Idenification purposes, because many cities have the same or similar names.

Fair enough.

You should probably tell Air Canada that, because some rube in marketing has been happily marking Calgary down as a hub. What an embarrassment; they should know better!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield <-- 7 countries' worth of Springfields
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland <-- 9 countries' worth of Portlands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...S._place_names <-- most common city names in US
Etc.

Montreal is the home of Air Canada. Toronto is just our largest airport and naturally where Air Canada's largest operations are. ;)

It's a combination of Calgary hitting above its weight and Montreal hitting below. Interesting to note that Melbourne is the same size as Montreal, but has almost double the traffic. Air travel is far more expensive in Canada so travelers drive, take the bus, or train when possible. Montreal is also a fairly poor city by north American standards. People don't hop on planes like they do in Melbourne, Boston, etc. High prices caused by Ottawa taxation policies just exacerbate the problem. For the sake of comparison:

1. SYD Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport - 36,927,417 passengers. (Toronto is a far more populous city in a far more populous region)
2. MEL Melbourne Airport - 29,297,357 passengers. (Montreal is the same size, but in a more populous region)
3. BNE Brisbane Airport - 21,017,060 passengers. (Vancouver is the same size, but in a more populous region)

Competition for Toronto in the east? I think Halifax takes a tiny bit of trans-Atlantic traffic away from Toronto, but not much. Halifax benefits from geography, but its potential as a north American hub has never been realized. For instance, it could be used instead of Boston or New York for flights that continue on to points in the US heartland, but I doubt they get much of that business.

I'd argue that YYC is in fact a "Hub"...but I'd put label it as more of a Domestic/Transborder Hub.

^^ Calgary is definitely a hub and AC is developing it as one.

Billy Bishop (Toronto Island Airport) is missing from the list and should be in 9th spot behind Winnipeg. Wikipedia lists it at around 2,000,000. Sounds like an estimate, but roughly right.

01. Toronto (Pearson) 34,912,456
02. Vancouver 17,596,901
03. Montreal (Trudeau) 13,809,820
04. Calgary 13,638,137
05. Edmonton 6,676,445

06. Ottawa (Cartier) 4,685,956
07. Halifax (Stanfield) 3,605,701
08. Winnipeg (Richardson) 3,538,175
09. Toronto (Billy Bishop) 2,000,000*
10. Victoria 1,506,578

11. St. John's 1,450,000
12. Kelowna 1,440,952
13. Quebec City (Lesage) 1,342,840
14. Saskatoon (Diefenbaker) 1,326,838
15. Regina 1,185,715


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...orts_in_Canada

Not a chance. If that was the case Edmonton's numbers would be a lot closer to Calgary's (or vice versa)

Calgary is a hub for Air Canada, and obviously the focus airport for Westjet.

IMO those are the reason the numbers get inflated.

I think Australia might have bigger numbers due to the fact that they are an isolated island. Comparing two similar sized cities in North America Toronto Pearson's numbers (34,912,456) are in line with Boston's Logan (29,325,617). Same with Vancouver (17,596,901) and Portland (14,390,784).

^ and a massive tourist industry.

WestJet runs more flights out of Toronto than they do Calgary. But yes, Calgary is certainly WS's major focus in the west.

This wasn't the smartest statement I ever read on this thread. Do you think 95 million people uses Atlanta's airport because Atlanta is a rich city and Atlantans just hop on planes more than the rest of the US?? You know what a hub is and what it does to passengers numbers?

What killed Montreal's traffic was the colossal error of building Mirabel in the middle of nowhere as THE (intended) international hub of the country, even the continent. From the mid 70's and for more than 20 years, international flights HAD to use Mirabel - there were none of these flights from Dorval. For many reasons I won't list here (having to take an hour bus ride to catch your corresponding flight was certainly one of them) this was a huge failure and all international flights ended up leaving the region instead of flocking over at Mirabel as intended. The hub was dead.

Now all passenger flights are back at Dorval but it will take quite a long time before they can rebuild the business since flights have all been established elsewhere.

