Is that a certainty? Are most of the international passengers leaving to spend their money elsewhere? Are the business executives of domestic companies not of economic importance to their domestic destinations?

Maybe there just isn't a big enough market to warrant such flights? :shrug:

Don't forget the rest of Canada is in deep freeze for most of the winter... There is a penchant to escape. I know some of my family flees Alberta for as much of the winter as they can... Probably why there are more sun flights out of there... Not so much my BC family.

Sometimes its cheaper to fly to Singapore than to Toronto. My friend booked a flight to Singapore for $620rt some years ago. I think there is no way you can get to Toronto with that price :D

A significant portion of the international traffic at YUL is YUL originating pax heading to the Caribbean and Central American sun resorts. So probably skewed in the other direction. How many Transborder pax are then connecting on to other International flights? And we all know traffic from all over Canada connects in YYZ for onward international flights. Hard to truly compare one airport to the other international versus domestic globally. Canada is the only country that separates US/other. I'd actually be curious which US airport has the highest % of Canadian traffic as a total International numbers. Sounds like a fun project! Example, in Australia, all airports of course separate domestic and International. A pretty decent chunk is Australia-NZ where we have our own relationship. Similar but still different to Canada-US. Being an Aussie, I can just fly to NZ and stay as long as I want (legally)... Forever if I wanted to. So how do you then compare say MEL's international stats to YVR's? Do you remove NZ from MEL as sort of a Transborder type flight and remove USA traffic from YVR? And there are lots of Aussies from all over Australia who connect in SYD for onward international flights.

If you're flexible, it's anywhere between $500 - $550 from Vancouver to Toronto return.

Yes really. I'd much rather have an airport with a lot of international traffic and destinations than a busy domestic airport.

Yeah, pretty cool considering that it was (is?) mostly flying between Japanese megacities (like Tokyo and Osaka) and at the same time there were over a dozen long bullet trains running on those same routes daily. Crazy what two cities of 20M+ people can support. :D

No argument from me. I was never saying there was anything not level going on, just countering the claim that YVR is an embarrassment of riches. It is, but only if you're flying north, east or west.

And ya I'd imagine it has everything to do with climate. I know growing up in Vancouver my family only went on a sun vacation once, and most families I knew were pretty similar. Compare that to Toronto where its nearly unthinkable to not go to Florida/Dominican/Cuba etc.. for a break from the cold.

Before settling for HKG and TPE, I was also keeping an eye on for those two cities out of YVR. In the last three months I never saw Singapore being cheaper than Panama City, but I did see some deals to PTY for around $400. So you can get there cheap, but the flights are on the likes of Delta and via airports like Atlanta.

This didn't get posted here, but a strange scene at YVR on Tuesday when a China Airlines 747 just arrived from Taipei managed to wander off the tarmac into the grass and got stuck. No idea what the pilots were thinking here:

http://www.news1130.com/wp-content/b...29-878x494.png
http://www.news1130.com/wp-content/b...29-878x494.png

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

Auto-pilot all the way to the terminal? :shrug:

Excellent news. And the Irish and Americans are coming.

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/n...onal-1.3423717

So you much prefer the economic situation of having an airport where most of the travellers were locals flying to international destinations to spend their money elsewhere over an airport that brings in compatriots from other parts of the country to spend thier money locally?

An airport that brings in foreigners is probably going to be a larger contributor to the economy than an airport that brings in travellers from inside the country. However, the statistics in this thread do not provide a sufficient amount of evidence to prove that is the case at YUL do they? It's a premature conclusion in an attempt to maintain the notion of superiority. That is why it is so commonly brought up in this thread even when the concept of economic importance isn't being discussed and the absolute numbers are provided simply to measure general activity.

I thought this was simple... Would you rather have a lot of flights to Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver or Doha, Beijing and London? International pax doesn't necessarily mean people spending their money elsewhere, tourism is also involved.

More international routes, more economic possibilities, as simple as that.

Yep. There's a good reason YYZ advertises the fact that it's the second largest international gateway to NA after JFK - it's a very good place to be.

Wont bring back UA though. A lot of American regional operators can't even fly CAT II approaches, much less CAT III.

There are several reasons. Not just the climate.

Distance involved is another. 737s/A320s cannot fly from YVR to most of the Caribbean (east of Cuba) without taking a payload hit, meaning bigger equipment with more range will have to be used. Since the demand isn't that strong to begin with, the justification of sending a Rouge 763 or a TS A310 from YVR to places east of VRA or SNU simply isn't there.

I know Sunwing has once weekly flights to MBJ and PUJ. YVR-PUJ is a whopping 5928 km! It's done non-stop, as per the schedules. That's the longest B738 flight in the world that I know of. The return has a stop in YHM.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...400Z/CYVR/MDPC

Another reason... why fly all the way to the Caribbean, when Hawaii, Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, etc are right there ! This is also why HNL only has a handful of flights to the US east coast and none to Europe. If Europeans want to go to the beach, there are thousands of places to go that are cheaper and closer than HNL.

It is not always a case of Occam's Razor. Sometimes a plane with less passengers if more profitable than a plane with more passengers because the plane with fewer passengers has passengers sitting in the most lucrative seats. If the flights from Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver are bringing in more dollars to the economy than the flights from Beijing, Doha and London, I'd take the economic boost over the prestige. While international passenger at Canadian airports are not automatically spending their money elsewhere, they are not automatically spending their money in Canada either.

Good point. Hawaii is only marginally longer flying time from YVR than the Caribbean is from central Canada (QC/ON, even MB/SK), but it's a million times better anyway as far as vacation destinations go.

Who in their right mind in BC would be thinking about Cuba when you have Hawaii practically next door?

YVR has a lot of important destinations (domestic, TB, Asia/Oceania, Europe) covered. If the worst thing that you can say about it is that you might need to make two stops en route to Uruguay or whatever, then that isn't much of an indictment.

Didn't think of that. Can all Air Canada/WestJet flights land using that? It'd suck if we spent all this money and the planes themselves can't use the tech.

Ditto Cabo and PV. Probably the best places that you could go south of Canada (especially PV). The humidity is far less, the people are easier to deal with, and you can actually go out at night.