This is one of those tricky things, there are a lot of NLer's in AB but there are far more in southern Ontario. So airlines are much more happy to funnel the traffic into Pearson and onto St. John's. Conversely, people flying into the smaller NL airports will typically fly from Edmonton to either Toronto or Ottawa, then to Halifax, and then finally arrive in NL at 2am. It makes more sense to use large planes to funnel the NL bound traffic into Halifax and then basically shuttle them across the water in Dash-8's.

There are some direct flights between AB and NL but they are chartered flights by the oil companies to fly people home on their turnarounds. Flair did do one into Stephenville for a while, Canadian North does one into Deer Lake, etc... from Fort Mac.

I think the chartered flights usually have chartered buses to complete the trip. At YYT, you always hear announcements such as, "Members of X Union, the bus to the Long Harbour site departs from the Arrivals Gate in 15 minutes.", "The shuttle to the Bull Arm site will depart from the Arrivals Gate in 15 minutes.", etc.

ahh, i always feel sorry for them when they travel with limited time off

Our current longest runway; 17R/35L, is longer than those two at 12,675'.

Passed by there within the last couple weeks. It is totally epic. Makes sense for among the fastest growing airports.

The other thing very noticeable is the logistics / distribution systems this airport supports. Fantastic.

the purpose of the longest runway is not because it is a fast growing airport. It is because of the elevation of the airport. The news story about longest runway/tallest airport control tower is merely sensationalist journalism. The size of the expansion (number of gates) is more relevant to the airport's growth...but not interesting as a news story.

Never said it was, though reviewing can understand the misunderstanding.

Overall demand at #YYC is certainly behind this expansion, both cargo / logistics / distribution, as well as passenger. The insiders likely also have a view w.r.t. airline intentions over the coming decades. Very exciting. #YYC is clearly becoming the national / international hub for the two western prairie provinces.

Did Calgary just pass Montreal? I didn't think they were even close to each other.

^^^ Ya that just happened a couple of months ago.

^^^^^ it's been a close heat for year's between Calgary's & Montreal's airports according to passenger count.. Calgary was busier than Montreal in 2008 as well as 2013
(same with Saskatoon & Quebec City)

Air Canada is offering 15% off on flights to Gander or St. John's for anyone who wants to see an iceberg.

http://www.aircanada.com/en/offers/a...d.html#YWG-NTP

Also, they've apparently hired me as their Communications Specialist:

http://i61.tinypic.com/1434arb.jpg

:haha:

Yup, . . and the media doesn't understand the principle of density altitude either.

Yeah, don't even waste your time trying to explain that. :haha:

That's quite the accomplishment for YYC to have surpassed YUL on a month-to-month basis and be on track to surpass it for the year. Considering the amount of legacy favouritism heaped on YUL by past governments, YYC surpassing it is a remarkable feat. Interesting that YOW is registering declines. Could that be as a result to restraint for government travel?

YYC surpassed YUL last year by over 100 000 passengers. For Ottawa, it's weird. Even their public transit system is registering declines. Some people have suggested that it is due to the layoffs in government, so you could be right.

That doesn't explain what's happening in Winnipeg though.

the main issue seems more that there is something wrong with YUL. Why would such a large and important city have such a relatively small airport. I think it is all a legacy of the Mirabel experiment, ending up with multiple international airlines leaving Montreal and shifting to Toronto. Only in recent years has Montreal started re-adding more international destinations from international airlines.

If you look at the where Montrealers fly, the deficit is almost entirely in domestic travel. It far surpasses Calgary in International travel and I believe somewhat surpasses it in transborder travel. This could reflect fewer family and business ties with the rest of North America?

What's the difference between international and transborder?

Most Canadian airports (all?) separate US traffic from other international traffic.

Transborder = USA
International = Everything else

Calgary punches far above our weight mainly due to the domestic traffic, however transborder has had big increases over the last few years too. International is nothing amazing, but for a city our size having non-stop flights to LHR, FRA, AMS, and NRT year round scheduled is pretty impressive.

Also worth noting that our traffic counts DO NOT include all the oil and gas charter flights that leave from the private terminals and FBO's on the field. I couldn't even hazard a guess at the numbers, but there are quite a few flights every day serving that exclusively.

:previous: Cool little tidbit Bigtime, thanks.

Interesting you bring up this point Bigtime. Over on the YEG thread in the Alberta section they have posted the latest passenger numbers for the airport and for the first time (that I have noticed) they are including FBO passengers. At YEG they are running at about 11% of the total traffic for the airport. I would think YYC would be about the same percentage. And taking this even further, if you think the numbers would be larger for Calgary or Edmonton, consider how much traffic to Ft McMurray is NOT using YMM but flying directly to the various other airports in the region. YMM is experiencing explosive growth as it is, think what it would be if everyone flying to Ft Mac actually flew into the city airport.

The decline in YOW traffic is almost certainly caused by reduced government travel. I work for the federal government and there's been a huge cutback in travel budgets. They don't send people to conferences nearly as often as they used to. Its rather embarrassing, as at many international conferences/cons, there's delegates from practically every country with Canada missing... but I digress.

YOW's traffic has always been a lot lower than you'd expect for Ottawa's population because of the proximity to YUL and a lesser extent YYZ. If Ottawa was located in, say, the middle of the Northern Ontario bush its air traffic would be high. That also explains why Calgary's air traffic is so high, its relative isolation within the continent--also the large corporate presence. It wasn't that long ago that Ottawa was bigger than Calgary (Calgary pulled ahead around 2010-ish I think), yet Calgary's air traffic was much higher even 10 years ago.

Ottawa's public transit declines is due almost entirely to federal downsizing. Ottawa's transit ridership was growing at incredible rates right until the downsizing started in 2012, then it started dropping. A lot of the people laid off by the feds were older people who simply exited the workforce entirely taking their lay off as a reason to retire early. It's actually a good thing IMO, as the BRT is insanely overloaded as it is, and if ridership kept growing at 2%-3% a year, there's no way the Transitway could have kept us going until the Confederation Line completes, whereas now we'll probably squeak through just in time.

That is sort of a cop out. It just isn't as busy of an airport, the end. If your assumptions about why Calgary's is so busy were correct, than why are Edmonton's so significantly larger than Ottawa's too? Edmonton is only 3 hours from Calgary, two major cities in a short distance. Our numbers are larger because we're relatively a hub in the west.



Some pics of the new terminal of Fort McMurray International Airport. It opened yesterday.


http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.c...rport27rb2.JPG
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.c...rport27rb1.JPG
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.c...rport27rb8.JPG
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.c...rport27rb9.JPG

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...ticle18876169/

^ Sharp looking interior for Fort Mac. Good stuff. That was a Michael Green project, if I'm not mistaken. Had Dialog won the project it would have had an Alberta terminal hat-trick.

Out of curiosity, why would traffic through private terminals & FBOs not be counted for Calgary or Edmonton's airport throughput? They use the same runways, taxiways, etc. Would anyone happen to know whether flights out of YVR's South Terminal are similarly excluded?

God, they're really going for it, aren't they? They're really going to make Fort Mac a boomtown. It's SO far north! I hope it lasts.

Airport terminal is gorgeous for a small city. Probably the smallest one that's certain to have direct flights from YYT. :haha:

Edmonton's also relatively isolated within the continent. Plus there's a lot of air traffic between Calgary and Edmonton (which I've always found funny given how close together they are...). Neither city has to deal with YUL being a 1.5 hour drive. I've actually only ever been inside Ottawa airport once (when I was flying to Edmonton last year, coincidentally enough :)), despite growing up there--every time we travelled, we drove to YUL, occasionally to YYZ. My parents go to Europe every summer and they always drive to YUL. Does Edmonton have a trend of being driving to Calgary? I imagine they would given how many convenient connections Calgary has, but YEG's numbers are so high that it doesn't seem like it.

There's probably a whole host of other reasons too. Ottawa being a government town, Calgary being a business town is likely a factor. Both cities have around the same average household income so that wouldn't be a factor I imagine. Though there's a difference in the reason for high income--in the case of Ottawa its because the blue-collar working class demographic is very small so it inflates the city's average income--there actually aren't many rich people in Ottawa--whereas Calgary its because everybody simply makes more, so maybe that is part of the reason.

