Air Canada will suspend service to New York’s JFK International airport over the summer as the war in Iran creates jet fuel shortages that have sent prices soaring.
Canada’s flag carrier said Friday that service from Toronto and Montreal to JFK will cease June 1 and resume Oct. 25. Service to the New York metropolitan area’s two other airports — LaGuardia and Newark — will continue. Air Canada offers 34 flights a day to those two airports from six Canadian cities.
Air Canada says it will reach out to customers who are impacted by the suspension with alternate travel options.
“As jet fuel prices have doubled since the start of the Iran conflict and some lower profitability routes and flights are no longer economic, and we are making schedule adjustments accordingly,” a spokesman for the Montreal-based carrier said Friday.
The average price for a gallon of jet fuel reached $4.32 on Thursday, up from $2.50 the day before the war in Iran broke out, according to Argus Media.
Oil prices dropped more than 10% Friday, after Iran said the Strait of Hormuz is open again for commercial tankers carrying oil from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.
Fuel and labor costs are typically the largest annual expenses for airlines. Delta Air said this month that the tab for higher fuel would add $2 billion to its second-quarter costs. Airlines including JetBlue and United Airlines are raising bag fees to offset skyrocketing fuel costs. Other airlines, including Lufthansa and KLM, have had to scale back service as jet fuel costs render some routes unprofitable.
In an exclusive Associated Press interview Thursday, International Energy Agency Director Fatih Birol said Europe has “maybe six weeks” of remaining jet fuel supplies and said the global economy faces its “largest energy crisis.”
