I'm assuming they think that they can make more money using the 787 on a couple new routes?

It's pretty clear operating both YYC-LHR and YYC-LGW wasn't optimal. It will be interesting to see what they do with that 787 next summer. I think upping NRT to daily should be a priority. That will leave 3x weekly for another route.

YUL posted Sept 2023 numbers. First percentage is Y.O.Y increase, second percentage in parenthesis is vs 2019:

Total: 1,927,076 +17.5% (+6.9%)

Domestic: 628,105 +13.0% (-4.5%)
Transborder: 394,583 +16.3% (+8.4%)
International: 904,388 +21.5% (+15.9%)

YTD total: 16,192,029 +39% (+2.9%)

In their Q3 results, ADM mentioned that:

(One document says Y.T.D is 2.9% above 2019, the other says 3.1%, but whatever....)

================================================

YYC also posted Sept 2023. Only Y.O.Y increase is provided.

Total: 1,726,143 +23.7%

Domestic: 1,195,308 +15.4%
Transborder: 342,910 +43.2%
International: 187,925 +56.2%

YTD total: 14,105,411 +33.2%

I didn't realize the transborder preclearance hours at YVR had been increased, not sure how I missed that (I'm usually pretty on top of airport news lol). This makes so much sense, a very positive move! I was actually thinking to myself the other day that there's a lot of US flights leaving from the international gates at night now. It used to be a handful, but seems to keep growing. That red eye departure with a morning arrival on the eastern seaboard must really be popular, so many airlines have these especially Air Canada lately. I remember taking a US-bound flight and being in international departures felt so weird! Having worked at the airport for years, I am just so used to transborder being separate, so seeing a flight to Dallas next to a flight to Taipei was always odd. Moving it to 23:30 (or midnight, as stated on the US government site) allows all US departures to be pre-cleared, which I don't think has ever been the case. Not sure if the other 8 airports with preclearance have a lot of late night flights? The BC coast is really the only place where the distance is long enough and time zone wise to make red eyes work. From the central and east, the distances and time differences are too close, there's nowhere in North America that would make sense with a late night departure from YYZ eastward. Late night departures to Europe/Africa work well from these areas, but not transborder. The hours of each airport's preclearance are super unique to each station, timed I assume to take in if not all, then most US bound flights. Are there any US flights from either YUL or YYZ that don't get precleared? YVR might've been an anomaly with it's chunk of US flights that weren't precleared, I think most other airports preclear almost everything. Imagine that list of red eyes that nname posted all missing out on preclearance? Would be a big gap

I did a Westjet summer 2024 service update for the "secondary" airports (still procrastinating doing YYC because it's such a huge undertaking compared to the others). I used the same standard week in July (15-21) for each airport, it's a normal week right in the summer travel season). Routes and airlines sometimes have variation in frequency from week to week on the same route, but it's rare (meaning there's usually the same frequency on a route for the entire season, rather than changing frequency and days week to week). Here are the stats for all airports listed on Wikipedia as Focus Cities for WS (hardly a scientific source I know, but WS doesn't mention anywhere as focus cities, it only mentions YYC as a hub, AFAIK...):

Week of July 15-21
YVR - 476 flights, approx. 61,000 seats, and 32 destinations
YEG - 360 flights, approx. 43,000 seats, and 29 destinations
YYZ - 311 flights, approx. 50,000 seats, and 29 destinations
YWG - 166 flights, approx. 23,685 seats, 14 destinations

I know no one will be anywhere near WS in YYC (hence it's status as a fortress hub), but YVR has quite definitively overtaken YYZ, which would have been absurd to imagine anytime pre pandemic. YVR is higher in total # of flights, # of seats, and # of destinations (not to mention it is the only airport other than YYC to have service from mainline, Encore, and Link, as well as 787 service). So it qualifies more as a hub than YYZ and YEG by any metric. YEG and YYZ essentially both have arguments for 3rd place, one based on total flights, and one on total seats. But they are kind of in the same place as each other now in terms of importance. YYZ has a somewhat inflated destination list, since there have tons of once a week sun destinations, which boosts the # of destinations but isn't adding a ton of seats. Their domestic drop has just been so extreme, the frequencies are a fraction of what they used to be, not to mention they don't have Encore or Link. Meaning their domestic feed from places like YOW, YUL, and YHZ is a single jet flight a day, so meagre, it's almost not worth it. They used to have high frequencies to lots of Eastern locations, really feeding their network. If they didn't have all the sun packages to unique Caribbean islands, they'd be even worse.

