Thank you for standing by. My name is Tina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Air Canada's first quarter earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Valerie Durand, Head of Investor Relations. You may go ahead.
Thank you, Tina. Hello. [Non-English content]
Welcome to Air Canada's first quarter 2026 earnings call. Thank you for joining us today. On the call with me are Michael Rousseau, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Galardo, our Chief Commercial Officer and President, Cargo, and John Di Bert, our Chief Financial Officer. Other members of our executive team are also with us and available for the Q&A portion of the call. Before we begin, I remind everyone that today's discussion may contain forward-looking information regarding Air Canada's outlook, objectives, and strategies. Actual results could differ materially due to various assumptions, risks, and uncertainties. Please refer to our Q1 2026 earnings release, our 2025 full year, and 2026 first quarter MD&A and filings available on aircanada.com and on SEDAR+.
With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.
Thank you, Amanda. Bonjour, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge the recent incident at LaGuardia Airport. On behalf of everyone at Air Canada, I want to express my sincere condolences and sympathy to those affected. Our thoughts are with the passengers, crews, firefighters, and families impacted. Safety remains the foundation of our industry and our first priority, which is why we remain engaged with the U.S. and Canadian authorities as they continue their investigation of this incident. I also want to thank the employees who helped in our emergency response by supporting the families of affected passengers and crew, taking care of our customers, and keeping the operations running. Turning to our results. In the first quarter, we delivered a year-over-year growth of 61% in adjusted EBITDA, reflecting disciplined execution in a volatile operating environment.
I truly believe the last two consecutive quarters of record results reflects the underlying strength of our plan and business model, and all stakeholders should be extremely excited as we move into the growth phase of our long-term strategy. We continue to make progress on our New Frontiers objectives, supported by the strength of our diversified network, premium positioning, and loyal customer base. This gives us the flexibility to align capacity with demand across the year and deploy it where returns are the most attractive, a capability that was evident in the first quarter, reflected in strong passenger revenues, solid premium and corporate performances, and healthy results at Air Canada Vacations. Since late February, the situation in the Middle East and the sharp increase in global jet fuel prices have created a significant external shock for our industry.
The pace of that increase is testing demand resilience across commercial aviation and reinforcing the need for discipline. This is not unique to Air Canada. It is an industry-wide challenge that affects how airlines think about capacity, pricing, and risk. In this environment, our focus is on staying flexible, making deliberate decisions, and managing the business to prioritize returns and protect cash flow and balance sheet strength. With this backdrop, we suspended our full year guidance and provided Q2 guidance. The Q2 guidance reflects our expectation to offset about 50% to 60% of the incremental fuel expense through disciplined commercial and cost actions. Despite fuel-driven fare increases, we continue to see strong demand across the network and throughout the booking curve.
History shows that in periods like this, airlines with scale, diversified networks, premium demand exposure, strong brand, and resilient balance sheets are better positioned to navigate turbulence and emerge stronger. Air Canada has these attributes. We are laser-focused on disciplined execution, prioritizing returns and cash generation, and continuing to strengthen the business for the long term. Importantly, strengthening our business means taking care of our people. I'm pleased to say we successfully negotiated two new labor contracts agreements with Unifor for our pilot and flight attendant crew scheduling teams during the first quarter. This reflects our continued commitment to constructive, direct union management relations and to fostering a workplace where collaboration drives long-term success. In the operations, this quarter was another reminder of how much progress the team has made.
Q1 brought several challenges: an unusually cold winter, various ice storms, disruption in certain sun destinations, and as I noted, the evolving conditions in the Middle East. In each case, our operations teams responded with focus and compassion, keeping the airline moving and taking care of our customers. I want to thank our employees. Their dedication and professionalism are at the core of the Air Canada brand and important contributors to the sequential improvements in customer sentiment.
That connection between our people and our customers is fundamental to who we are as an airline. It is what will continue to strengthen Air Canada. As we look ahead, we are entering an important phase of fleet and product advancement. We recently took delivery of our first Airbus A321XLR, which is scheduled to take its inaugural flight on June 15th. With additional aircraft deliveries expected this year, along with 2 787-10s, these aircraft will strengthen our premium offering. We have completed 7 Boeing 737 MAX conversions to Air Canada Rouge and are on track for 45 by year-end. Together, our people, investments in fleet, product, digital, and customer experience puts us in a solid position to take advantage of as opportunities arise and to execute on our New Frontiers objectives.
