Record Growth Spurs Strong Third Quarter for WAA

WINNIPEG, Manitoba – October 31, 2018 – The third quarter of 2018 continued to be strong for Winnipeg Airports Authority (WAA).

A strong September, coupled with a record-setting summer, saw passenger totals increase by 5.1 percent compared to the third quarter of the previous year. During July, August, and September of 2018, 1,272,672 passengers travelled through Winnipeg Richardson International Airport.

Consolidated revenue was $36.5 million for the third quarter, compared to $33.9 million for the same period in 2017.

“This continued growth is because travellers are responding positively to the capacity being added in our community. Each new seat has stimulated even greater demand,” said Barry Rempel, President and CEO of Winnipeg Airports Authority. “The efforts of our team, working with our partners, position our city, province, and region for continued success.”

September was busy at the airport, seeing an 8.6 percent increase over last year. As reported earlier, July and August both saw record passengers numbers, up 3.9 percent and 3.4 percent respectively over the previous year. This year’s increase is significant as Winnipeg saw an increase in visitors last year having hosted the Canada Summer Games.

Recent highlights for WAA include the announcement of a partnership with Northstar Robotics and Airport Technologies Incorporated to pilot North America’s first autonomous snowplow. Construction continues as well on the new Ground Services Equipment (GSE) Building, which is expected to be completed in the fall of 2019.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2018, in December Flair Air will be starting direct service from Winnipeg to three Florida destinations, Orlando, St. Pete-Clearwater (Tampa Bay), and Miami, as well as Las Vegas and Phoenix-Mesa.

Source: https://www.waa.ca/media/news/articl...uarter-for-waa

So according to the earning call, YYZ-BOM will still be seasonal... for now

Wow Vancouver way stronger than a Toronto route!?

Hamilton John C. Munro Int. Airport

Massive growth at the airport currently happening. With an average of 12 daily flights, the airport has gone through some extensive apron re-design to accommodate all the aircraft. Today there were 6 aircraft on the ground (at the gates) at once, that number will grow to 7 in December and 8 in January.

With up to 4 international arrivals occurring within 1 hour during the winter, the airport has been busy preparing with terminal re-designing and re-configuring parts of the terminal to ensure a smooth experience.

2 short years ago, there were only 4-5 daily flights from the airport. Definitely North America's fastest growing airport.

Interesting analysis by Calin.

New European routes met or exceeded expectations. Japan and Korea performed well.

Yield pressures to Australia and Mexico. Non stop to EZE hurting yields, hence the tag back online.

One thing I wasn't posted earlier. YYZ-MEX is now 2x Rouge 319 for S19, instead of 319+763. This was a change they made around mid-October.

Far more competition to DEL from YYZ, so not a huge surprise. 9W (even with a stopover), plus EK and EY with strong connecting traffic.

I hope that swoop manages to survive. I love the low fare model, well worth the drive to Hamilton.

September stats for the busiest airports (YYZ hasn't even posted August yet):

YVR 2,232,763 +5.9%
YUL 1,727,490 +8,5%
YYC 1,469,916 +6,3%
YEG 685,240 +6.8%
YOW 416,659 +4.7%

YTD airport stats til September, unless otherwise noted :

YYZ - 28,639,131 +5.7% (til July)
YVR - 19,941,944 +8.0%
YUL - 15,001,245 +6.9%
YYC - 13,188,277 +7.0%
YEG - 6,241,080 +6.1%
YOW - 3,796,837 +4.8%
YWG - 3,400,568

AC handled it's 100,000th passenger on LYS-YUL last week, after 2 years of service. They are very pleased with the route, and the fact they are launching BOD next year shows they are keen to exploit the market between secondary french cities and North America.

I found interesting the top 10 destinations for passengers using LYS-YUL:

1. LYS-Montreal
2. LYS-New York
3. LYS-Quebec City
4. LYS-Toronto
5. LYS-Los Angeles
6. LYS-San Francisco
7. LYS-Vancouver
8. LYS-Las Vegas
9. LYS-Miami
10. LYS-Lima

That last one is pretty interesting....

Link in french only.

http://www.air-journal.fr/2018-10-27...l-5206425.html

Very interesting indeed. You would think there would be multiple opportunities for PAX in LYS to connect through a European Hub to Lima.

Couple YYZ updates:

KLM is doing 9x weekly this winter rather than 7, extra flights as KLM 695/696 on Thursday and Saturday, 1x 772 and 1x 789.

AC 015/016 YYZ-HKG is now showing 400 seater 77W operations.

Both are solid boosts, along side EK, EY, OS and PAL boosting frequencies, should be good for 50 million pax for the year.

Icelandair buys WOW.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/11/...ir-buying-wow/

I was a little surprised to see that news regarding Icelandair and Wow. Especially as Wow has been struggling to some extent. I'm interested to see that they're still planning to market and fly as two separate brands, but do wonder how long it will be before they fly in just Icelandair colours?

I'm not surprised to see this this. I've flown this route many times, and it's nearly always full. It makes sense to add a few extra flights during the winter season.

Will be interesting to see how they consolidate their ops in YUL/YYZ/YVR. Probably nothing will change for summer 2019, but things will be interesting for 2020 onwards.

Viking could acquire rights to Q400 program.

https://theaircurrent.com/scoops/vik...om-bombardier/

Makes sense - the DCH-8 will fit right into the family. Sherry Brydson is building quite the little empire...Roy Thomson would be proud.


So Bombardier becomes, essentially, a division of Airbus?

Link won’t work for non subscribers.

Sorry, first few reports came from a geek sources.

It’s now hit main stream media, https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4896753?__t...mpression=true