^ Why do they run them so close together? That seems like a good way to maximize passenger inconvenience by ensuring long security lines, congested concourses, etc.

YVR is having a "Countdown to 25 Million" passengers event.
Such a massive milestone for the airport when they hit it!!

WestJet said that the route wasn't selling as well as they'd hoped. It's possible they are not being honest but I doubt that they would cut a cash cow route. Ultimately the airlines are trying to make money.

People need to keep this stuff in perspective. St. John's still has direct flights to London and London-Dublin is an hour long flight that costs about $50 on Ryanair. All of Newfoundland only has about 500,000 people. YYT is probably still one of the most internationally connected airports in a city of its size in North America.

Atlantic Canada has a lot of airports for its population. PEI and NB are particularly silly. 4 main airports for under 1 million people. People on PEI occasionally complain about how they have to fly to Halifax or Toronto, i.e. they expect a city of 70,000 to have convenient regularly scheduled direct flights to Florida or wherever.

Kelowna to Toronto Flights
 

My wife and I were talking today about potentially choosing Kelowna to base ourselves when we move back to Canada. The combination of great snowboarding, wine, weather, etc. are a pretty attractive package.

That got us looking at the flight options from there, since we'd be flying elsewhere a lot for our business. One thing that surprised me was how few direct flights there were to Toronto. That's a big pain, since for any Europe/Africa trips we'd likely need to be transferring via Toronto, and having to do a stop before reaching Toronto would be a massive pain. Anyone have insights or predictions on whether there's likely to be improved frequencies between Kelowna and Toronto in the next 1-4 years? The steadily increasing passenger figures would seem to bode well, given that Toronto is the largest flight market, but the recent new flight announcements seem to most be adding additional flights to and from Western Canadian cities.

AFAIK they have a daily (or almost daily) flight non-stop on AC and WS during winter, and double daily on WS and daily on AC during summer. Probably isn't going to change too much from that, considering AC added flights to YKA and YCD (Kamloops and Nanaimo) to YYZ as well so seems like their strategy is to add more destinations in BC rather than frequency upgrades. But you never know! And there are tons of one-stop connections thru YVR and YYC.

Kelowna is really nice and the greater regions really sells it

Just speaking from personal experience flying to London more frequently now, I'm not sure how flying ~5 hours from interior of BC to Toronto & then another 8 hours to EU would be more preferable than flying one of the multiple <1 hour flights a day to Calgary then take a 9 hour flight to EU.

Last time I flew to S' Africa going thru Atlanta was by far the fastest/easiest route from Saskatoon, I'd imagine it would be the same from BC. Often avoiding Eastern half of Canada especially with weather delays this time of year & congestion through YYZ makes for a more painless trip.

Ireland is pushing back at WestJet a little stronger than I thought. The Central Statistics Office said 22,045 Irish nationals flew direct to St. John's last year, up from 14,433 in 2014.

And the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at the Waterford Institute of Technology is pushing for communication by WestJet with people on the ground on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ugh I hope we get it back.

There's more routes and trip options available from YYZ than there is from YYC or YVR, which becomes very relevant the second you're trying anywhere in Europe that isn't a big hotspot like London or Paris.

There's plenty of cities in Europe and the surrounds that are fairly big tourist destinations but still require going through YYZ. Examples include Prague, Budapest, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, Rome--for all 5 cities, the only network connection to Canada is at YYZ or sometimes YUL. While many cities in Canada have direct flights to LHR and FRA, Kelowna does not, so a connection within Europe is 2 stops as opposed to YYZ which would only be 1. Even for places like YOW or YHZ which do have direct flights to LHR or FRA, connecting there is usually more expensive than connecting at YYZ. And connecting anywhere in the US (the other option for a 1 stop trip to Europe) is a huge PITA due to American customs. Connecting at LHR might become a pain post-Brexit as well.

Relevance? Westjet didn't claim people weren't flying the route, did it? :shrug:

YUL October stats are out.

1,599,188 +7.3%

Domestic: 635,672 +2.3%
International: 590,781 +14.6%
Transborder: 372,735 +5.3%

YTD total: 16,602,505 +6.9%

https://www.admtl.com/sites/default/...et_2018_EN.pdf

They said it wasn't performing to expectation.

Relevance to local media is its value as an access point for tourists. As an island, we don't have many so losing one - especially for the European market - is a big deal. That 25K helps us rank its importance to our tourism industry compared to other sources, such as Marine Atlantic, etc.

I'm not sure how much that Newfoundland to Dublin route slumped in passenger numbers, maybe everyone that was going to use that route took it before novelty of it wore off:shrug:

Perhaps maybe another airline will see some of it's merits & pick up the Ireland route, or maybe Icelandair will offer a route to EU through Keflavik.
Flying back home to Sask from Berlin earlier this year my flights were seemless, having connecting spot in Iceland half way between Germany & Alberta, neither flight longer than 6 hours, the airline offers some of the best routes to dozens of EU destinations from Western Canada. Maybe it would be a convenient connecting spot between Newfoundland & EU too, especially when Keflavik's airport triples in size & possibly offers a hop from StJohns maybe.

Corporate speak for "we can make more money if we fly out of Hallifax".

So WestJet has agreed to meet with the City and other concerned parties but the media here has latched onto the idea of bidding on an Aer Lingus direct flight. Even official people are talking about it (Aer Lingus wants to expand to North America). I thought it would be illegal for a European airline to serve YYT in that way? Does anyone know? I'm ignorant of air travel rules in Canada.

I can't imagine why it would be illegal for Aer Lingus to serve St. John's. You do have a designated international airport with customs facilities.

For example, Corsair (a French charter service) at one time provided a direct connection from Moncton to Paris for a couple of years (over a decade ago).

There are rules against cabotage, but if St. John's is a terminal destination (and not a pit stop), there shouldn't be any problem.

Maybe Air Canada Rouge will take a shot at it? They have A319s, so they have an aircraft type that formerly was used on the YYT-LHR flight.

The biggest concern would be that they would cannibalize their own London flight.

It's likely a different customer. It's almost always over $1,000 return, close to double what you can get to Dublin for on WestJet. And once you're in Dublin you can go anywhere on earth for pocket change relative to Canadian prices.

Why can't they serve YYT? Air Lingus serves Toronto and soon Montreal. YYT is an international airport. Canada and Ireland have open skies. It may actually make more sense for Air lingus, since they can connect people on the island further into Europe.

A little bit of context for the Aer Lingus discussion:https://www.irishtimes.com/business/...vice-1.3628618

The problem for YYT is they can't just give money to a foreign airline without getting the Canadian airlines miffed (keeping the thread G rated).

The USA has an essential air service worked into the legislation, but there is no Canadian equivalent.

Payments on that scale would take a heck of a bite out of any anticipated tourism benefits to provincial government coffers, I would think.