Before I wrap up, I announced my upcoming retirement last month after close to two decades with Air Canada. I look forward to supporting our company through this important transition period. I firmly believe Air Canada will continue its flight path from a position of strength with a dynamic leadership team, strong balance sheet, and a clear strategy. I'm confident the company is well-positioned to continue building on the progress we've made. Thank you. Over to you, Mark. Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. [Foreign language] I'd like to thank our employees for their dedication and our customers for their continued support and loyalty. Our consecutive quarterly record results are another clear validation point that Air Canada has the strongest commercial foundation in its history. These industry-leading results are the product of four key components. 1, international revenue growth supported by Canada's underlying demographics.
2, structurally higher yielding and brand loyal customer segments. 3, a diversified and growing Sixth Freedom franchise. Lastly, disciplined capacity management that led to a leading load factor performance amongst our peers. Q1 operating revenues and passenger revenues both grew 11% year-over-year to CAD 5.8 billion and CAD 4.8 billion, respectively. These results were largely driven by an 8% increase in PRASM on 2% more capacity. Our international revenues increased 17% year-over-year, reflecting sustained intercontinental demand. Notably, the Atlantic continued to perform strongly with solid mid-teen unit revenue growth in Q1. We continue to grow into higher-yielding segments, with premium revenues growing 11% year-over-year. In fact, business class revenues outpaced the economy cabin by 2 percentage points.
Corporate revenues increased 14% on strength across all geographies, which in part is supported by tailwinds from Canada's diversifying trade objective. We produced a record Sixth Freedom results on an increasingly varied mix of passenger flows. Our successful expansion into Latin America drove more than half of the 18% year-over-year increase in Sixth Freedom revenues. Lastly, our record first quarter load factor and unit revenue performance are a testament to the strength of our commercial model and disciplined capacity management. With load factors roughly 5 percentage points above some of our North American peers, we continue to demonstrate our strong ability to execute against our strategic priorities. Building on this momentum, cargo, an important contributor to the profitability of our long-haul franchise, with revenues growing 4% year-over-year in Q1.
Despite disruptions in Cuba and Mexico, increased sun capacity enabled record first quarter revenues for Air Canada Vacations and was the driving force behind a 19% increase in other revenues. Taken together, our first quarter results demonstrate significant progress in reducing Air Canada seasonality and speaks to the differentiated, diversified, and resilient commercial strategy that is driving continued top-line growth. Looking ahead, we are diligently managing an evolving geopolitical and macroeconomic landscape. Air Canada was one of the first airlines to implement fare increases as the crisis unfolded. Since then, we have implemented multiple rounds of passenger fare and ancillary increases, and we are ticketing forward yields at mid-teens above last year. Cargo has also taken action, including increasing spot rates and introducing a carrier surcharge to the market. We are seeing resilient demand across most geographies and customer types.
Our commercial model allows us to be competitive and attract different customer types, enabling a unique ability to tap into more resilient and loyal customer segments. We're also proactively reducing lower margin and hub bypass routes and consolidating frequencies where optimal. As of right now, our capacity outlook for the second quarter calls for a year-over-year ASM growth of between 0.5% to 1%, and we remain agile and disciplined in capacity management in the latter half of the year. In total, we believe that our commercial and cargo actions will contribute to a recovery of the incremental fuel expense of approximately 50% to 60% in the second quarter. We continue to see strong demand across the network and throughout the booking curve into the latter half of the year.
Importantly, we recognize that the situation continues to evolve, and we're ready to implement a variety of adjustments as required. Shifting to other topics, Air Canada's network remains one of the most far-reaching in North America, and the majority of our new routes for 2026 are booking in line or above their comparable set. We will be introducing our first A321XLR to customers in a few weeks time, marking an important milestone in Air Canada's next chapter. As the only Canadian airline to offer lie-flat seats on a narrow body, this aircraft will be deployed shortly on transatlantic and key North American markets from Toronto and Montreal. To close, Air Canada is using its strong commercial foundation and differentiated position to drive these results. We have proven that our commercial performance is resilient in volatile conditions and that our teams are executing on our long-term strategy. Over to you, John.
Thank you, Mark.
