Air Canada adds tropical and Tenerife

Air Canada is using a plane built for routes that are too far for a regular narrow-body jet and too small for a big wide-body one, and that is how Toronto and Montréal suddenly got nonstop flights to Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands for winter 2026-27. Air Canada said on April 6 that these will be the only nonstop flights between North America and the Canary Islands. (aircanada.com) The Toronto-Tenerife and Montréal-Tenerife flights start in late October 2026 and run through April 2027, which is peak escape-the-cold season for Canadian leisure travel. Air Canada is also adding new winter destinations including Roatán in Honduras, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, Mérida in Mexico, and Mazatlán in Mexico. (aircanada.com) From Vancouver, the expansion is aimed squarely at sun traffic across the Pacific side of Canada, with new service to Huatulco, Tepic-Riviera Nayarit, and Guadalajara in Mexico, plus San José in Costa Rica. Air Canada said the west coast push is part of a broader increase in flights to Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico for winter 2026-27. (aircanada.com) Tenerife is the unusual part of the announcement because it is not a standard Canadian sun route like Cancún or Puerto Vallarta. It sits off the northwest coast of Africa, belongs to Spain, and has warm weather in winter, which makes it a classic European holiday island but a rare nonstop destination from North America. (britannica.com; aircanada.com) The aircraft making that route work is the Airbus A321 Extra Long Range, which is a single-aisle jet designed to fly much farther than the older Airbus A321 family. Airbus says the model can fly up to 4,700 nautical miles, which lets airlines connect thinner long-distance city pairs without filling a much larger aircraft. (airbus.com) Air Canada’s version has 182 seats, including lie-flat business-class suites, which is a cabin setup usually associated with much larger transatlantic aircraft. Airways reported that Air Canada’s A321 Extra Long Range carries 14 lie-flat seats and 168 economy seats. (airwaysmag.com) Air Canada introduced its first Airbus A321 Extra Long Range into service in February 2026, after spending months saying the aircraft would open markets that did not make sense with larger jets. In October 2025, the airline had already flagged Palma de Mallorca as the first brand-new route the plane would unlock. (aircanada.com; aircanada.com) That is the real story here: Air Canada is not just adding beach flights, it is rebuilding parts of its network around smaller long-range aircraft. Aviation Week said the Tenerife flights will use the Airbus A321 Extra Long Range and noted that the route becomes possible because the airline can now serve long, lower-volume markets without sending a wide-body jet. (aviationweek.com) The timing also fits a bigger airline pattern after the pandemic, with carriers chasing leisure demand that holds up better in winter than some business-heavy routes. Air Canada’s own release pairs the new flights with expanded vacation packages, hotel inventory, and cruise options through Air Canada Vacations, which shows the airline is selling the seat and the trip together. (aircanada.com) So the headline is not just that Air Canada added more warm-weather flights. It is that one new aircraft type is letting the airline draw nonstop lines from Canada to places like Tenerife, Mérida, Roatán, and Tepic-Riviera Nayarit that would have been much harder to justify with a 250-seat or 300-seat jet. (airbus.com; aircanada.com)