Also some cities have multiple airports making the codes very important. I was on the Underground to Heathrow earlier this month and half way there some guy realized his flight was actually leaving from London City Airport instead. I doubt he made his flight.

Is Australia's tourism industry bigger than Canada's though?

From what I've read, Canada tourism industry is worth 85 billion compared to Australias's 35 billion...

http://tiac.travel/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Australia

I think Canada has bigger tourism numbers but we also have more attractions and they are spread out across the land. Major destinations in Australia, on the other hand, are concentrated in the south-east.

From some very quick searches I came up with 18 billion for Canada in 2009 and 35 billion for Australia in 2010.

Just from from my own experiences in either country, it was abundantly clear that Australia has a much bigger tourism industry compared to Canada, especially amongst young Europeans. Booze cruises are basically a right of passage for British people.

Either way most tourists to Canada drive north to from the states. Everyone has to fly to oz.

^^ That's very misleading. Canadian tourism numbers dwarf Australian, but tourists who do go to Australia stay much longer, and naturally spend more money once there. Conclusion: our airports are receiving just as many, if not more, tourists. What they spend when they get here is another matter.

Ours is bigger in # of tourists, there's is bigger in dollars spent. Besides, most of Australia's traffic is domestic. The issue is that Ottawa treats airports as their own private bank account rather than key economic infrastructure. The result: our airports struggle under a mountain of fees, while theirs act as economic engines of growth. It's another example of government lowering our standard of living through layers of bureaucracy and fees.

Another factor that explains low numbers for both Montreal and Quebec City is that family-related air travel is extremely low in Quebec. 95% of French speaking Canadians live within a day's drive or less from Montreal.

I don't know anybody who flies from Gatineau to Gaspésie or Montreal to Rouyn-Noranda or Quebec City to Sherbrooke or Ottawa to Edmundston to visit family. In fact, I've never in my life known anyone to do this.

If there is a secondary option to driving it is the train.

Whereas "other Canadians" tend to have their families more spread out across the country, and this boosts the air travel numbers considerably.

Almost nobody in my experience flies between two points in Quebec unless it's on business.

Hmmm interesting!

Also, I seem to remember seeing a graphic recently, can't remember where though, showing that the Sydney - Melbourne (and vise versa) flight route is one of the 10 busiest on the planet currently.

Perhaps once this boom is complete in Toronto and Montreal, that flight route will become a lot busier due to business flights? I dunno. A lot of Montreal's proposals seem to be business (office towers) and tourist (hotels) related, so that could bode well for the business connectivity between the cities, hopefully.

The poor city argument BTW is fallacious. Family incomes are within a thousands dollars of each other in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

What? Who said anything about any of those cities being poor?

I don't know for sure but I suspect that modal share for flights is a lot higher for Sydney-Melbourne. They're significantly farther apart than Toronto and Montreal, 876 km compared to 542. And although their passenger rail system is a lot more extensive than ours, the train is really slow. Flying really is the only option for the Aussies.

Ohhh I didn't realize it was that significantly farther between the cities.

Highway links between the two cities are not exactly optimal either, although slowly improving.

A decent portion of the Sydney-Melbourne route is still two lanes and undivided.

Yeah, I initially thought it was like Montreal-Toronto as well when I went there. But noooo.

And I also thought the same of Sydney-Brisbane was the same. But it's about 1000 km -there also a good portion of the route is two lanes undivided, and passes through towns. Though once again things are being upgraded there.

For Chadillac... see highlighted portion.

As I said, that's not really the reason for less air travel traffic from Montreal as opposed to Toronto or Vancouver.

So it's more like Calgary - Vancouver than Montreal - Toronto.

"Other Canadians" have family spread out around the WORLD.

I knew Brisbane was very far from Sydney but I had no idea Melbourne was that far. I guess we kind of just all think of Southeastern Australia as being closely analogous of the Quebec City - Windsor corridor, but what we have to realize is that the QC - W corridor is virtually the entire population of Australia, and growing nearly as fast. The distance between Melbourne and Brisbane is 1700 KM, while the distance between Windsor and QC is only 1100 km. In fact, if we want to go to the full extent of the analogy, SE Aus also includes Adelaide, which is over 2000 km from Brisbane at the shortest driving route. So it is pretty much beyond comparison. I didn't realize that the area of SE Aus was virtually twice that of Windsor QC before doing this research. Very illuminating.

