I agree, considering that within the EU you don't even need to clear customs/immigration so traveling between countries is largely domestic. My point about ORD vis-a-vis YYZ, and JFK still hold though.

Heading off Canada Jetlines before they even start to fly.

I am as well, I can only assume that's because around NYC there are so many airport options like LaGuardia Airport and Newark.

WestJet aims to offer 40% cheaper fares with new ultra-low-cost carrier 'Swoop’
The carrier to be launched next summer will charge fees for everything from carry-on luggage to in-flight entertainment and advertising within the cabin is not off-limits

http://business.financialpost.com/tr...-carrier-swoop

WestJet Airlines said it will offer fares that are 40 per cent cheaper than those currently available in Canada as it unveiled new details about Swoop, the ultra-low-cost carrier it plans on launching next summer.

After months of behind-the-scenes planning, WestJet revealed the new name and logo of its no-frills carrier, which will operate as a separate and distinct brand within the WestJet family. Swoop is expected to start selling discounted tickets in early 2018 and will begin flying passengers on six Boeing 737-800s in late June of 2018.

Bob Cummings, WestJet’s executive vice-president responsible for the launch of the new ultra-low-cost carrier, said in an interview with the Financial Post on Tuesday that Swoop will boast the lowest cost per available seat mile (CASM), a measure of how much an airline spends to fly passengers, within less than a year of launching.

“What we modelled out from an ultra-low-cost carrier perspective is that when we reach 10 aircraft (in spring 2019) and scale economies, we will have the lowest cost of any Canadian ULCC,” Cummings said.

While the company announced that Swoop’s headquarters will be located in Calgary, Alta., the same home base as WestJet, the list of markets the airline will serve has yet to be finalized. Cummings confirmed that Swoop will fly in and out of the Abbotsford Airport, located southeast of Vancouver, and that there are ongoing discussions with major airports in Canada as well as the Hamilton, Waterloo and Windsor airports. The goal, he said, is it launch progressive partnerships with airports that will also “repatriate some of the Canadians going across the border” to access cheaper flights.

LGA is largely domestic and EWR, while a fairly big hub, still lags far behind JFK in terms of international connectivity.

It's kind of a surprising move actually given the increased tourism and business between Toronto and Japan. if I'm not mistaken, Japanese tourism to Toronto is up year over year and it has been that way for a few years now. Almost 100K visitors from Japan in 2016. But like you said, maybe this opens up the door for ANA to NRT.

Still waiting for some major announcements from YYZ.

people on facebook were saying at least it rhymes with poop :haha:

There is no information on routes or which airports Swoop will be based out of yet on their webpage. (Despite contrary statements on the WestJet Facebook page...)

http://www.flyswoop.com

New services announced by AC out of YYZ and YUL:

From YYZ:
Zagreb, Bucharest, Porto - Rouge seasonal
Buenos Aires becomes non-stop on mainline and Santiago remains as a non-stop service

From YUL:
Bucharest and Lisbon - Rouge seasonal
Casablanca to transfer to mainline
Lima to be year round

https://aircanada.mediaroom.com/2017...isbon-Portugal

Nice announcement, although still waiting for a MAJOR announcement for YYZ, i.e. Johannesburg, Teheran, more India, and Asia.

Someone mentioned YXX in Abbotsford as the west coast airport they will use.

Massive expansion from AC into Europe and South America

YUL-LIS 3x weekly B763
YUL-OTP 2x weekly B763
YUL-LIM 2x weekly year round instead of seasonal
YUL-CMN transfer to AC A333
YYZ-OTP 2x weekly B763
YYZ-ZAG 4x weekly B763
YYZ-OPO 4x weekly B763
YYZ-EZE goes non stop, instead of one stop via SCL.

That's and additional 17x weekly frequencies to Europe or South America for Rouge for S18.

So they will need 3 763s to operate all these new routes. YYZ-DUB and YUL-CMN getting converted to mainline frees up 2 763s. The third is probably a new frame transferred from mainline, bringing the total in the fleet to the contractual max of 25.

These new routes should max out the Rouge 767 fleet. Maybe room left for one route launch from YVR.