That's one hell of an airport for a place like Fort McMurray.... they probably need it though with all the temp workers going in and out.

Do you have the numbers for international travel in Montreal versus Calgary ? I'd be curious to know them.

I could look them up but YUL trounces YYC in the international category.

Here you go, 2013 international passenger numbers:

YUL: 5,302,692 (up 1.1%)
YYC: 1,325,846 (down 0.67%)

Now take a look at the domestic numbers:

YUL: 5,408,528 (up 1.4%)
YYC: 10,069,903 (up 5.14%)

Thank you !

I wish we had that airport when I was up in Fort McMurray - the old terminal was a dump! I can't tell you how many times I was stuck waiting outside in -30 to check in during the Christmas rush...it was gross.

The scary thing is that the terminal was built to handle 1.5 million passengers a year and they are already at 1.2 million! So an expansion is expected in 5 years - insane.

I suspect that some of the companies that have direct charters to private airfields did it because the commute time from the airport to their sites adds another 1.5 hours plus and there may not actually be an easy direct road connection. Highway 63 literally 'ends' at some of the plant sites north of the City...I always found that funny.

Most of the sites that were within the 1.5 hour commute time and had a direct road connection (from what I recall) didn't have private airstrips and all funnelled through YMM. If you tried to get on highway 63 at the wrong time you would see this massive wall of traffic coming either into town or heading out as the shift changes hit.

It looks even nicer now that it's opened. There is a wall in the main concourse that glows green like the northern lights! It's all rippely and everything! :) You can see the wall in the upper left of the first pic I posted.


Apparently they are already working on the design of the next expansion at Fort Mac, as this new terminal is designed to handle 1.5 million passengers a year, and their numbers are already around 1.3 million.

The old YMM terminal will still be used for Syncrude and Suncor flights. There are a couple of Major Aerodromes north of town and I know Stat Oil has their own runway about 150 km south.

As to why YEG and YYC are so busy, if you have driven between the 2 cities you will know why most businesses opt to fly or take Red Arrow. Also YEG has been running a campaign to stop driving to the YYC terminal and demand more direct flights. Its also safer to fly to YMM than drive. There are a multitude of reasons for the 2 airports doing so well but also remember there is also a lot of travel into the far north from YEG as well.
When I am back up in YMM next month I will get more shots and post them if no-one else does by then. It is also shocking to see how many Americans are making the trip to McMurray now, even over just a year ago.

That's astounding that international numbers are almost identical to domestic at YUL. I'll hazard a guess and say that insinuates that:

1. Quebecers are less likely to travel within Canada and more inclined to eeave the country.
2. a lot of domestic travel is done locally (confined within Quebec or southern Ontario) and thus more likely to be done by auto or train than by air.

Toronto is only 5-6h by car. Quebecers prefer to go to Europe instead of going to Vancouver or Calgary for example.

Well obviously:haha:, so do Calgarians and Vancouverites (the vise versa) :P Though Asia and Oceania may be a bit more popular than Europe here.

It's expensive to fly to Vancouver. A ticket to Paris costs the same.

Also to consider, is all the travels to cuba/mexico/dominican republic... during winter which definitly boost the international travel numbers

And the average Via Rail trip from Montreal to Toronto is 4:30 hours long, downtown to downtown.

On VOCM News, WestJet said the following:

85% of 11,000 seats on its direct St. John's-Dublin flights were sold out within 24 hours.

They definitely plan to expand their European offerings out of St. John's, and are looking at Paris and Scandinavia.

:D

Isolation IS a big reason for Calgary and Edmonton's high numbers. You really can't drive anywhere quickly except between those two cities, there is not close by American airport to use, and there is no convenient rail traffic.

If that is not the case, what would explain Montreal's significantly lower domestic traffic when Montreal has 4 million people in its metro, equal to or more than all the possible feeder regions into Calgary.

I guess by being isolated, you are automatically becoming a hub for the large swaths of rural areas around and everybody from all the small towns have to fly through Calgary by small planes before transferring to their flights to their final destination. All that adds to passenger count.

so it makes sense. Supposing the 4 million in the western prairies (except Edmonton) use Calgary as their airport to get anywhere...only 1 live in Calgary area, so 3 million need to fly in. In Montreal, all 4 million just drive in. Suppose Montreal has 4 million domestic flights from these 4 million people (just for simple calculation)....at YYC, if the 4 million have similar travel patterns, those 4 million would automatically generate 7 million flights.

