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Summary

3 Canadian Airlines Are Among The 'Most Hated' In The World & Air Canada Isn't One Of Them

Twitter users didn't have much love for these carriers. 😳

Planes at Toronto Pearson Airport. Right: A Flair Airlines plane.

Planes at Toronto Pearson Airport. Right: A Flair Airlines plane.

Writer

A new study has revealed which Canadian airlines people apparently like (and dislike) the most, and the "most hated" airline in Canada may come as a surprise.

Money exchange company S Money has released information detailing the "most loved" and "most hated" airlines worldwide, and three Canadian airlines didn't seem to get much love from passengers online.

S Money analyzed thousands of tweets to find out the most loved and hated airlines around the world. It did this by collecting tweets mentioning the official Twitter handles of major airlines from every country and then using an AI sentiment tool to give the airline either a positive or negative score.

"We considered the Most Loved to be the airlines with the highest percentage of positive tweets and the Most Hated to be those with the most negative tweets," said S Money.

According to their findings, the most hated airline in Canada is WestJet, for which 67.4% of tweets were negative.

The airline was the fourth most-hated worldwide, right behind Australian carrier Jetstar Airways (67.5%), TAP Air Portugal (68.4%) and Indian carrier Go First, which came out as the most-hated airline in the world.

Right behind WestJet was low-cost carrier Flair Airlines which was found to be the second-most hated airline in Canada, with 65.2% of the tweets mentioning the airline found to be negative.

A bit lower on the list, Air Transat was the third most hated airline in the country, with 63.3% of tweets about the company being negative.

It's not the first time WestJet and Flair Airlines have received criticism from passengers.

In January, analytics company Cirium ranked the biggest airlines in Canada for their on-time performance in 2022, with WestJet coming out as one of the worst for punctuality among 10 major carriers.

As the company reported, of 94,663 WestJet flights in 2022, only about 59% were on time, contributing to its ranking.

In December, The Canadian Transportation Agency released a dashboard detailing the number of complaints each of Canada's major carriers received over a given time period, and Flair Airlines topped the list.

Among six Canadian airlines, Flair received the highest number of complaints over a six-month period in 2022.

What are the most-loved airlines in Canada?

The ranking from S Money also included Canada's most-loved airlines, but notably, none of the country's major air carriers were mentioned.

Bearskin Airlines, a regional airline based in Thunder Bay, Ontario, came out as the most-loved airline worldwide, with 53.4% of tweets about it being positive.

"If its Tripadvisor reviews are anything to go by, this could be down to the kindness of staff, cleanliness of the flight or efficient boarding," said S Money.

Following Bearskin was Pacific Coastal Airlines, a regional airline that operates flights to airports in B.C., which was the second-most loved airline worldwide.

The only other Canadian airline to make the list was Canadian North, which operates flights to Northern Canada and and came in at number four of the most-loved airlines in the world.

Some may be surprised that Canada's biggest airline, Air Canada, was left off both lists, especially given that there have been numerous complaints about lost luggage from those that fly with the airline and that Air Canada received quite a bit of criticism from passengers as travel returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Last year, Air Canada was named the best airline in North America by Global Traveler Magazine. In response, many took to social media to share their disagreement with the award.

One celebrity even went so far as to call Air Canada the "worst airline in North America."

This article's left-hand cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.

  • Contributing Writer

    Katherine Caspersz (she/her) is a contributing writer for Narcity Media, covering travel, things to do and more. She has written for various news sites and magazines, including Yahoo Canada and The National Post, and worked as an editor for the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She loves shopping, travel and all things spooky.

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