Westjet is awake

You spend most of your time ambling along without ever hearing much about Newfoundland and Labrador (the Canadian province, not a pair of dogs), and then it pops up twice in the same week from an Irish business perspective.

The area was one of the benchmarks referred to in an assessment of Ireland’s fiscal regime for oil and gas exploration in a report released by the Government during the week. On Monday, the Canadian airline Westjet also launched a seasonal flight from Newfoundland to Dublin, its first transatlantic venture.

Westjet's chief executive Gregg Saretsky told the launch gathering that it has sold 90 per cent of its capacity for its run until near the end of October, which has already been extended by three weeks.

“At the rate this is going we might have to make it year round,” he said. Westjet says it sold 11,000 tickets on its first day of sales in November.

The route is apparently being closely watched by the aviation industry, because, unusually for a transatlantic jaunt, Westjet uses narrow-bodied aircraft holding only 136 passengers.

Lots of Newfoundlanders claim Irish ancestry and their accents could pass for something a few miles west of Mayo. They also share another love with the Irish, according to the Canadian ambassador Loyola Hearn: the pub.