Don't know if people care but I just found this very cool website which maps out all the destinations of a given airport, shows the airlines that service a given leg as well as the dates and times they are operated. Very interestingly, it also shows you some hidden legs such as Sunwing flights from St. John's to Moncton and Fredericton.

http://www.flightconnections.com/

Yes, that's a very good website.

On another note, another 2 route changes that AC hasn't advertised:

YYZ-KEF and YUL-KEF are switching to mainline next summer. B737 Max 8.

AC812 YUL2345 - 0900+1KEF 7M8 257
AC813 KEF1000 - 1115YUL 7M8 136

AC816 YYZ2325 - 0900+1KEF 7M8 x257
AC817 KEF1000 - 1150YYZ 7M8 x136

Flights begin From June 1 and May 17 respectively, a few weeks earlier than this summer. These aircraft should rotate perfectly with the Ireland routes. AC will be able to do 1 to 2 domestic runs between YYZ and YUL with each frame during the down time here at home.

AC818 YUL2115 – 0825+1DUB 7M8 x257
AC819 DUB1020 – 1200YUL 7M8 x136

AC820 YYZ2200 – 0930+1SNN 7M8 x136
AC821 SNN1030 – 1245YYZ 7M8 x247

So I expect some Rouge A319 deployments across Canada or to the States come next summer.

3 weeks late but glad AC listened to me:D

YYT-LHR goes Max as well.

Source: http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/...from-may-2018/

YUL August pax numbers

1,969,833 +11.2%

Domestic +9.7%

International +13.5%

Transborder +9.2%

January-August: 12,441,410 YTD, +9.6%

Almost 2 million for the month. Great result for YUL.

Transborder hit 400,000 pax/monthly for the first time i believe.

WS is adding Mexico City flights beginning in March from YYC and YVR.

YYC-MEX starts 4x weekly before going daily in late April.
YVR-MEX starts 3x weekly before going daily in late April.

This is ridiculous growth! Montreal really wanted to put Calgary in its place since it had passed them, geez.

^ Great growth for YUL.

YVR August 2017

Total: 2,531,401 (+8.3%)

DOMESTIC: 1,232,929 (+7.6%)
INTERNATIONAL (incl TB): 1,298,472 (+8.9)
Transborder: 617,452 (+9.5%)

Bloodbath! YVR-MEX is will have combined 5x daily in April?

Consider it was only 1x daily a bit more than a year ago...

Taking this thread in a different direction - having seen a few airlines collapse/ enter bankruptcy recently in Europe (airberlin, Monarch, Alitalia), what routes do you guys think are over saturated from Canada and likely to be downsized in the near future? I imagine that the current bull run of airport and airline growth will hit a peak in the near future.

At triple the CMA population one would've expected such eons ago. Regardless, good for Montreal, now they can set their sights on YVR..

It's a matter of domestic traffic. Calgary's numbers are closer to Toronto than Montreal.

YTD 2017

Toronto: 9,793,888
Calgary: 7,650,580
Montreal: 4 613 522

Montrealers celebrating the news this afternoon:

http://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/...Wj6c.So.79.jpg

:haha:

So?

Domestic passengers aren't real people.

It's almost as if Calgary is the hub for a major Canadian airline that focuses almost exclusively on North American travel.

Interesting adds. Better late than never i guess.

Not much else to celebrate. The Impact wont make it to the playoffs, the Habs suck and so do the Al's.

YVR-Europe down 0.2% in August must be concerning. Those extra flights next summer seem like too much if the already added capacity can't be absorbed. But then again, AC knows what they are doing.

There is actually more or less no extra capacity S17 vs S16 on YVR-Europe.

European carriers were flat and AC cancelled their second daily YVR-LHR but instituted YVR-FRA and YVR-LGW. Net change in seats was 826 at its peak.

Yeah.... no concern about YVR-Europe. Next summer there will be a "moderate" increase to Europe.

And I still think, based on YVR's geographic location and population base YVR is VERY well covered!

I still find it amusing that some people still complain about YVR's global reach being inadequate.... or if a new service is added at a neighbouring airport a doom and gloom outlook is painted. There are STILL more additions to come folks so don't fret.... might not be the flood of new services we've been enjoying lately but there will still be more!

YVR still the #2 point of entry for Canada. Not bad for a city of 2.5 million far flung out on the West Coast!