I am not even sure why YWG is on the list, informal as it may be by Wikipedia editors. In terms of stats, they are way below both YEG and YYZ in # of flights, seats, and destinations. YWG is only 46% of YEG's destinations, and 47% of YYZ's seats. And less than half the amount of destinations as any of the others. This is absolutely not a random opinion or stirring the pot, this is a straight-up number analysis, not emotional. Overall it seems the definition of "focus city" is so vague, there really is no rules about who qualifies or what the methodology is. If anyone is aware of anything more than just opinions that qualifies a city as a focus city, let me know. I just did this exercise for fun to really measure empirically the reality at each airport

It's sort of a vague category you're right. I'd argue YWG is a focus city because of its YQT/YXE/YQR encore flights and having various US destinations (and recently ATL/LAX added).

YWG plays a fairly large role in WS expansion in the west. And now that YWG is a crew base for WS, there will likely be more routes developed out of YWG over the next year. I'm really looking forward to the growth and expansion of routes.

Porter may also adds few more routes out of YWG as well, with YOW and YUL coming to mind as the most likely candidates.

Thanks for the context on YWG, I am not well versed in the discussions or insights into routes there. Just looking at the current schedule right now for S24, that's the only thing it's based on. Would be good if WS boosted up YWG, the transborder adds are a good addition in this direction. I am surprised to see how big Westjet went on ATL, adding so many city pairs from Western Canada. ATL is of course a behemoth and with the Delta partnership it will only make it better to operate these flights. But I'm not sure how much more they will add from YWG while still keeping things centralized in YYC, which was/is their stated plan. But things could change again, it's really hard to predict right now where the flight growth will happen.

Of course on a nostalgic note, YWG is one of the five original airports served by Westjet when they launch in Feb 1996 (the others being YVR, YLW, YEG, and YYC). YWG should have some grandfather clause that let's them keep the focus city title indefinitely and regardless of flights :p

I moved out of Saskatoon about 10 years ago, so the dynamics may have changed. But when I lived there was no way I was going to add a connection in Calgary to get to Toronto or Montreal unless I absolutely had to. It just adds an extra 3-4 hours onto a trip that should only take that long. WestJet from its early days of flying 737-200s has been connecting passengers from Saskatchewan through Winnipeg.

While there is no clear definition as to what constitutes a focus city, to me it’s any destination that has some non-hub routes (e.g., YWG-YOW) and has some connecting traffic thru the airport on said airline. YWG fits that bill in WS’ world.

At AC, YHZ, YOW, YEG and YYC are focus cities with all of them shrinking (YOW and YYC the most) since 2019. The latter was once a hub and YWG used to be an AC focus city but now all they have are YYZ, YYC, YVR, YUL and seasonal YOW.

As for PD at YWG, I’ll be shocked if YOW is not announced within the next three months.

Spot on about Calgary. There is no way that if I'm flying east, I'm going to add extra time connecting through Calgary. I'll take Montreal, Minneapolis, Atlanta or gasp, Toronto (if I'm feeling like taking a big risk dealing with Pearson lol)

They're popular with the airlines, because you arrive at an east coast hub early in the morning, with plenty of connection opportunities. Most passengers probably hate it, but have no choice, as the connection times and opportunities make these flights very attractive. But I can't see them being popular with passengers. I guess it depends if you can fall asleep on an aircraft easily. A lot of people can't, and for them, these flights are definitely not ideal. Personally, I rather get a good night's sleep at home and fly out at 8 or 9am, rather than a redeye. Wouldn't you?

Don't know for certain about YYZ, but there aren't any at YUL. I'm pretty sure there aren't any at YYZ either.

