WestJet's takeover and consolidation of discount airlines Swoop and Sunwing into its main carrier has some vacationers and travel experts worried about higher prices to come. But the CEO of the Calgary-based airline says the moves are a win for everyone.

On Sunday, WestJet Airlines Ltd. announced it plans to fold recently acquired Sunwing Airlines as a standalone entity and merge it into its eponymous carrier. That move came only days after it announced similar plans for Swoop, the discount airline it launched itself in 2017. The federal government approved the takeover of Sunwing in March.

The merger means two fewer discount airlines serving travellers in Canada — raising concerns from critics that there will be less competition in the industry and higher prices.

For travellers like Amber Murray, both moves sound ominous. She and her family frequently fly on Swoop for vacations instead of on mainline carriers because its hub in Hamilton is about 80 kilometres from their home in Beachville, Ont. — closer than Pearson International Airport in Toronto — but also because the prices are far more affordable for her family's budget.

Over the years, Murray said, she's managed to snag flights as cheap as $99 per person for vacation destinations like Las Vegas. She was planning to use the airline again when the family flies to Mexico this winter, but she said prices offered by WestJet are in the thousands of dollars — not the roughly $900 she typically manages to spend on her family of four.

"We're not going to be able to travel as a family of four," Murray told CBC News in an interview. "I'm not going to be able to show our kids the world."

While she typically flew on Swoop, not Sunwing, Murray said news that WestJet is consolidating multiple airlines known for no-frills fares under one full-service banner is not an encouraging development.

"Who knows if we're going to be able to afford to be able to go away anymore," she said. "I'm very worried."