Haha ya Johnny merry Xmas buddy!

An update that Westwind has now been suspended following the recent crash in Saskatchewan: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskat...sion-1.4463510

This means that ironically a business wanting to access both major Saskatchewan cities would have better access if located in Winnipeg, Calgary etc. as opposed to actually being based in SK. Still seems extremely strange from my vantage point.

^^^ To help put it into prospective, it's only ~2 hour drive between Saskatoon & Regina and at least an hour flight to each of those cities from Calgary or Winnipeg. There would be no advantage to flying in from out of Province than just to be in Saskatchewan to begin with.
I'd bet most people with a good business sense would probably do what 99.99% of the people between those two cities do right now & just drive highway #11 direct between the two Saskatchewan cities when they need to.

I wonder if a business that wanted better access to St. Louis & Kansas City, Missouri would be best located out of State & in say ...Dallas?
or Tampa & Orlando, Florida better served if business was located in Atlanta?
or Memphis & Nashville, Tennessee business to be located in Chicago?
or between Cleveland & Columbus, Ohio?
...or Charleston & Columbia, South Carolina?:shrug:

All these city pairs don't have regular scheduled direct non-stop commercial flights between and are about the same distance apart as Saskatoon and Regina.

Those are helpful for putting it in perspective. If I had a choice, I'd definitely prefer that YXE get more US flight options. The loss of the direct YXE-Denver flights on United is really a killer for me. Heading home for Christmas when flights were quite full took 10 hours door to door, versus a 15 hour drive. Not to mention the uncertainty in the cold weather: my wife was informed that she would be overnighting in YYC given a late departure when she arrived at the airport at 10:30am until she put up enough of a fuss. Adding in the cost of the flights and the convenience of having a car when we arrive, we've decided that next year we're going back to driving. :(

I bet I was closer to the 24 millionth, I landed on the 31st on the 10:45 from YUL and I bet YVR just squeaks into 24 million this year.

I'd be much happier if we hit 24mil on the 22nd though!

OAG just released their busiest routes of 2017. LGA-YYZ was 6th busiest in the world and the busiest international route outside of East Asia, with 17,116 frequencies. It was also the least on-time route.

http://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-N...routes-in-2017

Crazy video out of YYZ:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BdlmXHTnePV/

Apparently there were a lot of very stupid, selfish, callous people on that plane. Insisting on retrieving ones luggage during an emergency evacuation would have caused fatalities if this were a more serious incident.

November 2017 YUL

1 233 998 +9,4%


Domestic 522 422 +6,4%
International 389 844 +12,5%
Transborder 321 732 +10,6%


YTD
16 761 911 +9,5%


On Dec 22nd, YUL welcomed their 18 millionth passenger ! So Id say about 18.2 million for 2017! but we shall see once final results are in :)

YVR just posted their November figures. Total traffic up 10.2%, with growth in all sectors. Domestic up 6.0%, Transborder up 12.7%, and International up 16.6%. Really tremendous growth, hopefully December keeps the numbers up! YTD up 8.3%

Year to date (with 1 month keft to go), YVR still leads the Canadian Big 4 airports in transborder growth and total international growth. YUL continues to lead in domestic growth and international (noty incl. transborder). YYZ just posted October stats, and is doing steady growth, but doesn't lead in any individual categories.

Very confused there for a moment with your acronym. YTD is the airport code for Thicket Portage airport in Northern Manitoba. They get crazy passenger traffic for a village with a population of 148. Every resident flies 310 times a day! lol

Just to put some raw numbers to the YVR percent increases for November:

YVR November 2017: 1,749,169

YVR Year-to-date: 22,139,479

Source: http://www.yvr.ca/en/about-yvr/facts-and-stats

Dec likely to be very strong as well, with Melbourne starting up and a few other smaller routes kicking in like Yellowknife.

I expect the year will end at 24.2 million or thereabouts.

For those still confused... Year To Date :)

Their stupidity is proven by what they were wearing too.

Wouldn't it lead in absolute increase (instead of % increase) in passengers?

I would say more along the lines of 18.35 million.

Yes but absolute numbers are not used as a measure of growth in any comparables, % growth is the only thing that gets counted. An airport with triple the passengers can have a larger absolute number very easily, but it doesn't represent anything. All growth statistics are measured in percentage

I'm not an aviation guy so forvive me but how does 18 mil stack up against other metros of 4 mil ? (just curious)

I wouldn't say it doesn't represent anything. It most certainly represents something - and something substantial. Growth rates always slow when an airport starts to approach 50 MM pax a year, but to still be adding 3 MM pax a year most definitely represents very strong growth.

YUL should be busier, but only on the domestic side of things. That is where the numbers are lacking. In North America, due the sheer size of the US domestic travel market, pretty much any metro area with a 4 million population has a busier airport, such as DTW or PHX. When you consider the rest of the world, not so much, as plenty of larger cities have airports that are less busy than YUL.

Ex. Casablanca, Porto Alegre, Ankara, etc....

On the international front, YUL punches above it's weight for a city of 4 million in North America.

Bottom line, every city is different, and hence every city's airport is different. Things to consider in this situation are location (remote locations will usually have busier airports), demographics, wealth of the population (disposable income and therefore propensity to fly), proximity to other large metro areas, access to other modes of transport (train, auto, bus), etc.