Our new DXB direct:)

http://i67.tinypic.com/2igyko7.jpg
Boom goes the city on c2e

' All that said, Edmonton built has a nice modern airport. What it needs now is a good rail connection to downtown.'

LRT will come ^in 10-15, but the 747 + LRT is perfectly reasonable. I can go door to door from downtown in 50-55mins for $5.

^To be frank, i am in this industry and can tell you that an LRT line to YEG will not happen in my lifetime which i hope is another 40 years. First is the Valley Line to the east, then the line to the west, then either the line to the NW or the SW extension to the City limits.

Let's put it this way. Look at how many flights YEG actually serves relative to YYC, YVR and YYZ. YVR and YYZ relatively recently built rail lines. YYC has such a small distance between the closest C-Train station and they aren't building a connection.

McArthurGlen Designer Outlets at YVR named "World's Best Outlet Centre" at MAPIC 2015
 

https://www.biv.com/article/2015/11/...0604-210829401

This mall will benefit YVR through additional non-aeronautical revenue and, more broadly, helps stem retail leakage down to the outlet malls across the border in the US.

^ I certainly liked McArthur Glen (Japadog!!), but I wouldn't put it above any number of garden variety outlet malls that you can find anywhere in the US and increasingly, in Canada.

Frankly, the most outstanding part of McArthur Glen is its location... it's not in the middle of nowhere like these places normally are.

YUL numbers for October are up...

1,273,410 passengers (including myself;)), +6.8% increase.

Now 13,247,689 passengers YTD.

Just a bit of a correction. I'm pretty sure you meant to say Linus. The great pumpkin was his thing. Not Charlie brown.

Domestic +2.5%
International +8.6%
Transborder +12%

+7.1% YTD

Just curious, how many Canadian cities actually have the international airport associated with them actually located within their municipal boundaries - as a cutoff point, let's make the municipal population count start at 500,000 (not talking CMA population here). I know Calgary does and Edmonton does not and I thought Vancouver's was but I learned that Vancouver Internatinal Airport is not actually located in Vancouver. What of Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Hamilton or any other Canadian city that has more than 500,000 residents.

The YTD growth is 4.6%. 7.1% is the YTD growth for international passengers only.

The threshold of RWY24R at CYYZ is located within the boundary of Toronto, but the rest of the airport is within Mississauga.

I think this has more to do with how different provinces administer municipalities.

Ottawa is.
Montreal is not.
Winnipeg is.
Toronto is and is not.

My bad, I looked at the wrong place :D

In the US, municipalities try very hard to annex the land that the airport sits on and, in some cases, own the airport itself. This is because a lot of municipal revenue is derived from sales taxes, and a busy airport - especially a hub - is basically a cash cow of outside people paying sales taxes on all the goods and services consumed within the airport (e.g. food, hotels, rental cars, etc.), but neither using city services nor being able to vote in municipal elections.

Part of YUL is located in the Saint-Laurent borough so it's partly within Montreal.

Halifax does not - even though Halifax has fewer than 500,000.

oops I commented on YEG ...thought Emirates had service to Edmonton... sorry my mistake.

Interesting and that is probably why I've read various news stories over the years of why Leduc County would like to keep Edmonton International Airport within its boundaries as opposed to Edmonton annexing the airport lands - everything being built up around that airport directly benefits Leduc County's tax base.

Yeah, OT, but it also explains why auto malls are frequently located on municipal boundaries in the US.

You get people coming in from a neighbouring municipality to buy a car. They pay $2,400 in sales taxes to your municipality on their purchase of a $30,000 car, and you don't have to spend that tax money educating their children or picking up their garbage.

I think the most extreme example is Las Vegas. This video explains how what most of us think of as Las Vegas is not in Las Vegas. https://youtu.be/naDCCW5TSpU

Edmonton will eventually annex... nearish term, but it will be a mess.

an interesting read

Why do so many people hate US airports?

