WestJet's Encore continues growing throughout Canada as transborder service debuts in 2016

Canadian airline WestJet during 2H2015 marked the second anniversary of its regional subsidiary Encore, an airline designed to allow WestJet to tap new sources of revenue within the Canadian domestic market and flesh out its schedule to make it more desirable for the business passenger segment.

WestJet has stuck to its plans for Encore expansion, launching in Western Canada and then setting its sights on the Eastern region of the country culminating with a push from Halifax in 2015. Encore's network composition is a mix of stand-alone stations and markets where it operates alongside mainline narrowbodies to improve schedule integrity.

Encore is fuelling at least half of WestJet's capacity growth in 2015, and WestJet management has found itself defending Encore's growth amid a shaky Canadian economy, stressing that the growth was justified given the regional operator's stimulative effects. That growth continues in 2016 when Encore enters its first US transborder market, Boston.