I had to collect my bags when coming back through YVR and connecting to a domestic flight. Not sure if the US connections are different.

Not in YYZ though.

Why would United not be pleased? They help set those rates as majority owner of Air Canada trans-atlantic and (more recently) trans-pacific routes; the Joint Venture agreements were a merger for everything except domestic traffic and marketing/branding.

American Airlines, Delta, and US airports (JFK, O'Hare) should be unhappy. United is giggling at figuring out how to use Canadian airport fixed landing-fee agreements with Air Canada to cut costs while taking a cut of the profit.

AC and UA don’t have anti-trust immunity across the Pacific. Only the Atlantic. UA isn’t very inclined in letting AC join its Pacific JV with NH. There must be a reason for this.

https://centreforaviation.com/analys...ncrease-260113

Even on the Atlantic, I was under the assumption that if AC was carrying a passenger doing PIT-YYZ-ATH, UA only had access to the revenues on YYZ-ATH, not the PIT-YYZ segment. No? I could be wrong. If that is the case, then UA is better off funneling that passenger through one of its own hubs, thus generating more revenue with the domestic leg as well.

Nor YUL.

I posted in the Vancouver forum, but worth putting here for the pax projections:

The Vancouver Airport Authority is issuing layoff notices on Monday (May 11) as it expects to have half the passengers – or less – travelling through its gates over the next three years.

YVR is expecting its annual passenger numbers to drop from 26 million - pre-COVID-19 numbers - to between eight and 15 million. After offering voluntary departure packages at the end of April, the airport authority made the decision to next start layoffs.

The airport authority normally employs 550 people, but they plan to reduce this by 25 per cent, laying off both management and unionized workers...

https://biv.com/article/2020/05/yvr-...layoff-notices

Indeed. American and Canadian taxpayers enabling AC to compete with American carriers while gouging Canadians. I don't see why we should be happy with this.

People always forget history and "lessons learned". Passengers will be back flying before you know it. 2 years is my guess. In 2 years time, traffic should be back to 80% of what it was before the pandemic. That's 20 million passengers for YVR.

YVR seems to overestimate everything. They were overestimating the number of destinations they were going to have by 2020. They are overestimating the impact of COVID as well.

You don’t have to in YYC either if your arriving from Europe, the US, NRT or CUN/PVR on WS. When arriving from any international flight and connecting to the US you go straight to US Preclearance, no stopping in CBSA.

I think it has to do with the airlines agreement with CBSA at each airport?

And WestJet has been pricing fares to attract more connections from the US to Europe via its hubs too. They had re-timed its afternoon Transborder bank last year to match up with its 787 schedule.

For one I don't have any issue with that. Filling the plane with (cheap) connecting traffic is the only reason that there are so many non-stop destinations out of most Canadian airport. Without American traffic, even YYZ cannot sustain as many European destinations pre-COVID19.

I wouldn't mind paying a bit extra to save me from connecting to reach my destination (especially through United States!!). But I guess there are always many people who don't mind the extra time and hassle in order to save a few hundred bucks... :shrug:

The biggest determinant in how much people fly is cost. We'd be able to take a lot more trips if flying was cheaper.

I'd care far less if AC was actually working in the interests of Canadians. But instead their fare structure shows that they actively gouge Canadians where they can, relying on the substantial protection given to them (for example, from the Middle Eastern and East Asian carriers). Want to see how absurd the lack of competition gets? AC lobbies against fellow Star Alliance carriers like Turkish, all to ensure the maximum amount of traffic is directed to its JV.

This would be less offensive if more destinations actually opened up for more of the country. Instead, it's mostly larger aircraft to the same destinations and a handful of new destinations from mostly Toronto and Vancouver (even Montreal and Calgary don't benefit as much). If you're in Ottawa, Winnipeg, Halifax or Edmonton, you're still connecting. Why do we have to pay more to connect anyway? In some cases with some heavy backtracking as a bonus too....

The biggest determinant for leisure traveler is cost. The biggest determinant for business traveler is time. For an airlines, the latter matters much more.

It is always cheaper for connecting flights than direct flights. This is not limited to AC, but pretty much every legacy airlines in the world. From my personal experience, YVR-Tokyo-Asia is often cost half as much on JL and NH, than just YVR-Tokyo. It was often cheaper with BR/CI to buy YVR-TPE-HKG then a separate ticket HKG-TPE than flying YVR-TPE direct (until AC came to the market and dump super cheap direct flight tickets). On the other hand, CX sells much cheaper TPE-HKG-YVR ticket than HKG-YVR (until HX cames in, that is). And even then, UA is trying to undercut AC by selling super cheap YVR-SFO-TPE tickets, and DL was even undercutting HX when at one point, when they sold YVR-SEA-HKG at almost the same price as YVR-SEA. This is just how the industry worked back then, but I'm sure it will probably change in the post COVID market...

