Air Canada, WestJet cut ties with app over ‘secret fares’ claim

MONTREAL — Air Canada said Friday it will join rival WestJet in severing its ties with Hopper Inc. after the mobile travel app’s suggestion that it has sole access to “secret fares” caused confusion in the travel industry.

Hopper, which sends notifications when a fare matching criteria set by an app user becomes available, landed in hot water with other travel groups that sell airfares, such as travel agents and aggregator sites, when the company suggested this week they were the only ones to have special fares at up to a 35 per cent discount and marketing them as “Secret Fares.”

“For someone to say that we have a secret fare and that it applies to all of our network is totally incorrect, it doesn’t happen, Duncan Bureau, Air Canada’s vice-president of global sales, said in an interview Friday.

The country’s largest airline had agreed to a trial of Hopper’s program by giving it access to a low fare on one route between the U.S. and Asia, he said.

Like other airlines around the world, Air Canada uses all kinds of distribution channels to drive sales, especially in markets where it isn’t the dominant player. They offer various types of fares, including private ones available to partners depending on the route, competitive dynamics and season.

“We don’t disadvantage one distribution partner from another. What we do is we leverage distribution partners that have a strength in a particular market or niche,” he said.

Bureau said Air Canada isn’t interested in selling the lowest possible fare or unloading seats at below cost.

“We don’t have secret fares. We have negotiated fares with all of our different partners and different partners bring different types of customers.”

Hopper was wrong to imply that Air Canada created an advantage for the app over its other partners, he said.

“For us it’s about integrity. We have a lot of distribution partners and what I cannot have is someone going to the marketplace insinuating that they have access to inventory or fares that no one else has fares to on a system-wide basis.”

The airlines said there were caught off guard when their names were used in a news release and were the subject of news reports.

WestJet spokeswoman Lauren Stewart said late Thursday that the company was severing ties with Hopper “due to the confusion this has created in the marketplace.”