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These are the major players among Canadian airlines in an increasingly crowded market

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

Air Canada has been the dominant player since it acquired rival Canadian Airlines in 2001, and now accounts for nearly half of the country’s domestic air travel market, flying by far the most planes internationally as well.WestJet, founded as a regional upstart in Calgary in 1996, has grown to serve nearly a third of the domestic market. It completed its purchase of Sunwing earlier this year but is facing a growing raft of rivals out of its home base in Alberta.Porter Airlines, which launched in 2006 out of the Billy Bishop regional airport near downtown Toronto, is tracing a rapid expansion as it seeks to nearly double its fleet by 2025 in direct competition with Air Canada. It now flies out of the larger Toronto Pearson airport as well.Air Transat, co-founded by current Quebec Premier François Legault in 1986, has struggled to market its tour packages since the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also failed to turn a quarterly profit for three-and-a-half years straight while shoulder...

Airline competition ramps up, setting stage for showdown and reducing (some) fares

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

MONTREAL — Passengers aren’t the only ones feeling cramped these days.Though Canadian flights have long been dominated by Air Canada and WestJet, the emergence of newer carriers including Flair Airlines and Lynx Air has shaken up the sector, injecting fresh competition to a once-complacent market.Most airlines are setting plans in motion to ramp up growth over the next year, adding more planes to an already crowded field — and cheaper fares on the busiest routes. “Whenever you’ve got players trying to establish themselves in these markets, it is a boon for consumers,” said former Air Canada chief operating officer Duncan Dee.Key domestic arteries such as Toronto-Vancouver, Vancouver-Calgary and Montreal-Toronto host more airlines than ever — up to six now versus as few as two several years ago — with fares dragged down by a pair of budget carriers.The cost of a domestic round-trip plane ticket fell to $289 on average this fall, a drop of 24 per cent from 2019 levels and 11 per...

A US Navy vet got unexpected help while jailed in Iran. Once released, he repaid the favor

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michael White had only recently arrived in a grim Iranian jail when a curious fellow prisoner, an English-speaking Iranian, approached him in the courtyard for a conversation.The American did not reveal much at first, but it was the beginning of an unlikely friendship between White, a Navy veteran imprisoned on spying charges he says were unfounded, and Mahdi Vatankhah, a young Iranian political activist whose positions on social issues had drawn his government's ire.As the men connected behind bars over a shared interest in politics and human rights, they developed a bond that proved vital for both.Vatankhah, while in custody and after his release, helped White by providing White's mother with crucial, firsthand accounts about her son's status in prison and by passing along letters White had written while he was locked up. Once freed, White did not forget. He pushed successfully this year for Vatankhah’s admission to the United States, allowing the men t...

'Maryment' CEO joins Weekend Morning News to share more on wedding budgeting

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

It is still wedding season and we know the cost of saying 'I Do' adds up. Laura Panozzo, CEO of 'Maryment' shares more on how it doesn't have to be that way.Love the WGN Morning News? We love you, too. And you can have all the hijinks delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign up and subscribe to our WGN Morning News newsletter.

Sunday brunch: Bread pudding pancakes with Southport Grocery and Cafe

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

Check out this morning's Sunday Brunch with Southport Grocery and Cafe where we make bread pudding pancakes.Love the WGN Morning News? We love you, too. And you can have all the hijinks delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign up and subscribe to our WGN Morning News newsletter.

Author of 'The Owners Manual to Life' on worrying less

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

Author of 'The Owner's Manual to Life' and therapist Michael Zajaczkowsi joins WGN Weekend Morning News to share tips on how to worry less and live a better life.Love the WGN Morning News? We love you, too. And you can have all the hijinks delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign up and subscribe to our WGN Morning News newsletter.

The northern lights were heating up: Why haven't we seen them lately?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

(NEXSTAR) - Earlier this year, those living as far south as Alabama were treated to a special celestial treat: not aliens, but the aurora borealis. Since then, most in the U.S. haven’t had the chance to see the northern lights, despite hopes that they would dance to the south amid an active space weather period. So where are the northern lights? “It’s a little bit of a crapshoot,” Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for the SWPC and seasoned space weather forecaster, tells Nexstar. “We’ve had just as many eruptions occur since [spring], but we just haven’t been lucky - or unlucky, whichever way you look at it.”Certain conditions have to be met for any part of the Lower 48 to see the northern lights. Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, play a major role in that. CMEs are explosions of plasma and magnetic material from the sun, NOAA explains. While CMEs and solar flares (which can occur simultaneously) can impact navigation, communication and radio signals here on Earth, CME...

Kyle Police locate missing teen

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

KYLE, Texas (KXAN) — On Sunday, the Kyle Police Department said it found a 14-year-old boy who was reported missing.KPD said the teenager was found and is safe.

Emma Varvaloucas: Gen Z is dropping the college dream. It’s time for America to catch up

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

For years, we have lamented the spike in college costs and accompanying student debt bloat while we teach high schoolers to covet admittance to a tiny sliver of prestigious universities — ones that refuse to enlarge incoming class sizes despite endowments the size of some small countries’ gross domestic product.President Joe Biden’s first plan to relieve student debt is dead in the water, and the second is off to a slow start. Meanwhile, Americans’ confidence in higher education is eroding, and college graduates are surprised to find themselves still in the working class.Colleges are finally lying in the beds they made for themselves. According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, undergraduate enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022 and doesn’t show signs of recovering post-pandemic. “The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record,” The Associated Press reported this spring, going on to paint those numb...

Brown, Rottman: Claiming a ‘computer crime’ shouldn’t give police a free pass to raid newspapers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:00 GMT

Last month, police officers in Marion, Kansas, crashed into the newsroom of the Marion County Record, a weekly newspaper, and the home of its publisher to seize computers, cellphones and documents. After several days of public outcry, the county attorney ordered the material returned.Newsroom searches are rare today because a 1980 federal law makes them almost always illegal.But the outcry goes back to colonial days, when British-loyalist redcoats raided revolutionary American pamphleteers.Such searches were seen as the ultimate attack on the free press. In the infamous 1971 search of the Stanford Daily, for example, Palo Alto, Calif., police were seeking photographs to tie Vietnam War protesters to a violent clash on campus. After the Supreme Court refused to offer protection from such raids, Congress passed the 1980 statute, making newsroom searches far less of a threat.Vague, sweeping “computer crime” lawsInstead, the Marion case highlights a separate, systemic threat...