Air Canada to retire jets, fly less often under cutback plan

Air Canada, the country's largest airline, said it will shrink operations by flying routes less frequently, switching to smaller planes in certain markets and retiring some larger jets.

``We are assessing which aircraft, primarily wide-body, we will remove from our fleet,'' Chief Financial Officer Michael Rousseau said today at a Merrill Lynch & Co. conference in New York.

His comment fleshed out how Air Canada would achieve the target set yesterday for cutting seating capacity by 7 percent starting in October and eliminating as many as 2,000 jobs to counter surging fuel prices.