And?

Airlines are in the business of making money. They are not public services building service plans on some concept of equity.

YOW also suffers from two big realities:

1) The largest employer in town has really curtailed corporate travel and won't be seeing substantial resumption for a while. I imagine this might really become the new normal for a large part of the federal government too. Especially, if there's a change in government to one focusing on fiscal restraint.

2) It's an airport dominated by a JV partner of Lufthansa. Why send a frame to YOW and use up a slot, when AC will shuttle pax to YUL or YYZ, to connect on to widebodies.

You'd make the exact same call if you were in LH planning.

Even if they were I'm not sure that doling out flights by metropolitan population makes sense. Different regions have different transportation needs.

Ottawans seem to have this chip on their shoulder that they should get proportionally rewarded compared to Toronto and Montreal. Reality doesn't work like that. Especially in aviation.

If I were an AC or LH exec, I would make the same call too. Ottawa residents don't have much choices. So they will fly whatever they are served up. So why bother with a high cost low yield operation at YOW? Meanwhile, boosting frequencies to the bigger metros improves returns substantially by spreading fixed costs in those cities across multiple flights and opening up even more connection opportunities.

The best thing Ottawa could get would an HSR connection to Montreal so that Dorval became accessible in about an hour. That would actually open up way more travel opportunities than scrapping for the odd daily long haul narrowbody. Though, I am sure in due course, Ottawa will start seeing more long-haul narrowbody flights from some of the LCCs.

Ottawa has flights to London (Heathrow no less), in addition to just about every major city in Canada. Along with a number of US destinations.

OK, so no Dublin, Glasgow or Paris. Frankfurt might be happening at some point, but the airline industry is still recovering, so I get the hesitancy. Montreal is one of the best connected cities to Paris for obvious reasons, so I could see why both Westjet and Air Canada are reluctant to jump in.

Looking at other airports around the world, I don't seem to get the sense that airports of 5-8 million passengers in other regions have huge numbers of intercontinental flights either.

As is appropriate for the national capital of a country with 38M, that is also a metro of 1.4M.

Montreal gets more than just connections to France. And at least of some those flights as just a function of AC having a hub there. If ever Westjet jumps onboard the SkyTeam train, they'd expand there too.

I do agree that Ottawa does decently for its size. Which is kinda why the whining about getting shafted compared to other cities is odd. We get the connections we need.

What we actually need is diversity of options rather than destinations per se. Having Air Canada's JV partner fly from FRA really isn't going to help the Ottawa traveler much. I would literally rather have British Airways go toe-to-toe with Air Canada over YOW-LHR.

It would seem to be a big opportunity for someone like Westjet to jump in with something like YOW-CDG or AMS. Of course, you can bet that AC would drop prices and add FRA in that case until they're chased out.

Just FYI Air Canada launches new YUL-CAI route today.

Looking like a full load.

Now that Air Canada is coming back Central Mountain Air is pulling back out at YCG.

Ottawa had flights to London. Not anymore.

I was under the impression that YOW-LHR was fairly important for AC, and that it would return by next year. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case. AC hasn't flown YOW-LHR since the onset of the pandemic, and won't be in a rush to re-add it either, even after the restrictions for intl flights are lifted.

Apparently the route isn't as lucrative as I initially thought.

Earlier last month, AC hinted at maybe getting some A321LRs. I can see them holding off on resuming YOW-LHR until that happens. And that might take a couple of years at least. Until then, they will funnel all the YOW-LHR crowd through YUL/YYZ.

I think YOW-LHR will be halted until the slot waiver expires at Heathrow and business traffic picks up.

There's no way AC would risk giving up a slot there by not using it.

Can the 737 MAX make it from Ottawa to London? The A321LR/XLR would be a good fit for AC, but the A320neo would have been the better option, period. It must have been a screaming deal from Boeing to go with the 737 MAX.

They'll just double up on YUL-LHR in order to keep the slot. They can move it to YYZ as well if need be. The point is, they will focus on building back up the hubs first, and YOW-LHR isn't part of that plan.

Yes, the MAX can fly YOW-LHR. It's within range. However, the 4,000NM range of the A321LR is better suited for the route, especially in winter, for the westbound.

That makes sense. When I lived in Ottawa in the late 1990s there was an AC and a Canadian YOW-LHR that left at adjoining gates at nearly the same time. Both were 767 back then. So today in normal times there should be sufficient traffic. But it is not normal times.

I suspect the route is government heavy. There is not a lot government travel with COVID bans etc. in place. When traffic comes back I suspect they will move the extra YUL flight back to YOW and at the same bump up the size of the aircraft from YUL. Until then it makes sense to keep the extra flight out of YUL.

Advanced booking must be very good...

YYZ-OGG increased from 1x weekly to 2x weekly, and will use 789 instead of 788
YVR-HNL increase from daily to daily 789 + 3x weekly 7M8
YVR-OGG increase from daily to daily 789 + 4x weekly 7M8

No change for other routes

Right after WS announced their own Hawaii schedule too. :haha:

Yeah, advance bookings are very good. A few of WS YYC-OGG's are almost 100% sold out on the 789.

WestJet is entering the dedicated cargo market through the use of Boeing 737-800 Boeing Converted Freighter (BCF) aircraft, beginning in 2022.

Press Release
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E4k1nYAX...pg&name=medium

Seems late and somewhat pointless given Westjet's limited range worldwide. As a side business on passenger flights, fine, but a dedicated fleet? In North America, there's tons of competition and alternate modes of transport to flight.

Cargo is a moneymaker when one can fill the plane and the other transport options are more limited, which is the case with overseas travel.

Hmm I can see them going after some of the Nunavut NWT market. Or at least into the major airports.

Anytime now feds for YEG international flight permissions.

Aren't those markets well served already? It seems strange for an established airline to be going into the cargo business with narrowbodies.

I thought YEG had an exemption for AMS/DEN?