They moved YVR from Narita to Haneda a few years ago when slots at Haneda opened up. AC retained the Narita flight.

No, NH never operated NRT-YVR, at least not in the recent time.

The service began as NHD-YVR, starting from S14.

Current plan for NRT-YVR is to run for 4 weeks, then go back to HND. But S22 schedule is still not finalized.

Yeah YVR was moved over as part of the batch of international slots that opened up at HND. HND is better for O&D, while NRT is better for connections. Given how traffic's tanked, no doubt YVR will again rely more on connections for the next while.

Yes, your correct. It was JAL and AC at Naritia and when ANA came along it was from NHD from get go.

The Vancouver International Airport saw its "year-over-year" passenger traffic drop by 72 per cent and it expects this year to be another challenging one because of fewer people choosing to travel by air.

A report that goes before Vancouver city council Tuesday doesn't say whether the drop was calculated for a full calendar or fiscal year, or whether the statistics date back to the declaration of the pandemic in March 2020, but said passenger traffic for the "year-over-year" time frame was 7.1 million.

Statistics on the airport's website show the number of "enplaned and deplaned" passengers for 2019 was 26,379,870. That volume of traffic decreased to 7,300,287 in 2020 and 4,991,843 from January to October of 2021; the November and December statistics have yet to be released.

The Vancouver airport and others in Canada don’t anticipate passenger numbers will return to pre-COVID-19 levels until 2025.

“We anticipate COVID-19 and its effects will endure for several years, and that the return of passenger traffic will be bumpy, slow and unpredictable,” said the report, which was released prior to a presentation Tuesday to council from Vancouver Airport Authority President and CEO Tamara Vrooman.

https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/l...ouncil-4987094

The the above reasons,is why most Canada airlines✈️ are going to continue to re route/consolidate most of its passengers flights through its busiest Airport Hubs & that likely won't change for the forseeable future!!

Canada - Europe flights - Air Canada will likely to continue to consolidate most of its Europe flights✈️ through its busiest 4 AC Hubs in Toronto YYZ, Vancouver YVR, Montreal YUL & Calgary YYC✅!!

As for WestJet they will continue to consolidate most of its Europe flights through its 3 busiest WS Hubs in Calgary,Toronto & Vancouver✅!
Most of the AC & WS to Europe flights from its busiest Hubs are likely to operate this Spring/Summer.

Currently AC still has Halifax YHZ - London UK LHR flights scheduled on the Boeing 737Max8 this Spring/ Summer 2022, but how likely its to operate is still up in the air & still have to wait & see what AC decides??

Also WestJet currently still has Halifax- London Gatwick UK,Dublin,Glasgow and Paris CDG flights scheduled on the Boeing 737Max8 planes this Spring/Summer a few times weekly and how likely all them operate is still up in the air too and have to wait & see what WS decides??

https://biv.com/article/2022/01/chin...-omicron-cases

In response to China’s ban on 4 of Air Canada’s Vancouver YVR to Shanghai PVG flights from carrying any passengers,it looks like Transport Canada has quietly taken action & “restricted/blocked” 4 of (MF) Xiamen Air 806 flights✈️from carrying passengers too on YVR to Xiamen XMN,China until end of February 2022 in response to it.

Not surprising Canada did it also, as since March 2020 pandemic restrictions, the AC 25 & Xiamen Air 806 has had similar departure times at night to China carrying passengers from YVR & usually competing against each other!

YOW is the first major Canadian airport to report December 2021 and year-end pax stats:

Sector / Dec-20 / Dec-21 / % Change
Dom: 44,664 / 165,898 / +271.4%
TB: 0 / 7,292 / #DIV/0!
Int'l: 0 / 11,955 / #DIV/0!
TTL: 44,664 / 185,145 / +314.5%

Sector / YTD 2020 / YTD 2021 / % Change
Dom: 1,032,037 / 1,143,950 / +10.8%
TB: 163,093 / 11,242 / -93.1%
Int'l: 168,382 / 15,597 / -90.7%
TTL: 1,363,512 / 1,170,789 / -14.1%

12 Months Rolling / % Change vs Year End 2019
Dom: 1,143,950 / -71.4%
TB: 11,242 / -98.4%
Int'l: 15,597 / -96.3%
TTL: 1,170,789 / -77.1% - still a huge decline vs 2019. April 2022 will be the start of a huge upswing percentage wise, but not raw numbers wise.