I'd say out of that 4 million for Calgary, about 2 million would drive, 2 million would fly. We get a lot of Edmonton's air traffic driving to Calgary to fly out. We also get the majority of Red Deer (100 000), Lethbridge (100 000), Medicine Hat (70 000), and the entire Calgary metropolitan area (1.4 million). So possibly even more than 2 million would be driving in. Basically from a driving radius of 3 hours or less.

God love ya, WestJet. :D

They threw a lovely party for the inaugural St. John's-Dublin direct flight yesterday. Via YYT on Twitter:

http://i.imgur.com/YoqKJt2.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/OCJx7Mz.jpg

Éire & Talamh an Éisc, together again!

http://i.imgur.com/stokxbX.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/sUA6iVJ.jpg

And today:

http://i.imgur.com/5z5sUaU.jpg

Almost home:

http://i.imgur.com/P7SNOjs.jpg

The flight time from St. John's to Dublin is just over 4 hours.

Previously, flying from St. John's to Dublin would take, at minimum, 11 hours (3.5 to TO, 3.5 back, and then the distance from St. John's to Dublin).

AND Dublin is a hub for air travel to Europe. Once you're there, you can pick up a flight anywhere on the continent for pocket change.

And all of this for half the price of Air Canada's direct St. John's-London flight.

I love this! :D I can't wait to go! :D

This is awesome news, Scandinavian destinations would be really cool. I would also like to see Iceland as a destination.

:previous:

Excellent stuff. My wife and a friend of hers are going to use the new WestJet service to Dublin in a couple of weeks.

It is conceivable that St. John's might become an important WestJet hub for European destinations. :tup:

Now, if only we could convince WestJet to inaugurate a new Moncton-St. John's service and everything would be golden. If St. John's ever became a WestJet hub for Dublin, Glasgow, London, Paris, Iceland and Scandinavia then I could definitely see this contributing to the success of a Moncton-St. John's link (for connections).

WestJet just might be the best thing that ever happened to St. John's International Airport!! :yes:

Only until they acquire a fleet of widebodied jets capable of flying directly from larger markets. That isn't to say that Westjet won't continue to run a flight to Europe from St. John's, but I doubt that a big St. John's hub with multiple overseas destinations is part of their gameplan... they're likely doing it because of the limitations of their existing fleet. (i.e. you can't fly one of the planes currently in Westjet's fleet to the UK nonstop from Toronto...)

Yeah, I hope they keep some sort of connection in the future. Cutting 7 extra hours of flying time and expense for us is worth a quick stop for mainlanders.

Porter's flights from St. John's to Toronto are up to 12-hours long with stops in Halifax and Ottawa - but people take them, in both directions. There's no reason a quick 30-min to 1-hr stop in St. John's should be such an inconvenience for flights originating in larger markets.

But WestJet seems to treat its airports quite well if the demand is there. And it clearly is, at least for now. I would be surprised if they don't continue to serve/expand the local market to Europe even when flying from Central Canadian airports become a (hopefully additional) possibility. There's also already flight options for these larger markets, so WestJet wouldn't be the only boat on the sea.

And if not, then just throw air travel open to proper competition. There are lots of airlines around the world that would love to serve smaller markets in Canada.

In reality it isn't inconvenient. But it becomes very, very hard to compete with other carriers who sell the ability to get from Toronto to [insert European city] quickly and without stopping. As a vacationer I'd choose based on price and Westjet was cheaper without being unduly inconvenient, I'd opt for the stop in St. John's. But it's business travellers that are the bread and butter of most international routes and if my company is paying for it, then I'm taking the non-stop flight no matter what.

For sure... the demand is clearly there given that what we might consider smaller markets (relative to other Canadian cities with transatlantic service) like Halifax and St. John's have sustained flights overseas for quite some time now. I sure wouldn't expect those flights to disappear.

Agreed. I think Canadian travellers would benefit from more competition.