WestJet Expands Seating to Include Premium Economy

WestJet announced today its introduction of premium economy seating into its air fleet. Offering customers four rows of extra legroom seating with additional features such as 36 inches of pitch, priority boarding, and complimentary on-board amenities, premium economy reconfiguration will begin in August and be completed by December 2012.

"We continue to evolve our product offerings to provide greater benefit and value to a wider variety of guests," said Bob Cummings, WestJet Executive Vice-President, Sales, Marketing and Guest Experience. "We are confident that this new initiative, combined with the remarkable guest experience delivered by our inflight team, our reliable on-time service and our low fares will see even more guests flying with us."

All other seating will now have standardized seat pitch of 31 to 32 inches, in compliance with its North American competitors.

"Details on the full product offering and how guests can take advantage of these exciting initiatives will be announced in the near future," concluded Bob Cummings.

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Other news from WestJet today is its confirmed order of 45 Q400 NextGen airliners from Bombardier. Originally slated to be an order of 20 aircraft with a contingency to add an additional 25, WestJet and Bombardier announced today the confirmation of said order for a total of $1.59 billion USD.

"We are very pleased that our negotiations with Bombardier have led to the finalization of this purchase agreement," said Gregg Saretsky, President and Chief Executive Officer, WestJet. "We now look forward to fine tuning our plan to launch our new regional airline in the second half of 2013. We have every confidence that the Bombardier Q400 NextGen airliner is the perfect aircraft for our new venture. It is an aircraft that will serve WestJet and our guests extremely well and we look forward to bringing low fares and our remarkable guest experience delivered by our WestJetters to many new communities."