The meaningful indicator these days
Month-Over-Month Change
Sector / Nov-21 / Dec-21 / % Change
Dom: 143,880 / 165,898 / +15.3%
TB: 3,790 / 7,292 / +92.4%
Int'l: 3,642 / 11,955 / +228.3%
TTL: 151,312 / 185,145 / +22.4%
Avg/Day: 5,044 / 5,972 / +18.4%

In December, YOW handled 44.2% of pre-pandemic December 2019 traffic levels.

Basically all Intl is from Nov and Dec.

-77% will be more or less in line with the other major airports. YYC should have better results than the rest of the pack, due to strong domestic numbers.

I would not be surprised to see YYC finish ahead of YVR for 2021.

I imagine the Prairie airports will have the smallest percentage drop vs 2019.

They won’t. YVR/YYC/YUL will finish the year ~ 7/6/5 million respectively….

Out of the 3, YYC is the only one that will beat its 2020 numbers though.

Interesting observation. Hi-Fly does a lot of flying for the Canadian government. At the start of COVID they did the repatriation flights from cruise ships and many of the evacuation flights. They have been doing many of the flights to bring over Afghanistan refuges for resettlement in Canada. They are a charter airline out of Portugal that does the same for many of the European governments.

I can understand going to Hi-Fly when AC, WS and Transat are busy flying their normal routes. However all the domestic airlines are struggling to find routes to deploy their widebody aircraft onto. Wondering why they are not getting as big a piece of the government charter business.

I believe the US has some type of program that goes back decades where they provide subsidies or preferential contracts to the US based airlines and in return the airlines each have several aircraft the US government can activate into national service during an emergency and that is how they moved Afghanistan refuses into the US.

^

At the start of the pandemic in 2020, hi-fly was a regular at YUL on flights from China (including their A380). Mostly to bring in PPE. Nothing pax related. AC, WS and others have done a lot of repatriation flights, more so than hi-fly, that’s for sure.

I know hi-fly recently won a contract for YFB runs, due to the water issue there. And yes, you are right, those contracts should have gone to a Canadian carrier. Mind you AC was involved with water runs to YFB too I think.

FAA has now cleared 90% of all U.S commercial fleet to operate their radio altimeters during low vis ops. They've added 7 additional radio altimeters to the list of approved equipment, bringing the total to 20.

As I was saying last week, this now includes all A220s/CRJs/Dash 8s. It also includes the ATR and Embraer E120 turboprops.

https://www.faa.gov/5g

Air Canada expands its q400 Castlegar to Vancouver service from 4 to 6 weekly!

WS schedule updates to the end of April.

Domestic: https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/flights/domestic-schedule

International/TB: https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/flight...ional-schedule

Doesn’t look like much in the way of route suspensions, but frequency reductions abound.

Yep mostly frequency reductions on flights by WestJet. And there are still few route suspensions for WS currently like :Calgary YYC- Portland US, seasonal Edmonton YEG - Kahului (OGG) Hawaii & YEG - Los Cabos,Mexico all suspended until March as examples.

Also looks like WestJet YYC - Nashville,US & YYC - Paris,France (seasonal) flight ✈️ routes both scheduled to resume mid March 2022 & on the same day.

The UK is requiring airlines to use a minimum 70% of their slots this summer, meaning those routes will likely have to operate in some capacity otherwise AC/WS will risk losing those slots.

https://www.routesonline.com/news/29...r-summer-2022/

YFC year-end pax stats:

100,844 people traveled through YFC in 2021, compared to 103,667 in 2020, and 427,085 in 2019.

That is a surprise. Fredericton Airport was closed (for the most part) from Jan 23, 2021 - Jun 26, 2021. with no major carriers.

Compared to only reduced service in 2020.

The closure (while not ideal) did allow for a major overhaul and facelift.