For London (and maybe frankfurt) I can see London making sense. But Europe is big, and no city covers in this country like Toronto. So if you are going to most cities in Europe from a non direct city, wouldn't connecting in Toronto make the most sense?

Generally yes, but I suspect the airports in Sask orbit YYC pretty closely, with frequent connections and decent capacity. So if you can catch a flight overseas from YYC with a short connection time, in some cases it might easily beat going to YYZ if you have to wait a long time there.

Conversely, YWG is very well connected to YYZ so it becomes the natural connecting point for people headed to Europe.

Yes, especially if you are a 'Westjetter' - Westjet uses Saskatchewan's airports as feeders to support their YYC hub for sure.

For example today Westjet has 16 departures from YXE (Saskatoon): 8 to YYC/ 2 to YYZ/ 2 to YWG.

Air Canada has 13 departures today from YXE: 4 to YYC/ 4 to YYZ/ 2 to YVR/ 2 to YWG.

(Edit: For interest I looked up YQR (Regina) for today: Wesjet has 17 departures, 10 to YYC; Air Canada has 13 departures; 6 to YYZ)

So if Saskies are Westjetters - due to frequencies they will likely be funnelled thru YYC, even if going east. I have family in YXE and they often fly west to YYC to go to YYZ or YUL. Crazy I know.

I imagine Westjet will just ramp up connecting prairie traffic via YYC going forward, and try to capture most 'Westjetters' from YEG and eastern British Columbia. As Westjet does - YYC does, no doubt who the new terminal there was built for.

If you're talking about Canadian coverage, absolutely, no one comes close.

If you're talking about European coverage, than YUL comes pretty close. After those two, it drops significantly.

European airports with direct service from YYZ - 37
European airports with direct service from YUL - 33

direct = non stop or one stop, as long as it's same plane service. Either way, most of these are non stop.

(did this quickly, so possible errors)

That's totally how hub & spoke system works, have flights from one airport like Saskatoon's YXE to hubs like Edmonton's YEG or Vancouver's YVR, & of course, Calgary's YYC, as in Westjet's case every couple hours frequency from YXE, so that all feeder planes can fill long haul Westjet flights from Calgary to Gatwick, De Gaulle, Dublin etc. Air Canada does the same from YXE to YYC to load it's flights to Heathrow & Frankfurt etc.

Does sound crazy but, sometimes feeder flights go in direction to airports for filling long haul flights that will be headed in reverse-opposite direction. Victoria's airport is a good example of this, since most Victoria flights are between it & Vancouver, most options mean Vic-ies have to fly north to Vancouver first, then flying south back over Victoria to get to California or Vegas...what have you.

One unfortunate thing about Victoria to Vancouver flights is that they can be very expensive, I found on-line one round trip flight was almost $800, & that's for a 25minute flight each way :(

The going in reverse thing seems odd on an intuitive level, but it makes sense if an airline runs frequent service to a hub, e.g. 8 flights a day to YYC means you'll probably have a shorter connection time to catch a flight to Europe than if you go to YYZ on one of the 2 flights a day there. As I've mentioned, AC likes to funnel YWG passengers through YYZ and I've gone there to catch all manner of flights including to Asia.

^^
Wow, totally must be dependant on what Asia city Winnipeger is flying to:shrug:

Last time I flew from Saskatoon to Hong Kong, it was a seamless two hour AC flight to Vancouver, 2-3 hour wait at YVR then the 13 hours flight to HKG, That was 4 years ago though but I'd hope AC still operates that afternoon Asian flight.

It was the first time & only time I'd ever been on a flight where Canada Customs agents were on the jetway of a boarding plane & randomly pulling passengers aside, such as myself, to ask questions about 'how much money are you taking overseas with you?" etc :sly:

This has never happened to me flying to Asia from California though, not sure if it's a Canada thing.

I had a backpack & a laptop case, but I must have looked like the type to carry large sums of unaccounted money to Asia. :???:

^ Normally I have gone through YVR en route to Asia, but that one time I flew through YYZ was to NRT. I can't recall if it was new and they were struggling to fill seats or what (this was a few years back), but as I recall there were a lot of empty seats on that flight. Coming back NRT-ORD the plane was pretty well full.

I can't say I've ever been questioned in the jetway as to how much money I'm bringing with me, though... but to be on the safe side, next time I head overseas I'll be sure to leave backpack stuffed with hundred dollar bills at home :P

^^You probably don't have to worry about being 'pegged' (pardon the pun) as a money launderer, it's those shifty-eyed Saskatchewan English teachers in Asia that are closely scrutinized. I don't know any money launderers but I do know of tons of Sask English teachers in Asia, there have even been reality TV series about some Sask English teachers.

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Yes - YYJ being a feeder airport - I know people that fly Westjet YYJ (Victoria) to Vegas and connect via YYC or YEG (for the cheap fare mainly - not schedule).

Westjet, when it was all 737 before Encore, had 3 to 5 flights a day from YYJ to each Alberta airport and none to YVR. Now that Westjet runs Q400s, they have ramped up service to YVR - so they are now funnelling more PAX through there.

Air Canada mainly funnels YYJ PAX through YVR.

Departures from YYJ this Friday:

WestJet has 18 departures : 6 to YVR; 5 to YYC & 5 to YEG. (when you book online to points east of Alberta, Westjet mainly feeds you though YYC)

Air Canada has 15 departures: 11 to YVR; 3 to YYC; 1 to YYZ

Because of YYJs close proximity to SEA, we also have 7/8 daily departures via Delta and Alaska. So many US bound YYJ passengers connect via SEA due to convenience/frequencies as the SEA departures are timed for connections.

So AC mainly feeds through YVR & YYZ and Westjet mainly funnels through YVR, YYC and YYZ.

Taking large amounts of currency into and out of Canada

While it's not illegal to take large amounts of currency out of the country, you have to report it to CBSA.

Bringing large amounts of currency into foreign nations has to be reported and may be illegal in some cases, depending on the nation.

I guess you were the lucky random person who got stopped? Bringing money into and out of China has been a hot-button issue lately.

I often get flights back to England via Amsterdam rather than the direct flight to Heathrow. I then get a connecting flight to a regional airport 10 mins from my family. It saves me a 2-3 hr drive to/from Heathrow.
Depending on the route over the UK into AMS, many times I will fly over the house on my way before doubling back again. Several people have commented to me thinking it's crazy to fly an hour east, but for convenience, it's much better.

Same thing goes for most maritimers flying to Europe. You first have to fly west to YYZ or YUL to get your flight to Europe which in most cases takes you right back over where you originally started your trip hours before. Ive taken pictures of my hometown from 30+ thousand feet numerous times.

I flew from Victoria to Edmonton on Flair recently. There was a gate announcement as we descended into Edmonton for people connecting on to Abbottsford.

That's flying over 1650km to end up 106km from where you started. Probably cost less than the ferry ride would have!

YYJ-YEG-YXX? Yikes. That's not a winning business model.

In Japan, people who want to go from Sapporo to North America all have to backtrack to NRT before heading east again, despite it being the closest major airport to North America.

And Sapporo is a city of almost 2 million people.

Their website doesn't currently allow you to book that. Maybe it did in the past?

I moved out of Saskatoon about 3 years. However until that point I was doing flights into Europe a few times a year. Mostly business centers. There was no real advantage going through Toronto over Calgary. However back then the options in Toronto were more limited. It may have changed now that Toronto has not direct flights into secondary European cities.

Going over the arctic via Calgary is a bit faster that going through Toronto. Comes down to how tight the connections can be made.

I don't think there is a lot of people on the YYJ-YVR flight that are just doing that leg. