The first is a price war on flights to Florida. If you act quickly, you can grab an outstanding deal on a flight from Winnipeg (YWG) to Florida (numerous airports), to travel April through June.
Return tickets, with taxes included can be easily found for Orlando ($330), Fort Lauderdale ($348), Tampa ($389) or Fort Myers ($391). These prices are in Canadian funds, with searches completed by myself on March 30th. Airlines with the lowest prices are Delta and United. Air Canada and Westjet are in the mix, typically about 10% higher.
Use your favourite APP (like Kayak or OnTheFly) to find dates that work for you. Don't expect these prices to last long. Exceptional discounts like the will be snapped up faster than the hot pancakes at the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair kickoff breakfast!
Secondly, it looks like NewLeaf "airlines" is back in business. The Canadian Transportation Agency has ruled that they are A-OK to use Flair Airlines' license and brand themselves as a "reseller." However, they are not technically allowed to call themselves an airline.
Cbc.ca offers more on this story.
The reason this is big news is that they will spark some great competition for prices in Canada. The most important factor to know is that, their routes are limited as are the days of the week you can fly with them. So, in terms of convenience, Westjet and Air Canada are still your best options.
The best part of this story is that, if you pay close attention to NewLeaf.ca when they relaunch, you might be able to snag a real deal (on the identical route) from Westjet. I speak from first hand knowledge here. When NewLeaf launched originally in January, Westjet silently and without fanfare, beat the prices. My kids took advantage of Winnipeg to Kelowna flights at $176 (yes, TOTAL price and offered by Westjet) and booked a spring break ski vacation.
I originally talked about this in January. One of the routes price matched was Winnipeg to Toronto. So consider this your official heads-up to great deals to Kelowna, Vancouver and Toronto when NewLeaf looks to relaunch in the coming weeks.