Honestly, the drop from YYC to the four you listed is so vast, that none of them qualify as a WS hub. They are all WS focus cities, as far as I'm concerned. The fact WS uses the hub verbiage only about YYC kind of corroborates that as well. Also, WS announced some new routes out of YVR and YEG this past week, and it didn't mention them as being hub airports in the press releases.

Earlier this year, AC was at 500-600 flights a week from YYC, and it still wasn't a hub. In fact it hasn't been an AC hub for quite a while. AC now has around 400 weekly flights from YYC, which is around the number of flights WS will have from YVR next summer. So why should YVR be called a WS hub when we know AC at YYC isn't?

I am not a big fan of red eyes, but I know a lot of people who are, they love having a full day and then leaving at night, and starting a new day in their destination. Yes there's probably some tiredness, but we're not talking 15 hour flights, most people can manage and don't mind it. I took the ready eye from YVR-JFK and was fine for the trip, didn't impact anything. I just love that preclearance is finally extended to cover all the transborder flights, even those late at night, it's a big plus.

I agree that YYC is in a league of it's own, undoubtedly the only true hub now. Not claiming YVR is anywhere near it, or even a hub. I was just providing the data for the four cities considered focus cities, and showing the differences between them. I just meant of the four, YVR is the most "hub like" in that it has a lot of domestic feed, and lots of transborder. Not to mention a lot of the Asian flights on foreign carriers have agreements with WS (Qantas, Xiamen, Korean Air, JAL, and China Airlines codeshare with WS on domestic routes, feeding into YVR for international connections). So this also strengthens WS's YVR ops, creating an international feed even though they don't have international ops here. But none of that is me claiming YVR is a true hub, just providing context for the "focus city" blanket designation across YVR, YEG, YWG, and YYZ.

New AC numbers. (Reminder, these are weekly departure numbers.)

YYZ 1662
YUL 871
YVR 913 (An increase from 2 weeks ago. First time I've seen it higher than YUL since I started posting these since last August.)
YYC 200 (first time this number is below YOW's departure count)
YOW 204
YHZ 165
YEG 141
YWG 83

Will be interesting to see how these numbers evolve over the coming W23 season. November, along with February, are the two slowest months in terms of passenger numbers (and therefore movements) for pretty much all airports in Canada.

For comparison's sake, here are the numbers from when I initially started posting these, back at the tail end of peak summer, on August 22nd. YYC departure numbers have been cut by almost 30% since then.

YVR posted their September total as well, but the breakdown links aren't updated yet.

2,187,658 (+15.6%) for the month.

https://www.yvr.ca/en/about-yvr/facts-and-stats

These 3 airports' monthly numbers are getting tighter and tighter, what with YUL and YYC reaching (or surpassing) their 2019 numbers, while that's still not the case for YVR.

Yes, this is the same as my data. YVR usually have more flights than YUL during the winter season, and YUL usually have more flights during summer (except for last year due to the airport not able to handle the traffic post-pandemic). The number should stay like this at least until end of March, before TATL ramp up again.

Obvious to answer to that is China, isn't it?
They had so many flights and connecting passengers into China pre Covid, until that comes back (if ever) they are missing a big part of there operations to get them back to pre covid numbers.

The risk of arbitrary arrest and detention would put me off travelling to China.

Has anyone tried Porter's new longer-haul flights? I am thinking about booking some in the future, however, I just don't like the idea of being stranded somewhere. Vacations are a way to get away from stress, not increase it more. That means the ULCC carriers are no bueno.

Pros/Cons?

I mean, Air Canada has multiple options, but you pay for that luxury.

No complaints with Porter. They are now my go-too airline. The inflight service and decently roomy seats is what’s keeping me coming back. No delays with them either yet (unless my YYZ-YEG flight gets delayed tomorrow lol). If you’re looking for reliable, I’d take the bet with Porter.

I thought the term hub and focus was just where an airline puts their crews, their maintenance, their most head starts of the day, the most connection points, certain long hauls or long distances. Just whatever they deem it’s important to their operation