[Non-English content]
I thank our employees who kept operations running smoothly and continued supporting our customers with caring class. The first quarter was a continuation of the strong execution we delivered in the fourth quarter of 2025, underscoring the effectiveness of our plan and the progress we're making across the business. adjusted EBITDA increased 61% year-over-year to CAD 623 million, a first quarter record representing a margin of 10.8%. We reported adjusted loss per share of CAD 0.05 in the quarter compared to a loss of CAD 0.45 in the first quarter of last year. These results exceeded market expectations and demonstrated strong commercial execution, network optimization, operational resiliency, and continued progress on cost management initiatives. As anticipated, adjusted CASM increased 5.5% year-over-year.
This increase was primarily driven by the expected impact of higher labor costs related to previously negotiated agreements. It was further strained by operational inefficiencies related to capacity constraints during the quarter, including cancellations to the Middle East, weather disruptions in the Northeast, and localized challenges in certain sun markets. Importantly, however, total non-fuel costs in the quarter were broadly in line with our internal expectations. Turning to fuel. Volatility increased meaningfully as the quarter progressed. Prices rose sharply in March and more than offset the benefits we saw earlier in the period. As a result, fuel expense was broadly flat year-over-year in the first quarter. Lower-priced inventory and our fuel hedging gains helped moderate the impact in Q1. We do expect elevated fuel prices to be more impactful in our results beginning in the second quarter. Cash flow performance was strong.
We generated a record CAD 1.8 billion of cash from operations in the quarter, reflecting a solid operating performance and the momentum of seasonal working capital built ahead of the peak travel season. We note that this was supported by strong advanced ticket sales and the effect of higher fares. It included CAD 283 million in proceeds from the first in a series of sale and leaseback transactions that will restore our level of fleet ownership to our historical levels of 65% to 70% over the next two years.
Our operating cash flow strength, combined with the planned benefits of our sale leaseback strategy and a sustained level of solid on-hand liquidity, allow us to repurchase close to 8 million shares, deploying CAD 142 million under our active NCIB authorization. This brings our total cumulative investment in the share repurchases to CAD 1.5 billion since the inception of our CAD 2 billion target buyback program we announced at December 2024 Investor Day. We ended Q1 with approximately 287 million shares issued and outstanding, representing a 20% reduction of our share count as at September 30, 2024. We continue to protect the strength of our balance sheet and maintain our focus on financial resilience. We ended the quarter with a net leverage ratio of 1.4 times EBITDA.
We will now use our financial strength to improve our gross leverage ratio, and we'll be repaying our upcoming August debt maturity using on-balance-sheet liquidity while staying comfortably above our stated liquidity target of 15% of revenues. As we complete the debt paydown, we will pause the share repurchases in the near term, but we will revisit this decision in the second half of the year. We are executing our financial strategy with discipline as we optimize capital allocation in line with our priorities. Prioritize the balance sheet strength and preserve flexibility, make ROIC accretive investments in the airline, and return cash to investors. We are very well-positioned to play both offense and defense as we navigate the current environment. Let's now turn to our outlook. Due to continued uncertainty and variability of outcomes for future jet fuel prices, we are suspending our full year 2026 guidance.
We are introducing Q2 guidance to share what we are expecting in the current quarter. We anticipate Q2 adjusted EBITDA in the range of CAD 575 million-CAD 725 million, and we expect to grow capacity by 0.5% to 1% year-over-year in the quarter. We reflect the forward fuel curve as of April 28th in our Q2 assumptions of $4.15 US dollars per gallon. Including transportation, taxes, and hedging gains, our planning rate is CAD 1.28 Canadian per liter. We are ticketing forward yields at mid-teens above last year, reflecting around $4 US per gallon in equivalents. We expect to offset about 50%-60% of the incremental fuel expense through disciplined commercial and cost actions, including the benefits of fuel hedging.
The actions to mitigate the impact of higher fuel prices will have some adverse effects on unit costs. We have made some adjustments to Q2 and the second half capacity. We will continue to monitor the need for further reductions. Additionally, we will see some impact from increased absolute sales and distribution costs given higher fares. We remain focused on containing costs and have initiated actions across the organization to generate variable cost savings through improved planning, optimization, and operational discipline. We remain focused on execution and agility. We will continue monitoring conditions closely and be prepared to act, taking deliberate actions to protect our results and preserve financial strength. To close, in the face of heightened volatility, our priorities are clear. 1, stay laser-focused on managing the controllables, including commercial actions, capacity management, and cost containment. 2, protect cash generation and balance sheet strength.
