MONTREAL — Air Canada shares took flight Wednesday after the country’s largest airline announced it would sell a quarter of its Aeroplan loyalty program to Blackstone and a trio of Canadian pension funds for $2.5 billion in a bid to bolster its balance sheet. The carrier’s stock price jumped 15 per cent after markets opened before settling to a roughly 10 per cent increase following the announcement Tuesday night. Hovering at around $30 per share, it notched its highest point since early 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic brought Air Canada’s stock crashing down from heights that breached $50 in January 2020. The sale marks a windfall for the Montreal-based company just as high jet fuel prices caused by the Middle East war deliver a half-billion-dollar hit to its earnings this year. The buyers of the 25 per cent Aeroplan stake are led by private equity giant Blackstone and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the province’s pension fund manager. The Public Sector Pension Investment Board and the British Columbia Investment Management Corp. are also investors. Air Canada says it will maintain full control of the travel reward program’s day-to-day operations. “There is no intention of relinquishing control of this valuable and strategically important component of Air Canada,” said outgoing CEO Michael Rousseau, who sought to reassure members about the frequent-flyer system. “There will be no changes to the way members earn or burn points or to any other element of the program because of this transaction,” he told analysts on a conference call Wednesday. Air Canada plans to use proceeds from the deal to repay $1.7 billion in bonds and buy back up to $800 million in shares in September as it looks to shore up its finances. The sale is set to close on Monday. The cash infusion comes after Air Canada reported a net loss of $178 million for its latest quarter, versus $186 million in profit a year earlier. About 50 per cent of the airline’s tickets for the three months between April and June were already booked when the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran in late February, said chief financial officer John Di Bert. That meant the company was buying fuel at much higher rates on flights where half of the passengers had not paid steeper fares to reflect the costlier journey. The result was a more than half-billion-dollar “hit” to its finances for 2026, Di Bert said. “The bottom line is $500 million to $600 million is the headwind that, from day one, was to some degree non-recoverable,” he said. Air Canada lowered its outlook for the year after suspending it on April 30. It now forecasts between $2.9 billion and $3.2 billion in adjusted earnings for 2026 rather than the $3.35 billion to $3.75 billion predicted earlier this year. It also expects flight capacity will grow more slowly than initially thought, and that free cash flow may be down from the previous forecast by as much as half to between $200 million and $500 million. On Tuesday evening, Air Canada reported that revenues rose 11 per cent to $6.27 billion in the three months ended June 30 versus the same period last year. On an adjusted basis, diluted earnings fell to 40 cents per share from 60 cents per share a year earlier, but far exceeded analysts’ expectations of 13 cents per share, according to financial markets firm LSEG Data & Analytics. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 12, 2026.