And for your last point... for the whole connecting traffic to work, it must funnel all traffic to one or few specific airports. If even YYZ cannot sustain some markets without connecting traffic, then what makes you think it will work better by splitting the routes to multiple airports with fewer flights (less attractive) and much more complicated connecting network (also less attractive)? This is how hub-and-spoke system works. Canada just do not have enough population and demand to support point-to-point service except for very very few destinations.

And do you think Turkish is interested in serving places like YQM, YQR or YYJ? ME carriers just want to pick off the cream of the market and could care less about secondary cities. Canadian airlines need that network to justify service to small communities.

Here's the point. If I'm departing Ottawa, what difference does it make to me whether I'm transferring on to an AC or TK frame at YYZ? Presumably, the government should be more interested in my benefit as a consumer than AC shareholders.

As for serving those outlying ports, show me one route AC or WS will operate at a loss indefinitely. They have no issues cutting these routes the minute traffic drops or if the slots get more valuable at Pearson. So no I don't buy that bullshit excuse either.

Question here. How many of you work for AC or WS or have financial interests tied up in those carriers? Be honest.

I don't think you need to pick up your bags in YVR anymore either, they have recently overhauled the connecting process with major modifications behind the scenes. Now you would clear customs and go to the domestic transfer facility.
But that might only be on certain airlines like AC and WS?

AC would probably prefer you fly YOW-LHR with them, then fly TK from LHR to IST as codeshare.

Flying YOW-FRA-IST using JV with LH would probably also preferred over YOW-YYZ-IST. They want you to flight their long hual as much as possible.


ZERO with any aviation business.

I get what AC would prefer. I just disagree that facilitating to that extent should literally come at my expense.

Forget going to Istanbul (fantastic city though it is). But it's about the points beyond. So YOW-YYZ-IST-XYZ. This example shows this protectionism is not at all about helping Canadians as it is about making sure travelers like me fly through the AC-LH JV as opposed to flying TK to my end destination.

I bring this up because TK goes to places I need to go to and not having the luxury of usually ending up in J, I am pissed at the idea I have to suffer AC's shitty Y class, passing up TK's fantastic Y, because somebody has the ignorant idea that this preserves services to Saskatoon....as if AC's shareholders give a shit about preserving service to Saskatoon.

I hope any bailout comes with strict conditions to curb this anti-consumer behaviour. And apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...th-conditions/

Well, it's obviously there won't be enough demand for YOW-XYZ. Otherwise some airline would be already running YYZ-XYZ.

So now, is the option YOW-LHR-XYZ possible? What about YOW-FRA-XYZ? If either one of them is "yes", then why would anyone want to do the route with 2 stops, and why is it matter if there is a YOW-IST or not?

If XYZ is so small that it can only be reached from IST, then sorry, you may be the only few people that uses the route because the demand is so low to even warrant a direct flight to major European hub. Why would any airline need to cater a service that have so low in demand, when they can use their resource elsewhere that serves way more people? If you're AC, and you feel that the options at LHR, FRA, YYZ, and YUL already serve 95% of the demand out of YOW, would you willing to let another airline that can maybe serve an extra 2% but will undercut you for the other 95%?

The point here is why does AC get the privilege of making that decision for me? If I want an extra stop shouldn't that be my call? And do you understand how the reduction in choice impacts my wallet?

I don't buy the "facilitating business travel" excuse either. For years, AC refused to serve most of the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. Yet lobbied against the carriers best positioned to serve those places. We found out later they offered Emirates a deal to drop the lobbying for a cut of profits. It was all about funneling passenger through FRA to improve profit sharing. And of course LH still didn't have the network to really compete. Anybody who legitimately does a lot of business in that part of the world today isn't flying AC or LH or AFKL or BA. Is AC even daily to DEL, BOM and DXB yet?

Now I don't blame AC for this as much as I do the government for putting the interests of AC's shareholders ahead of mine as a consumer. It's unfortunate that this pandemic was hitting just as LCC competition was set to take a chunk out of AC and WS. If I'm already getting 17" wide seats, 30" pitch and shit catering, I don't really give a fuck what colour the metal is on the outside.

So you rather see EK running 7x daily DXB-YYZ and force many other airlines to pull out, than having a while variety of choices of airlines and destinations serving Canada? Yeah, there's a choice made for you, always connect at DXB whenever you want to travel.

And if you think 7x daily is crazy... that was exactly how much they ran to BKK and SIN before COVID19...

That’s exactly it. At all 4 airports, to the best of my knowledge, if you’re not connecting on the same carrier or a codeshare, you still need to connect the “old fashioned way”. For example, if you fly LHR-YYZ on AC and then interline to AA (and terminal transfer), you’ll still have need to retrieve your bags. I know at YOW and YHZ, you need to still to clear Canadian customs, go to the transfer desk/belt and clear security on the other side. However at YOW if you’re connecting to transborder from domestic, I believe for the past several years now your bags are checked through...at least from a domestic flight.