Third, preserve and advance our long-term value creation strategies. Despite the short-term challenges, we are very well positioned. We remain poised to play both offense and defense as the current environment evolves and ultimately find stability and resolution. With that, back to you, Amanda, for questions.
Thank you, John. Tina, please open the line for questions from our analysts.
As a reminder, to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Tom Fitzgerald from TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks so much for the time. I was just wondering if you could maybe unpack a little bit of your what you're seeing in terms of revenue across the geographies and by customer segment in the second quarter.
Sure. Tom, when you look at it, you know, North America obviously is much more resilient. Going into Q2, we had fewer RPMs booked relative to our Atlantic and Pacific, where going into the quarter we already had the majority of our base load basically booked. If you look into Q2, you'll see much higher yields in North America. You'll see higher yields in the transatlantic. The Pacific is a bit more challenging in that some of the carrier surcharges are regulated by governments in Asia, particularly Korea, Japan, China, et cetera. If you look at it by cabin, again, you know, there's a clear trend where premium yields and demand continues to be really, really strong.
I think you'll see that, you know, carrying all the way through Q3 and the early part of Q4.
Okay, great. Thanks. That's really helpful. Then just as a, as a follow-up, just kind of like as it sits right now, just how are you thinking about maybe like thresholds for cutting capacity in the second half of the year? I don't know if we should expect maybe second half of August or post, you know, September or beyond. That maybe is the focus, just given how strong 3Q usually is. Just any framework there, and then just in tandem with that, just how you think about managing, just CASM ex fuel. Thanks again for the time.
On the capacity side, we're really going 2, 3 months at a time here. We've now brought July, August, and the early part of September in our window. It's a little bit early to tell for Q4 because the demand signals that we're seeing for Labor Day and beyond suggest that, you know, we're really looking at a strong period of demand, and that's consistent with the last 2 Q4s, which were record Q4s for us. Definitely for July and August, we're going to be reducing capacity trimming, you know, lower profitability flights, hub bypasses, kind of marginal frequencies on routes where we have a substantial amount of frequencies. For Q4, it's still a little bit early to make a definitive statement on how much we're going to cut or keep in place.
Your next question comes from the line of Fadi Chamoun with BMO.
Thank you. Mark, I just wanted to get your thought. What are you seeing in terms of bookings going into this third quarter? How are they holding up? Maybe if you can give us a sense of how much kind of demand degradation if you're seeing, if any, given the higher prices that you have kind of put in place.
Fadi, the answer for Q3 is we are not seeing any demand degradation right now. All of our services are still above last year in terms of current bookings on hand, but also new bookings to come. We've been in the green for, you know, the better part of the last 2 months. Despite multiple increases in fares, we have not seen demand degradation right now. Going into Q3, our load factor, our book load factor is about 2 points ahead of where it was last year at this time.
Okay. Just to follow up then. In the second quarter, you're saying the hedging and higher fares offset 50% and 60% of the higher fuel cost?
Yeah
I'm guessing the higher fares lag a little bit in the recovery because of the timing. Like, how would you think about that coverage going into the third quarter, assuming fuel is at the forward curve basically that we're at now?
Yeah, and that changes all the time, right? If you would've asked me that question a week ago, we actually had a curve on April 22nd. We've updated that to the 28th. You know, we would've been well into the 70s. Probably, you know, now maybe somewhere in the low 70s still attainable, and we'll watch this thing as it moves around, right? I mean, the last couple of days have been very volatile, so hard to tell. We're having pretty good recapture, and I would say that Q4, obviously, very good.
Okay. You have no hedging, I'm guessing, for like Q3 or after?
Correct. Correct. That's a straight go-through on fuel, yeah, in the second half.
Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Your next question comes from the line of Konark Gupta with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Thanks. I do want to follow up on the fuel side. John, if you can, you know, remind us what would have been the net impact of fuel price in March or Q1?
I missed that question. Can you repeat it to me, please?
Yes. In Q1, I know you guys were hedged to a degree.
Okay.
You had some lower priced fuel inventory as well, right?
Yeah
a sense of how much fuel price would've impacted the EBITDA in Q1.
Okay, good. Sure. We had about a CAD 90 million headwind on fuel at a gross level, and about half of that was absorbed by the hedging. We still were left with probably about CAD 55 million of net headwind.
Okay, thanks. In terms of demand environment, Mark, it seems like the booking curve is pretty strong, even in Q1 or Q2, Q3 now. Where do you see in your network, on a relative basis, there's more demand elasticity. Is it by cabin maybe or by region? Where do you see the elasticity starting to show up now?
