I am completely confused by Flair business strategy.

Just tried doing some dummy booking for April 16th. From Saskatoon you can flyer to Winnipeg or Toronto. But other days of the week you can't do either. On the 16th the aircraft looks to go from Saskatoon to Winnipeg return and then off to Toronto.

They could offer YWG-YXE-YYZ, but they don't. Yes, it is a silly routing but it is better than having a daily offering than have passengers wait an extra day.

If they are not going to do connections they have the wrong aircraft for these cities. WestJet was able to make their early network with the 737 work because they were setup to do connecting flights. It would have been a failure otherwise.

I mean either way a YWG-YXE or YWG-YQR will both serve at least a million people which is not an insignificant number. In that allotment you need to provide alternative forms of transportation. For example, this could also be used by recently made startups who want to expand operations but need to save resources on transportation while still reaching a destination in a reasonable timeframe.

Fares start at $49 and get to your desired location in 90 minutes that’s probably more affordable then driving while being way more efficient. Especially with the way gas prices are trending I can guarantee you they won’t struggle to find a crowd. If it also helps reduce the absurd prices brought forth by west jet and air Canada I’m all for it.

Enter...er coming soon (again).

https://www.jetlines.ca

I've not really followed Flair's network design, but my understanding is they're more point-to-point leisure flying than anything else. Their customer is one who will change their plans around the cheap Flair flight, not one who needs a reliable everyday service.

Admittedly the YWG-Saskatchewan flights seem more like a trial balloon at this point. I imagine the scheduling operations saw some idle time with planes sitting in Winnipeg. So, a complete round trip probably could be done in less than 4 hours a few times a week. If it works, great. If not, oh well.

I would be curious if a discount airline could make the old Westjet hop across the country flights work on a daily basis. One plane starts in Halifax in the morning, hops to Vancouver via Montreal, Toronto/Ottawa, Winnipeg/Regina/Saskatoon and Calgary/Edmonton. Another plane starts in Vancouver, does the reverse.

I suspect it wouldn't work for a bunch of reasons (fuel-hungry takeoffs/people prefer direct flights/time zone issues/one airport having issues screws up entire operation are some issues that come to mind) and this is why direct flights are definitely favoured.

Any decade now!

I mean, Chinese Democracy did eventually get released too.

Maybe it just doesn't work and people prefer to fly direct nowadays? If you look at the old CP routes from 1987 (taken from another forum), you'll see most of the routes are hops across Canada. So it would be more acceptable back then when WS just started. No airline do that nowadays, and no one want to fly YVR-YUL with 3 stops anymore.

They did try YVR-YYC/YEG/YMM/YQR/YXE/YWG-YYZ and YXX/YLW-YEG-YYZ, but seems like they move away from that network after just a couple of seasons, and convert all flight to direct and standalone.

I suspect you're right, especially in the case of mainline airlines. Concentrating people at the next big hub and using the appropriate aircraft for the amount of passengers is the better decision. If there's enough passengers between two points, a direct flight makes sense over a multi-stop one.

A quick look at Flair seems to indicate that they're trying to get the low-end passenger who doesn't mind less frequent schedules in exchange for a discount price.

This time Jetlines will have actually $ backing them with the Global X ACMI US carrier that just started ops. https://www.globalairlinesgroup.com/charter.html

This iteration of Jetlines will be completely different more akin to Allegiant and their closest competitor will be Sunwing. I personally hope they actually get off the ground this time.

With TS' retrenchment from western Canada and markets like YOW where demand for sun flights has almost always exceeded supply thanks to YUL being down the 417 and YOW being the AC & WS YYZ feeder capital, there are opportunities there to exploit. In the east, even with a WG presence, places like Sudbury can handle more than 1 sun flight a week. They could easily handle 3-5 more when you compare market size with say Moncton that has a pile of sun routes.

If they're planning to launch in early 2022 but only announce flights in early 2022 they'd be restricted for sun flights. If they want to launch sun flights in February or March or April 2022 they'd have to announce some routes pretty soon (1-2 months).

Interesting flying today out of YYC.

-Domestic lines are 1hr+
-Trans/Inter 10mins
-A few folks past their 72hr window
-US departures seem busy though; our flight to DFW is oversold.

“Expect news” to me equates to “we will announce either our summer 2022 plans or winter sun 2022-23 routes in early 2022”. “Early 2022” to me = anytime in Q1 2022, which could be as late as late March.

Today the inaugural F8 transborder flight to FLL departed YOW, which was the first transborder departure period since June 2020. It even departed on time. Today was also the return of AC on YOW-YTZ since 2005 and later tonight marks the return of network transborder air service as UA touches down at YOW from IAD for the first time since late March 2020.

Wow for Ottawa that US flights✈️ Resumes again. At least it’s slowly returning to
normal for smaller & less busiest airports in Canada but not 100% yet!

Interesting,speaking of Calgary YYC - US flights✈️

This upcoming week:
Calgary - New York JFK resumes on WestJet , 2x weekly November 1 to December 17 and upto 4x weekly from Dec.19 & 1st time it has operated since late March 2020.

Calgary- Seattle, flights resumes again November 4 - on Alaska Airlines which was suspended since late March 2020 will be operating 1 daily & also WestJet’s new Calgary- Seattle service starts the same day operates upto 4-6 weekly.

Also on November 4 seasonal Calgary - Orange County 2-3 weekly flights starts up again on WestJet too.

WestJet 787 planes ✈️ will be operating some flights to sun destinations in Mexico and Hawaii starting November 2021 for this upcoming Winter season again.

Calgary-Cancun
Calgary-Puerto Vallarta
Calgary-Kahului OGG
Toronto- Cancun
Vancouver - Kahului OGG

YYC-OGG (Maui) is back this week too. 2x weekly initially, then increases gradually to daily by late December.

Stuck in DFW due to a cancelled MEX flight from COVID regulation implementations. No cabs, no motels, only airport bar is packed with future residents tonight.

And work on what the US Customs people did to pass the time with no flights day after day? Did they get reassigned to other airports?

You got taken AAdvantage of….;)

Massive cancelations at DFW this past weekend. Some of it was weather, most of it was flight crews timing out at the end of the month.

I went into work last Thursday and there was a GDP for DFW. That’s extremely rare. They were on the 31s due to weather/wind. It snowballed from there.

Not a clue. YWG and YEG also had and YHZ still has no transborder departures to preclear.