In my experience, American airports tend to work reasonably well but they are usually unpleasant places. They all feel like overgrown bus terminals. The fact that most are built in stages with a bunch of small terminals doesn't help... you end up with something like ORD which is one of the world's biggest but basically feels like dozens of the old Winnipeg Airport laid end to end.

There are some US airports which are nicer than others, especially among the tier 2 ones like RDU. But the only large US airport I've been to that impressed me is DEN... which is basically a big new Asian airport that somehow landed in the US.

I really like KDTW whenever I fly through there. Spacious, plenty of options for food and drink and some shopping to pass away the time if I have a long connection. KJFK and KLGA are dire in my opinion and I avoid those whenever I can.

^ EWR is not much better either. It's disgraceful how arguably the most important city in the world has such laughable airports.

Never been to DTW but I've heard and read good things.

Dulles has the amazing check in hall and a relatively new train system to replace most of the buggies. Now they just need to rebuild the concourses. Unfortunately, the airport is in a price war with Reagan, and suffers from adverse selection.

Once the Washington Metro gets to Dulles (being built right now), they will have to decide whether to keep pushing capacity increases for Reagan, or try to re-emphasize Dulles.

+1.

The Americans are capable of making things of impressive taste and beauty, and they are able to design user-friendly products like the iPhone, but they just suck at trying to give anything publicly-owned any kind of flair. Everything is just as utilitarian as possible.

This also infects a lot of their corporations' presentability - even to the customers who should matter. My friend joked about going to the United First Class Lounge at ORD and being presented with a plate of cheddar cheese with a few grapes on top like it was some low level business conference in 1995. Compare the layout and the substance of an American in-flight magazine with, say, Air Canada's enRoute, and you'll know what I mean.

PS: This isn't an "Anglo" thing, since I find that public infrastructure in the UK - airports, trains, buses, mailboxes, phone booths, the public realm - is some of the most attractive in the world.

PPS: other than Denver, Detroit is another Asian-quality airport in the middle of the US. That's ironic considering what kind of city Detroit is.

PPPS: The most international and cosmopolitan of US cities have the worst airports. All 3 of NY's airports are deplorable; LAX is embarassing and so is ORD - especially the AA terminal.

Logan is by far the worst major American airport I've visited for everything you said in your first paragraph. Denver's scale impressed me but it seemed pretty sterile and unwelcoming. Don't even get me started on the messed up artwork they have in that airport. I'll be flying into Vegas in 12 days and picture it full of slot machines tourist info booths.

The worst North American airports I have been in by far are those in the NYC metro area. Truly terrible. Charlotte was also an... experience. Despite looking fairly decent.

For major airports the best was probably Denver. I really liked terminal 2 at SFO but heard the rest weren't as nice. Never had a huge issue at some of the smaller airports, and they seem to have better food and drink options than their Canadian counterparts. New Orleans was dead easy, as is Chicago Midway (plus you can get drinks to go at both!).

Logan was not a good experience to me... O'Hare was good when we arrived but bad when we left.

Yes, I've had a few Miller Lite, cheese and cracker lunches in United Clubs :haha:

Your buddy will be pleased to know that they now serve soup and a couple of food offerings...things are looking up!

But so true though, as much as I think that Canadian airport authorities have gone a little too far with building new terminals with reckless abandon, I'm grateful that ours are pretty nice places compared to the dives that are so many American airports.

I concur. Laguardia is the worst airport I've been to.

It's true most American airports aren't typically "nice".. They tend to be dark, old carpeting, dirty, poor food options, very little US airports offer complimentary wifi and/or plug-ins for electronics, flat screen TV's, etc...
Compare them to the likes of YYZ or YOW and you can definitely see the difference and how flying out of Canadian airports is (somewhat) enjoyable because our airports are so nice...

With that being said, flying in the US is cheap and they can keep those costs low... Who is paying for all of our airport upgrades and niceties? travelers. with all of those tacked-on "airport improvement fees" and such. So as much as it's nice, we are paying for it and hurts our travel budgets.