It's a bit early to comment on elasticity because, again, when we look at it by geography or by point of origin, there's nothing that suggests that things are slowing down. Of course, you know, there is a little bit more pressure in the lower segments of the market. Those might be a bit more price sensitive. On the premium side, you know, we see good elasticity and good willingness to pay. Obviously, we're more exposed to those segments than others might be.
Yeah. Thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of Savi Syth with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the Sixth Freedom. I know you mentioned, you know, seeing a lot of benefit from kind of LATAM as you've seen much of the last year, I think. I was curious if you're seeing any benefit from perhaps the Middle East hub closures or, you know, just the fare increases from U.S. Airlines. If any of that, if you're seeing kind of an acceleration on that side of the business as a result of some of those events.
Savi, a couple of ways to answer this question. Firstly, in terms of Middle East exposure, you know, that doesn't really do much for us on the passenger side because we just have a single flight to India, and that's performing very well, obviously, with the situation in the Middle East. The benefit is more on the cargo side, where spot rates have gone up and the dislocation is quite significant. On the Sixth Freedom side, you know, when it comes to U.S. to Europe and inbound Europe to U.S., we're looking at low single-digit growth in terms of revenue. Really where we've seen the growth is, you know, LATAM to Europe, LATAM to Asia, where we had, you know, almost half of our 18% growth in revenue in Q1 was on that sector.
We think for us, that's just the beginning. We have a geographic advantage that we need to exploit. More to come towards the latter half of this year on that.
That's helpful. If I might just follow up on kinda the top first question there. I was curious how much of maybe each quarter was sold prior to the fare increases and just trying to understand, you know, that midteen yield, when we'll start to kinda really see that come through in the quarters.
Yeah. Savi, going into Q2, we had about 50% odd of our bookings already in prior to the obviously the crisis. Going into Q3, it's about a quarter.
Perfect. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Daryl Young with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Hey, good evening, everyone. I just wanted to ask a question around the seasonality comment that you made regarding Q1 and whether you're able to sort of ring-fence how much of that strength was maybe pulled forward or what you would've traditionally expected in Q2, Q3 timeframe or any sort of metrics you can put there on how much of a shift in seasonality has happened?
Yeah. That shift in seasonality is kind of an intended consequence of what we're trying to do here. You know, yes, Easter has shifted from April, late April into the early part of April. It did give some benefit to March. Actually, you know, we had substantial PRASM gains in January and February, led by strength on the transatlantic and strength that we're seeing on our LATAM sun business. Those are obviously two intentional strategies to reduce our seasonality.
Okay. Then just in terms of fuel management and availability heading into the peak summer season, can you maybe just give us a bit of color around how you're feeling about the security of fuel in Europe?
Yeah, thanks. I'll start by saying that we feel very good about our Canadian hubs and we have significant infrastructure and inventory and we also have, you know, pretty good supply fluidity here. To your point about Europe, we talk to suppliers every day and I would say, you know, over the next 8 weeks, looks like that remains solid, and they've done a lot of work on their end in terms of validating their supply chains and capacity to support. Of course, we'll continue to watch this like everybody else as we get deeper into some of the uncertainty here.
We're also making some adjustments and able to adjust gauge and do other things to support. If there were some form of rationing, we could probably also manage some of the fleet to be able to accommodate that with more fuel efficient jets into some of the destinations that'll be affected.
Great. That's it for me. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Cameron Doerksen with National Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Good afternoon. I guess I wanted to ask a bit about what you're seeing from a competitive point of view. I mean, obviously, you've raised your fares quite a bit here to offset fuel. Are you seeing some of the competition, I'm thinking, you know, particularly in domestic market, doing the same thing? Have you seen, I guess the proper capacity adjustments from some of your competitors, as well as you look ahead to the summer?
Yeah. Again, the market is very dynamic. Obviously what we see today might differ in a couple of weeks' time. Generally speaking, fare increases have been adopted by the market and our competitors almost unanimously across America. In terms of, you know, capacity reductions, I think we all have more or less the same philosophy. We're trying to go at this 2 months at a time, you know, because obviously this could change on a whim. What we're seeing is competitors have taken capacity out in May and June and left their summer schedules relatively intact.
