a measure of the fullness of their aircraft). For the 12-month period, January to December 2011, Air Canada's passenger load factor reached 82.8% and WestJet's passenger load factor stood at 79.7%. The slight deterioration in the annual load factors (-0.3 percentage points for Air Canada and -0.1 percentage points for WestJet) is largely due to a stronger increase in capacity than in demand in the first half of the year.
5. For the 12-month period, January to December 2011, the major Canadian air carriers reported a 4.9% increase in terms of turbo fuel consumed from the same period in 2010. Air Canada consumed 3.5 billion litres (+4.0%) of turbo fuel, while WestJet consumed 1.0 billion litres (+8.2%) of turbo fuel.