Fly From Canada - Top Canada Travel Deals

Sunwing now offers a vacation security plan that allows you to cancel your vacation, up to three hours before departure - for any reason. Most travel insurance will allow you to cancel only when someone is ill or there is a natural disaster.

Plus Sunwing includes a NO AGE LIMIT Travel Protection Plan that features:

Full Medical Expense Coverage
Post Departure Trip Interruption
Travel Delay
Baggage Benefits

According to Sunwing, this is the only Canadian Travel Protection Plan without any age restrictions. The cost varies from $59-129 per person depending on length of stay.

The cancellation benefit allows for cancellation or change of your vacation, FOR ANY REASON, up to 3 hours prior to the scheduled time of departure (except for "no shows" and any passengers cancelling as a result of denied boarding).

When a cancellation is made for any package, air only, or land only booking, the refund will be made in the original form of payment less the amount, if applicable, of the cancellation penalty, which will be refunded in Sunwing Vacations travel certificates (redeemable through the original booking agency). Sunwing Vacations travel certificates may be used like cash when purchasing a Sunwing vacation and are valid for one year, nonrefundable, and non-transferable (issued only in the name of the passenger who cancelled).

Sunwing offers all inclusive vacation packages to Cuba, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Panama, Jamaica, and the UK. Flights depart from Toronto, Ottawa, London, Thunder Bay and Sudbury.

For more information, visit Fly From Canada's Tour Operator page

November 8, 2005 - Canadian at Par - SeaWorld Orlando and Busch Gardens Tampa Tickets

SeaWorld and Busch Gardens are allowing Canadians to print their own At-Par tickets from home when they log on to www.atpar.ca, www.seaworld.ca, www.buschgardens.ca.

The parks Canadian Resident Salute program starts Oct. 1 and runs through April 30.

Available from any home computer is a One-Park Pass that allows one-day access to either park or a Two-Park Pass, which allows five days of unlimited access to both parks within a seven-day period.

The passes are also available from Air Canada Vacations, Keith Prowse Canada, Sunwing and Nolitour (formerly World of Vacations)

November 19, 2005 - Have you heard about Zoom Airlines?

Courtsey of November 12, 2005 VANCOUVER SUN

A year and a half ago, I flew from Toronto to the U.K. and back on Zoom Airlines, a fledgling Canadian airline, for a little more than $500 -- everything included. No, it wasn't a charter. I was served hot meals and watched an inflight movie in my relatively roomy seat on a decent 767 aircraft. I flew into one airport (Gatwick) and out of another
(Glasgow) at no extra charge. I bought my ticket online, paid a deposit at booking and the balance a few weeks before departure.

Whenever I am asked about transatlantic deals, which is often, I pass along this little gem. The response is always the same: "Zoom? Is that part of Air Canada?"

It couldn't be less so.

Zoom is a three-year-old Ottawa-based, privately owned airline that doesn't fit the category of no-frills, but offers one-way regular fares to the U.K and Paris starting at $199. In December, it will launch the only direct non-stop from Toronto to Hawaii. Next summer, it will bring cheap flights to France for the West Coast with a Vancouver-Calgary-Paris flight.

Strange then, that so few have heard of it -- especially when you can count on two fingers the number of Canadian commercial airlines flying scheduled service, as opposed to charters, into the U.K. and Paris. One is Zoom, the other, Air Canada.

Truth is, the airline is well-known in some travel circles, and not in a good way. It was started by Hugh Boyle, who hails from the cutthroat low-cost travel business in the United Kingdom. Direct Holidays, the company he built with his brother, John, had grown into one of the U.K.'s largest direct-to-consumer travel companies before the
brothers sold it to Airtours PLC for $200 million in 1998. Boyle ended up on this side of the pond, in Ottawa, intending to retire. Instead, he launched Go Travel Direct, a low-cost operator of package tours to the south. When he couldn't secure the seats he needed for his sun-bound customers, he started Zoom.

Boyle's direct-sell method hasn't gone over well with travel agents. Nor have marketing slogans such as "Say Goodbye to Travel Agents and Aloha to Go Travel Direct." The company says its direct-booking model
allows customers to save up to 33 per cent on trips by not going through a travel agent or intermediary. Flights on Zoom or packages with Go Travel Direct are booked online, over the phone or in person in Ottawa
or Montreal where it has offices.

Controversy over the upstart airline and its direct-sell vacation operation got nasty a year ago when travel agents tried to bring in the regulators over the company's negative advertising practices.

But that hasn't made the industry's current "bad boy" change its ways. "The price doesn't support paying travel agents commissions. It's not built in," says Kristopher Dolinki, Zoom's CEO.

The fuss is dying down, and Dolinki attributes that to a growing acceptance of direct-sell travel in North America. "Any time you try to change the norm in an entrenched industry there is always going to be a fight."

And it is clear Zoom isn't going away. The airline now flies from Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Quebec City and Vancouver. It has also grown its list of U.K. destinations to include Gatwick, Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast. The airline has doubled its capacity in the past year, and a fourth 767 arriving in January will increase
capacity by an additional 25 per cent. It is projected that Zoom will reach the 600,000-passenger mark in the coming year.

As more Canadians get onboard with the Brit model of low-cost travel, not to mention $199 fares to London or Paris, I suspect the name Zoom will never again be associated with that other airline.

November 27, 2005 - New Airline Services In Canada

New Service Into Charlottetown

Two major airlines will be returning to Charlottetown airport next summer, without subsidies having been paid out, according to Tourism Minister Philip Brown.

Brown said he has been informed that both WestJet and Northwest Airlines will continue to offer seasonal service to the province.

"We are pleased that both WestJet and Northwest Airlines showed faith in our province and that they will continue their flights in 2006," he said. "This will complement service provided by Air Canada that will serve Islanders and our visitors very well."

Both summer carriers were promised revenue guarantees that would have required government to give the airlines money in the event that passenger traffic did not meet targets.

"There will not be any money paid out as result of our revenue guarantee provided to these carriers," Brown said.

Sunwing Starts New Airline

Toronto-based Sunwing Travel Group, which offered limited service from Ottawa last year, announced yesterday it will offer beefed-up service through its newly formed airline, Sunwing Airlines.

The company expects to fly about 9,000 people out of Ottawa on direct flights to Cancun, Mexico, Varadero, Cuba and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic starting in late December.

Colin Hunter, chairman of Sunwing Travel Group, said owning its own airline will allow the company to provide more pampering to its customers and have more control over its business, than it had last year when most customers were booked on no-frills Jetsgo, Mr. Hunter said.

Although Sunwing and Go Travel Direct -- an Ottawa-based company that started direct service in 2000 -- both have their own airlines, Go Travel sells its packages directly to the public, while Sunwing sells through travel agencies.