We already do have access to RyanAir and the like, really. Once we're in Europe, we can avail of those flights, and the direct flights to Dublin/London accomplish that purpose. A lot of my friends took the flight to Dublin and went on to Paris, St. Petersburg, even Istanbul, etc.

Their logo is beautiful.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfou...nder-1.3230960

I doubt Air Canada was charing $4000 round trip from St. John's. West jet has now reverted to being the exact same price as Air Canada on this route, it seems.

You could already fly to London, Paris, Glasgow, Frankfurt, and Dublin without going to central Canada from either St. John's or Halifax.

I was confused because there was a flight segment missing (YWG-YYZ on my Westjet flight itinerary). There was a miscommunication between AA (the ticket issuer) and WJ (the service provider). The flight has now been properly booked. Good thing I checked. Would have probably missed my flight.

A lot of stories about flights in Atlantic Canada don't really make sense. For example, people complain about having to connect through Halifax from Moncton, but Moncton is a city with 150,000 people or so that is only a 2 hour drive from the Halifax airport (!). They have great flight options given the size of the market.

It sucks that people have to fly to Toronto sometimes from Newfoundland when they're heading east but we're talking about a huge island with under 500,000 people living on it. I don't think there is enough of a market to have multiple affordable flights to Europe or less frequently travelled long distance destinations every day. People living in Newfoundland are probably pretty well-served by the hybrid hub-and-spoke model combined with a few longer distance flights.

Just for comparison, from where I live, I have to drive 2.5 hours to Brandon airport (haven't used it yet) and 3 hours to Winnipeg to fly anywhere. I don't feel too bad for anyone.

Of course not, but Maritimers think that every airport has to have every destination they could ever possibly want and feel needlessly hassled to have to drive another hour down the road to that other airport. :shrug:

That's a pretty wide brush to paint all maritimers with but I get your point. When I hear folks grumble about YHZ being snubbed in this latest WS expansion because it's apparently a huge, bustling metropolis (hyperbole, people, hyperbole) that no one knows about is a wee bit silly.

I'm not sure what qualifies as a bustling metropolis but YHZ is roughly tied with Winnipeg for 7th in Canada and gets about 80% as much traffic as Ottawa despite the fact that it serves a city with a smaller population. The reason for this is that the driving distances outside of the region are farther so people fly more and YHZ is a regional hub where people fly in before connecting to the smaller airports.

Some people think the airport in Halifax is like, say, the airport in London, Ontario, which gets about 1/7 the traffic.

I agree that the complaining is weird though. There is some distortion of the market from Transport Canada limiting who can fly in, etc., but generally speaking the flight options available depend on what the markets can support. Atlantic Canada generally has much better local flight options than other parts of Canada aside from the largest cities like Toronto.

London is an interesting comparison. You're driving several hours to get to the nearest major airports, but it has paltry service in comparison to other much smaller cities.

Google says 1:45 right now from downtown London to Pearson. It would take very little in the way of better pricing or better schedules to get people to make that drive.

In an alternate universe with a major international airport less than 2 hours from Halifax it would probably have a lot less traffic too.

International jetty expansion almost done... YUL looking gooood

http://oi61.tinypic.com/vzab2g.jpg

http://oi57.tinypic.com/2ezquma.jpg

http://oi60.tinypic.com/r86noh.jpg

^
Nice pics. its coming along nicely, but still some work left to do. Opening is only for June 2016. That last pic says it all. 4 heavies parked at remote stands to make room for other heavies at the jetty. Add in the winter time charters down south, and you can see how the international jetty will need these 6 additional gates.

Nice to see rush hour pics with most of the gates full !

Very jealous seeing all that foreign tail at YUL.

Here in YYC I'm just hoping BA can stick it out so we have some variety from AC and WS with them and KL around.

yup!! ive been looking for pics for quite some time now.... nice to see all those gates occupied....

we're getting Air China 3 weekly beginning September 29, 2015... also Icelandair in May.

T'es chien, Stan, t'es chien!!! :D

Icelandair is a great way to fly since you can stay over in Iceland with no extra fees. First flew Icelander to Luxembourg in 1978 when the only North American destinations were Chicago and NYC. Took CN's Turbo-train from Toronto to Montreal and then the Amtrak Vermonter night train to NYC, spent the day in NYC and left that evening to Iceland. Spent 2 days in Iceland on the way over and 3 on the way back.
Did the same trip on my honeymoon in but stayed longer in Iceland. Hitched hiked out into the country side and camped over looking the Westman Islands still erupting in the distance.

A lot of airlines allow free stopover in Europe