Air Canada to launch direct Flights between Vancouver and Sydney

Air Canada is to operate its first new Boeing 777 aircraft on key routes serving Europe, Asia and the South Pacific. As the airline begins introduction in April 2007 of the first of eight new 777 aircraft to be delivered in 2007, Air Canada customers will experience the advanced widebody aircraft on select Air Canada services: Toronto-London Heathrow (beginning in April), Toronto-Frankfurt and Toronto-Tokyo (beginning in June), Vancouver-Tokyo (beginning in July) and Toronto-Hong Kong (beginning in August).

In addition, effective December 14, 2007, Air Canada will introduce daily non-stop service between Vancouver and Sydney, Australia using its new 777 aircraft.

"With the arrival of the 777, we are thrilled to introduce the only daily, non-stop service between Canada and Australia, our seventh non-stop destination in the Asia-Pacific region." said Sean Menke, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer.

"We are equally proud to be the only North American carrier to offer customers the comfort and privacy of first class lie-flat beds, at a business class price. The deployment of these highly fuel efficient and customer-friendly 777 aircraft on select Air Canada services to London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney raises the bar in comfort and convenience in air travel while leveraging Air Canada's extensive international and North America route networks via our Toronto and Vancouver hubs."

Air Canada has timed its new Vancouver-Sydney non-stop service to offer customers a vast array of time saving connections to and from points throughout North America and Australia. The carrier's new non-stop routing, with an elapsed time of approximately 15 hours southbound and 14 hours northbound, shaves more than three hours off the current one-stop routing via Honolulu. Air Canada flight AC033 will depart Vancouver at 23:45, arriving in Sydney 09:50 two days later due to time zone differences. Effective December 16, 2007, AC034 will depart Sydney 11:35, arriving in Vancouver the same day at 06:40. Air Canada's Star Alliance partner, Air New Zealand, will codeshare on this service.

With the introduction of non-stop service to Sydney, the carrier has suspended near-term plans to operate flights to Australia via Los Angeles in view of the lack of necessary authorizations at this time to operate the route.

Air Canada's 777-300ER aircraft are configured to provide a choice of 42 Executive First Suites and 307 seats in Economy Class and the new 777-200LR that will be operated on the Sydney route from February 1, 2008 will be configured with 42 Executive First Suites and 228 seats in Economy Class.

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