:haha:
Not only that, but absolutely no significant percentage of those domestic passengers are flying to "hubs" to board those sexy, international flights. None whatsoever.

:haha: Savage.

Oh? I haven't been following the news lately. Bombardier must've managed to bullshit their way out of the litany of anti-competitive charges brought against them by other planemakers and countries....

lol....Cheap shot.......

:D

:tup:

OAG published it's megahub international index for 2017.

The index reveals the 50 most internationally connected airports. Airports are ranked by comparing the number of scheduled connections to and from international flights with the number of destinations served from the airport.

No surprise, LHR is first.
YYZ came in 5th
YVR in 26th
YUL in 43rd.

In North America, YYZ is 2nd, YVR is 9th and YUL 14th.

Good job by Canada's 3 largest hubs to be in the Top 50 worldwide.

Also, thanks to Rouge and WestJet's international expansion, YYZ now features in the Top 25 Low-Cost megahubs, coming in at number 16. The list takes into account intl connections between low cost flights (same or different low-cost airline)

Official Index can be downloaded here for free.

Another link to index here. (originally posted by Johnny Aussie in the YVR thread, thanks again !)

Nice ! BUT YUL will jump quite a lot in ranking in the next few years gauranteed :)

That's an interesting article on connectivity. I was intrigued, but not totally surprised, to see that Vancouver has more weekly flights to China than any other airport in North America and Europe.

Original scoop goes to max but nname with the link:

Hainan airlines adding a Shenzhen --> Tianjin --> Vancouver route beginning in March 2018.

Hainan had applied for and received Tianjin - Vancouver over a year ago but never announced a start date so finally some clarity on what they are doing here.

These are the final two frequencies allotted to Chinese airlines in the current bilateral, so unless something gets changed that's it for new frequencies from China. Capacity can still be added by increasing the size of the planes but a lot of the routes are already flown by pretty large aircraft so there's not a ton of room for growth. Hopefully the two governments get together and add some more capacity for the years to come. Still a lot of unused capacity on the Canadian side, however western airlines have had difficulty breaking into the secondary city market in China so AC/WJ would have their work cut out for them.

.... and the list grows... 7 mainland Chinese airlines and 11 total Chinese airline when including HK and Taiwan. This will be YVR's 24th overseas carrier... other than YYZ of course, no other Canadian airport comes close to this number. Crazy for such a tiny city. :haha:

Yes... perhaps that's why AC is staying away from the secondary cities.

I'm still disappointed that they haven't started flying to CAN.

Maybe they know something we don't?

Perhaps it will happen, perhaps not?

Maybe AC wants to 'save' their potential frequencies for higher yielding flights to major Chinese cities. As soon as the new Beijing airport opens, that will allow an increase in flights to that city, as I think PEK has restrictions on it now. Also, AC probably has a higher percentage of Canadian citizens on their flights, so the major cities take precedence over secondary destinations in China.

Chinese airlines - by virtue of being limited in the routes that they can fly by the Chinese government - have an incentive to jump onto a given route before a domestic competitor does. They then have a monopoly on that route as other Chinese carriers are not permitted to compete on it. Whether the route is profitable is another question.

CAN was on their map - that's why I'm disappointed.

I've not been keeping up on AC's projected expansions.

Maybe when they get their last 787s, they'll end up flying to CAN? Unless the 787s are a 1:1 replacement for existing 767 routes?

The expansion map was made before the mass expansion of Chinese airlines flying into Canada. With CZ now fly to both YYZ and YVR, it just become less likely.

There are also other destinations on that map - SIN, BKK, CTS, AKL, ... not all of them will eventually happen (AC already stated that AKL is not happening, and they are still looking at SIN/BKK)

Hopefully not. Canada doesn't need more Chinese carriers flooding YVR with trash yields, or more Chinese, for that matter.

It's not normal that a Vancouverite cannot purchase a house in his own city because some Chinese with a suitcase full of cash is buying up everything he can. Same for Toronto.

The cap on flights won't stop this of course, but it will help limit it. It will also help increase the yields across the Pacific, as demand will catch up or surpass supply.

not as crazy as a certain airport in Quintana Roo with close to 20 overseas carriers and a sub 1 million population. You of all people should know.....;)

Plane hit by drone landing in Quebec City.