Okay. You know, just I guess maybe philosophically, I mean, if it's, you know, you've obviously increased fares as has the industry, and we haven't seen a significant degradation in demand. I mean, is this, is this a lesson learned, I guess, for in the future when fuel prices go down, you know, that you can probably maintain, I guess, some of these fare increases?
This can play out multiple ways, Cameron. Time will tell.
Okay, fair enough. Thanks very much.
Your next question comes from the line of James McGarragle with RBC Capital. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks for having me on. Just wanted to ask on the capacity that that's being trimmed versus your original plan. You know, how should investors think about the adjusted CASM, you know, in Q2 and then, you know, during the rest of the year? Is that, you know, prior cost reduction program sufficient to kind of hold unit costs in line with the prior framework given the lower than planned capacity?
Yeah, thanks for the question, James. I'd say that, you know, I mentioned this on the last call, but I think that the profile on the front end of the year, the first half is higher, quite a bit higher than the second half. Second half of the year, you know, probably feels more like an inflation type of a year-over-year growth. First half of the year is higher. There'll be a little bit of pressure here, and it was planned pressure, but there's also some aggravation in Q2. You have things like a higher fare will attract a higher sale commission. While, you know, that's a revenue driver in the sense that it's driving the higher fare, it sits in the CASM unit cost calculation.
We'll have a little bit of both there. The other thing is we are seeing pretty high load factors as we look at the second quarter. Those load factors, when they are high, they tend to have an impact on unit cost. You know, a little bit of capacity, sales and commission and high load factors. The mix of all that in the end does help the revenue side, the CASM number will be a little higher, but overall, we think we'll manage it. The cost reduction and initiatives are really to just continue to keep some flexibility here as we look at back end of the year. Do we wanna, you know, adjust capacity further and take off some of the sting of that.
I appreciate that. Then just on the transborder, you know, as you kind of put through some of these capacity cuts, are you seeing load factors and yields beginning to stabilize? You know, would you say that right now you have enough visibility, you know, to call a trough in that entity? Or does the outlook kind of remain a little bit too fluid right now to kind of commit to a recovery timeline there? I'll turn it over after that. Thank you.
James, we had a really solid Q1, and we're gonna have a really solid Q2 on transborder. We're seeing yield, load factor, and significant PRASM gains. Part of this obviously is because the demand supply balance is a little bit more in our favor, but certainly there's also been a bit of a soft rebound in the market. Generally speaking, our performance on the U.S. is quite strong.
I appreciate it. Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Maybe if I could just start off with how do you think about your fleet from here if fuel stays at these levels or higher? How are you thinking about how that'll impact fleet planning and potential retirements?
I would say that for the time being, we're focused on navigating this. We come in with a really strong balance sheet. As, you know, we kind of work through 2026, we'll have a better view of what, you know, the longer term impacts are. Right now we're seeing demand being very resilient. Of course, fuel is peaking now, but would expect that at some point it would normalize whatever the normalized levels will be. What's important to understand about our growth plan is that it's about structural demand. We've talked about this before, but it really has a lot to do with, you know, restoring some wide body capacity where we are underserving and continuing to drive Sixth Freedom.
The plan for us to continue to build out that fleet will modify in the medium term, short term as necessary, but the longer term is just to continue to grow. On the retirement side, we do have A319s and some older aircraft, and we've been pretty active even in the current year. I think it's somewhere like 14 or 15 aircraft will be retired. That'll continue as planned. You know that we're also going to standardize our Rouge fleet, and that'll bring one of the most fuel efficient and purpose-built fleets for leisure travel. We think that, you know, our whole fleet plan still works together.
In the short term, if we need to make some tweaks, we'll do that just to navigate this.
Got it. Maybe I guess somewhat related to the retirement question, but more market share focused. You know, how do you think about this environment and where you could be potentially more aggressive for market share and where you cut back if you don't see the profit levels?
Yeah. We're not playing the market share game right now. What we're doing is we're in risk containment mode, especially as we think through summer. You know, obviously in this situation, you're always gonna have a tranche of flying that once, you know, call it, single-digit margins now becomes unprofitable despite the fare increases. We're optimizing as required, our network, but we don't see this as an opportunity to subsidize any flying for market share gains.
Got it. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Murray with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks folks. Good morning or good afternoon, I guess. Turning back to the guidance for Q2, I mean, it's a pretty wide range to start with. Sounds like you've got a lot of the fares already in the bucket or booked. I'm just wondering, what are the kind of puts and takes, kind of the take your bottom end of the range, top end of the range? Is it just fuel or what materializes in fuel, or are there some other inputs that we can maybe keep an eye on to give us an idea how to gauge this as we go through the quarter?