Well, some of them do but not all of them of course. Likely a higher percentage of them do though due to higher proportions of immigrants within the population.

The Gatineau-Ottawa "Executive" Airport (which is really just Gatineau pathetic little airport, Canada's busiest airport without a control tower according to Wikipedia) has flights to the Montreal St-Hubert Airport and Québec City. Not sure how many passengers these flights carry.

I've mentioned this before but considering the huge population of the Québec City-Windsor corridor, home to 3 of the 4 largest cities and 6 of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, I think high speed rail should be priority for the Feds. IMO, VIA rail is a national embarrassment.

Like, 3.

International code YND!

Good for looking up weather data too.

My wife has taken flights for business trips out of there on occasion.

I reckon that almost all passenger traffic there is on a corporate (public or private) dime of some sort.

2 of the 4 largest cities now :tup:

By metro we're still slightly bigger. :tup:

If your talking about the city proper, Ottawa is bigger than Vancouver. If you're talking about Metro, Ottawa still has a slight edge over Calgary.

AWESOME - YEG

Looks like @FlyEIA is set to announce a new INTERNATIONAL destination. Details on Tuesday. #yeg #goodnews @globaledmonton #whereintheworld

Likely KEF

Reykjavik? Really?

^that's the rumour. Icelandair was looking at 4 new markets/destinations, YEG was one of them. Great connection to Europe.

I know Edmonton is looking at extending the LRT from Century Park (the southernmost ETS LRT station at present), but that's most likely decades away at the very least. I might be dead before they actually get started on it. :haha:

Oh yeah, for sure! People ending up at wrong airports in the same city and thus missing flights are a very common thing worldwide.

I used to hear quite a bit about passengers ending up at the wrong airport in Edmonton before the consolidation of most scheduled passenger service at YEG back in the late 1990s. And I'm sure quite a few passengers trying to fly out of Montreal had the same problem when airlines were still flying into Mirabel.

Most average travelers who are not pilots or working in the aviation industry likely may not even know their local airport's IATA and/or ICAO codes*. This can not only result in them coming to the wrong airport of origin, but also flying into the wrong destination. Especially when airline reservation staff screw up on inputting the wrong airport code and the poor schmuck doesn't even realize until it's too late because he doesn't know anything about airport codes. Such as ending up in Sydney, Nova Scotia instead of Sydney, Australia, for instance - it's surprising how often this happens.

*As if things aren't more confusing, there's not just one set of airport codes, but two used by each separate outfit. IATA (International Air Transportation Association) airport codes are the three-letter ones most commonly seen. ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) uses a four-letter coding for airports worldwide.

Although most IATA airport codes for many large airports outside of Canada are fairly easy to recognize, some are just as bad or even worse than Canadian codes. Try KAN, for instance. You'd think that's for Kansas City, but not so. KAN is the IATA code for Kano, Nigeria. Kansas City's real IATA code is MCI. MCI stands for its former name - Mid-Continental International Airport.

Larger Canadian airports, yes, but smaller airports are even trickier to recognize. Such as YQU for Grande Prairie. They could've used YGP, but that's for Michel-Pouliot Gaspé Airport in Gaspé, Quebec.

Calgary/Vancouver are not far apart at all.

As posted on C2E

Confirmed it's Icelandair. Starting June 4.

dep YEG 6:30 pm arr KEF 6:50 am
dep KEF 4:45 pm arr YEG 5:30 pm

Boeing 757

Frequency TBA

Congrats to YEG!

Does Icelandair still fly out of Halifax?

Yep, it has daily flights to Reykjavik and has for quite some time now.

Keflavik actually, and a great airline it is too! The next time I go to Eurpoe I think I might use them again....... :tup:

Yeah, looking forward to using it to connect to Euro, shame it is not until June 4th that it is starting.

Apparently it is 4x weekly starting March 26!!!