Air Canada has made an aircraft change for for its upcoming Brisbane-Vancouver service, with the Boeing 787-9 now scheduled to operate the new route from October 30.
The schedule change, reported on the Airline Route website, is the latest tweak to a route that was first originally slated to be a three times weekly service with 787-8s when it was announced in July 2015.
Then, in December, Air Canada said the flight would commence as a daily offering.
The 787-8 will be used when Air Canada begins the new route from early June. However, the Star Alliance member will switch to the larger 787-9 from October 30.
Given Air Canada’s 787-9s (298 seats) have 47 more seats than the smaller 787-8 (251 seats), the move represents an extra 329 seats a week between Brisbane and Vancouver.
Flight AC35 is scheduled to depart Vancouver at 2345, arriving in Brisbane at 0715 two days later. The reciprocal AC36 is timed to depart Brisbane at 1040 and land in Vancouver at 0715 the same day.
Brisbane will be Air Canada’s second Australian port as the airline also flies daily to Sydney using either Boeing 777-200LRs or, during peak seasons, the larger 777-300ER.
The Australian and Canadian governments in December 2015 signed an expanded air services agreement that would lift the available capacity for carriers of both nations to 9,000 seats a week by the end of 2016.
Air Canada is the only airline offering year-round nonstop flights from Australia to Canada. Qantas has a seasonal service between Sydney and Vancouver during the peak winter and summer seasons, while there are also one-stop options via alternate points such as Hong Kong (Cathay Pacific) and Auckland (Air New Zealand).