Yeah. First thing is I'd look at the middle of the range and start to build out of that. That's, you know, that's where we put it. I think that, you know, the biggest variable is fuel. We do, you know, we do see a lot of volatility. That can actually turn to the better, or it can get a little bit more difficult. I think right now we feel pretty good about how the quarter's developed. A lot of the inputs, as you said, are in, and fuel volatility kind of is the biggest one.
Great. One other question. The federal government put out a couple of items that I think would impact you guys in their spring economic update. One was about the airport ownership rules and how that could evolve. There was also some interesting commentary about, you know, maybe a different way to deal with passenger issues. Something I think you guys have talked about maybe replicating a European model. Any comments or thoughts around either of those items and would you guys be interested in looking at infrastructure down the road? How do you think that mediation process may work in terms of just managing your costs?
Let me, let me start, and Ariel, who heads up TR, will fill in some of the blanks. The two issues that came up, which are not new, are the potential airport privatization. That model exists around the world. We're very aware of it. And, you know, at this point in time, our focus is on lowering the cost for consumers. If there is a new model out there, whatever that might look like, if that lowers the cost for consumers, then we'll be supportive. On the APPR, we're actually running a test with we brought the idea to the government to use a European base ADR type process to speed up the whole process of getting an answer to the customer.
We think that's good from a customer-centric point of view. You know, Air Canada is running that test right now. We're in the middle of that test right now with a select number of customers. We're gonna see what the results of that test look like, and then we'll, you know, we'll obviously have discussions with the Government of Canada about that as well. Ariel, you wanna add anything?
I think that was complete. Thanks, Mike.
Okay. Thanks, folks.
Your next question comes from the line of Krista Friesen with CIBC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just on the fuel offset.
Realize you spoke to expecting to be able to offset about 50% to 60% of the expense in Q2. If we're in an environment where fuel stays higher for longer, how should we think about what you're targeting for the remainder of the year, say into Q3 or Q4? Thank you.
Yeah. I guess we did suspend guidance because that's got a lot of variability. If you would've asked me that question, we had an April 22nd curve out there, and if you would've asked me that question on that April 22nd curve, I would've said somewhere in the mid to upper 70s for the full year on recovery across the full year. We'll see how it evolves from here. Right now, I think we're, we have pretty good line of sight to Q2. Maybe a few puts and takes there, but altogether, I think we have pretty good line of sight. The second half of the year, just, you know, 2 things to keep in mind.
We're pricing at around $4 a gallon equivalent in the fare, and to the extent that, you know, fuel does come below $4 a gallon, we'll start to see some recovery as well. Fourth quarter should be obviously a high recovery quarter.
Thank you. I appreciate the color. I'll jump back in the queue.
Thank you.
Final question comes from the line of Andrew Didora with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good, good afternoon, everyone. John, maybe a little bit of a random question here, but I did see in the disclosure in your release, you know, you talk about your Canadian hubs contracting fuel 1-2 months ahead of time. This is a little bit different than kinda the way I've thought about it in the past. You know, does this mean do you have, you know, decent line of sight into 2Q, Q2 fuel costs right now? Or maybe to ask it another way, like, how much of your 2Q capacity does not have contracted fuel right now? Thanks.
Sure. Yeah. As I said, you know, the inventory plus the procurement terms that we have for our Canadian hubs in particular, which is not all of our fuel, right? You have to keep in mind that there's a lot of fuel purchased outside of Canada as well, outside of our hubs. That does have, you know, pricing benefits us because it came in some cases before the pandemic before the Middle East crisis, for the first quarter and parts of the second quarter are protected as well.
As we look into Q2, I'd say that, you know, maybe a third about roughly, kind of, think about that, a third of our fuel, maybe just a little bit more than that is still not priced.
Got it.
We basically burn, I don't know, 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion liters in Q2, maybe say 400 million of that.
Okay.
still out to the price.
Okay. Thank you. That's all I had.
Yeah. Thank you. Cheers.
With no further questions in queue, I will now hand the call back over to Valerie Durand for closing remarks.
Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. Should you have any questions, feel free to contact myself, Amanda Murray, or Ivan Zarate at Investor Relations. Thank you, and have a nice day.
Thank you again for joining us today. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.