Canada 3000 has completed a C$30 million ($20 million) initial public offering (IPO) to fund expansion of domestic Canadian scheduled services.
The airline, already the country's second-largest domestic carrier, hopes to exploit Air Canada's declared intention of reducing the net domestic capacity of it and Canadian Airlines, with which it merged recently.
Formerly a charter specialist, Canada 3000 has repositioned so that domestic, cross-border and international scheduled services already account for 70-75% of its activities.
About 20% of the carrier was sold under the IPO. Of the proceeds, C$10 million will go towards leasing more aircraft, C$5 million will be spent on e-commerce and e-ticketing initiatives, C$1.5 million will go to retiring long-term debt and C$2 million will be used to redeem shares in a subsidiary. The rest will be used as working capital.
Canada 3000 will take delivery of four 142-seat Airbus A319s from November next year to increase frequencies on high-traffic domestic routes and to add direct flights between secondary cities.
The airline will sublease two more A320s for the 2000/1 winter season. It already operates six A320s, four Airbus A330-200s and five Boeing 757s.
Source: Flight International
