MONTREAL — Air Canada Rouge has turned four years old, and is commemorating the milestone by commending its employees and thanking its 16 million customers since launching.

From its first flight on Canada Day2013, Air Canada’s leisure carrier has grown to 49 aircraft from four, created 1,800 incremental jobs and flown more than 16 million customers.

“Air Canada Rouge has proven itself to be tremendously popular with customers, as shown by steady growth that today has it operating more than 100 routes, up from an original 14. It has also been a key driver of Air Canada’s strategy, enabling us to increase capacity, add frequencies and compete effectively in leisure markets to give our customers an ever-expanding choice of destinations and travel options. I commend the employees of Air Canada Rouge for their dedication to creating memorable travel experiences and thank our customers for choosing Air Canada Rouge and making it so successful over these last four years,” said Benjamin Smith, President, Passenger Airlines at Air Canada.

Since the beginning of this year alone, Air Canada Rouge has begun offering service on a variety of exciting new international routes, including: Montreal to Algiers, Marseilles and Reykjavik; Toronto to Berlin and Reykjavik; and Vancouver to Nagoya and London-Gatwick. New services beginning this fall include: Montreal to Lima and Phoenix; Toronto to Cartagena, Belize City and St. Vincent; and Vancouver to Orlando.

This year, Air Canada Rouge began offering high-speed, satellite Internet aboard its aircraft. Air Canada Rouge customers now have access to the fastest internet service on a Canadian airline, giving them the ability to email, stream video and music, surf the web and more while flying. All Air Canada Rouge Airbus A319s now offer connectivity and installation of the service on all Air Canada Rouge A321 and Boeing 767-300ER aircraft will be complete by the end of 2018.

Air Canada Rouge is also celebrating other milestones, including 330 flight attendants hired since January, 317 million kilometres flown in total (the equivalent to 8,000 trips around earth), 33 new routes to its overall network, over 12,600 pieces of toiletries collected by crew and donated to various Canadian charities, and over 400 hours of crew volunteer time contributed to local charities in the last year.