Montreal, June 17, 2016 – Air Transat is proud to inaugurate its first direct flight between Vancouver and Rome, Italy, today. This new service will be offered on Fridays until October 7, in addition to a connecting flight via Toronto available on Wednesdays. A ceremony will be held at the Vancouver airport with representatives from Air Transat and the airport, as well as the consul general of Italy, to celebrate the inaugural flight.

"The addition of this direct flight between Vancouver and Rome, a very popular destination with vacationers, is an important step in enhancing our transatlantic flight program for travellers from Western Canada," says Annick Guérard, President and General Manager of Transat Tours Canada. "By offering 12 European destinations from Vancouver this summer – six of which are available via direct flight – Transat strengthens its position as a holiday travel specialist and meets, more than ever, the needs of travellers in search of new discoveries."

Also this summer from Vancouver, Transat offers seven weekly flights to London; four weekly flights to Paris, Amsterdam and Manchester; and three weekly flights to Glasgow. Furthermore, in order to widen its selection of transatlantic destinations from Western Canada, it now offers two weekly flights between Vancouver and Toronto, allowing travellers from Vancouver more opportunities to fly to Budapest, Prague, Dublin, Barcelona and Venice via Toronto during the summer season.

Transat also offers multi-destination options, which allow travellers to land in one city and return from another, at no extra cost. Thus, a trip to Rome could end in Malaga, Spain, or vice versa.

Moreover, passengers flying to Europe will enjoy an incomparable travel experience with Air Transat, voted best leisure airline in North America four years in a row. The comfortable cabins, personalized inflight entertainment system accessible via individual touch screens or Air Transat’s CinePlus A app, free baggage allowance and attentive crew are just some of the reasons that make Air Transat flights so pleasant.

For a complete list of flights from Vancouver, visit airtransat.com.

About Air Transat

Air Transat is Canada’s leading holiday travel airline. Every year, it carries some 3 million passengers to nearly 60 destinations in 30 countries aboard its fleet of Boeing narrow-body and Airbus wide-body jets. The company employs more than 2,500 people. Air Transat is a business unit of Transat A.T. Inc., an integrated international tour operator with more than 60 destination countries and that distributes products in over 50 countries. Air Transat was named Best North American Leisure Airline at the Skytrax annual World Airline Awards, held in June 2015.