Ottawa Now - Price hike on crude oil leads to additional flight fees for Canadian customers

Customers booking flights through Air Canada Vacations, WestJet, and Porter Airlines will soon have to pay additional fees on certain flights. The ongoing war in the Middle East has caused a hike in crude oil prices, forcing businesses that rely heavily on fuel to increase charges. Air Canada is slapping a $50 fuel surcharge on some designated Sun destination flights. Meantime, WestJet is adding a temporary $60 fuel surcharge on all bookings made with a companion voucher. And ahead of all those announcements, Porter implemented a surcharge of $40 for VIPorter flight redemptions. These changes might seem like a short-term tool to stop the financial bleeding for today’s airlines, but how much stock should we take into those assumptions? And if these charges are permanent, how will that impact the Air Travel sector as a whole? John Gradek is a former Air Canada executive, an aviation management expert, and a lecturer at McGill University. He joins Kristy Cameron on today’s Ottawa Now.