Mr. Michael Rousseau reports

AIR CANADA UPDATES 2023 GUIDANCE

Air Canada has updated its 2023 financial and capacity guidance.

Air Canada is updating its guidance for 2023. The revised guidance for adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization* reflects expected earnings resulting from an improvement in traffic and yield from a stronger-than-anticipated demand environment and lower-than-expected fuel price. The revised guidance for adjusted CASM* reflects adjustments to various expense items, including those resulting from the higher-than-expected traffic. Air Canada's 2023 capacity guidance remains substantially unchanged.

Air Canada is also modifying the baseline comparison for its 2023 adjusted CASM guidance, comparing it with a 2022 instead of a 2019 baseline. Given the new cost environment, prior comparisons with the 2019 baseline are no longer as meaningful, and comparisons with 2022 are more appropriate.

Air Canada is providing the following updates to its 2023 guidance.

Air Canada is not updating its 2024 targets at this time and will continue evaluating them as it progresses toward its plans and executes on its strategic priorities.

* Adjusted CASM and adjusted EBITDA referred to in this news release are non-generally accepted accounting principle financial measures. Such measures are not recognized measures for financial statement presentation under GAAP, do not have standardized meanings, may not be comparable with similar measures presented by other entities, and should not be considered a substitute for or superior to GAAP results.

Major assumptions

Assumptions were made by Air Canada in preparing its updated guidance. As part of its assumptions, Air Canada assumes moderate Canadian gross domestic product growth for 2023. Air Canada also assumes that the Canadian dollar will trade, on average, at $1.34 per U.S. dollar for full-year 2023 and that the price of jet fuel will average $1.09 per litre for full-year 2023.

For further information on Air Canada's public disclosure file, including Air Canada's 2022 annual information form dated March 29, 2023, consult Air Canada's website or SEDAR.

First quarter of 2023 financial results

Air Canada will be releasing its first quarter 2023 results on Friday, May 12, 2023. Following this, Michael Rousseau, Air Canada president and chief executive officer, Amos Kazzaz, executive vice-president and chief financial officer, Mark Galardo, executive vice-president, revenue and network planning, will hold a conference call to present the results and be available for analysts' questions.

Media and the public may listen to this call. Details are as follows.

Date:  Friday, May 12, 2023

Time:  8 a.m. ET

By telephone:  416-340-2217 or 1-800-898-3989 (toll-free), passcode 9229567 followed by the number sign; please allow 10 minutes to be connected to the conference call

A webcast will be available.

Note: This is a listen-in audio webcast.

Replay:  An on-line replay will be available shortly after the conclusion of the call.

We seek Safe Harbor.