Logan's newest, terminal A, is actually quite nice, and E (international) is passable. That doesn't make up for the fact that B and C are utterly miserable though.

American airports generally aren't nice places to spend time, but they are almost always pretty functional, which is what matters in the end.

I waited 3 hours in a small room where all Air Canada flights depart from at Logan. No restaurant, just a room with seats.

I have to agree with everything said on this page.

Few things to add are that the TSA officers in the US are much more intimidating and rude than our own CBSA agents. Well, the same goes also with American police officers vs. Canadian Mounties, but there is absolutely no joking around with the officers in the US.

Most US airport also seem to be built to be destinations rather than transit points. Transiting on many US airports requires changing between terminals and is not very ideal. I also hate it how only few US airports have frequent Downtown rail connection to the airport, and most of them seem to be built for people traveling with cars.

LAX bad but not awful

Newark a bit ghetto, some decent areas, stupid runway+delays due to winds

Logan, AWFUL

Minny - fantastic

Denver - fantastic

S.F - fantastic

all the us airports i have stopped over in or used in the past few years, have pay to use wifi which sucks when you are trying not to use your data

Yup. Air Canada used to fly out of a tiny section of terminal C that had nothing but seats, washrooms, and a couple gates. If I recall correctly, there was a Starbucks and a gift shop just outside of the secure area.

Fortunately they've since moved into terminal B. Not a lot better, but still an improvement.

Don't forget that one pop machine and one vending machine...

awful

^ Haha, sounds like the old YWG transborder area

The closest thing I've come across was the temporary terminal at Bellingham Airport. It was basically just a portable, with washrooms and a door or two to the tarmac. Thankfully it was well worth it, as the new terminal is great for such a small airport.

The problem with most of the older US airport terminals goes back to pre-9/11. While in Canada and most other parts of the world only passengers were permitted through security in the US anyone go to the gate area. You could meet incoming friends at the gate etc. The screening was a quick pass through a simple metal detector. That resulted in the screening are being very compact and not much on issue.

Post 9/11 security because a multi-step process with equipment that takes up a lot of space and lineups that take even more space. The older terminals were not design to accommodate this. Places like Newark and LaGuardia that this stuff put installed into space that was originally intended to just be a hallway.

Basically some of these older airport just have the wrong layout and they have never redesigned the terminal.

The newer terminals are fine. It is these older ones.

MCI in Kansas City is perhaps the worst example of this.

Doesn't affect most here but thought people will be interested. But Buffalo has its licence suspended. The few times I have been on some of their aircraft has been an experience.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/...nded-1.3346524

LRT out to YEG would be a massive waste of money. I'm not trying to slag YEG, but just saying that there are better ways to use transportation dollars. It's way to far from the core, and would cost mega bucks relative to how much it is needed. Bus shuttle service makes more sense. They aren't even looking at rail service to YYC which is a busier airport and isn't very far from one of the lines.

Amen - flew out of LGA in the summer with Delta to YHZ; what a dump. It stunk and the ac didn't work so they had giant fans blowing air down the concourse.

I've not done JFK yet; I'm hearing the terminal 4 upgrades have made it quite impressive.

I have to say SEA is a great terminal - I've always had great experiences there and it feels comfortable/spacious (except in the arrivals hall - that does feel a little cramped). The musicians in the food court is a nice touch too. The worst airport I've experienced is MSP (Minneapolis). It's old, crumbling and have the wash rooms weren't functional.

How long ago was this? In my view MSP is among the best US airports. Nice, modern, spacious, plenty of amenities, good transportation links, nice little perks (hundreds of iPads to use for free throughout the terminal).

Yeah, MSP was actually pretty nice compared to a lot of airports.

I had no problem with the gates that Delta has (where the 1 Westjet gate is) at LGA. It was actually quite typical. Where we landed with AA on the other hand....yuck.