<q data-attributes="{"lang":{"value":"fr","label":"Français"},"value":{"html":"Ce ne sont pas tous les sièges dans l’avion qui seront fixés au tarif de 500$”,”text”:”Not all seats on the plane will be fixed at $500″}}”>Not all seats on the plane will be fixed at the $500 fareconfirms the spokesperson for the Quebec Ministry of Transport (MTQ), Louis-André Bertrand, a few hours after the press conference by Minister François Bonnardel.
Generally well received by the representatives of the regions, the government plan However, there are some blind spots.
The number of plane tickets at $500 will be limited, it was admitted from the outset, but Quebec does not yet know how many tickets will be offered at this price. At the time of this writing, the MTQ was unable to provide estimates to Radio-Canada.
The MTQ was also unable to indicate the criteria that will be used to establish the number of tickets available by region or by route.
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How will the envelope be shared?
The plan unveiled by Minister François Bonnardel has an envelope of $261 million over five years. Of this amount, how much will be used to subsidize $500 plane tickets? Impossible to know precisely.
On the MTQ website, however, information allows us to deduce that this will only be a fraction of the total envelope.
In 2022-2023, the government will release $34 million to fund not only $500 flights, but also two other measures: an enhancement to the Airfare Reduction Program and financial support to increase the frequency of flights in an underserved area.
For the next four years, the amount devoted to these three measures will increase from $34 million to $50 million, but the MTQ website does not indicate how the amounts will be distributed.
What efficiency?
With its $500 tickets, the government hopes to stimulate demand for regional flights, so that air carriers will compete more fiercely and, sooner or later, reduce their fares.
MTQ spokesperson Louis-André Bertrand repeats that the $500 tickets represent a step in the direction
better accessibility for regional flights in the province.
In the absence of precise data, however, it seems difficult at this time to assess the potential effect of this measure on the ridership of the regional airline industry in Quebec.
As an indication, according to a document from the Quebec Federation of Municipalities, approximately 875,000 passengers boarded or boarded a plane at a regional or local airport in the province in 2016.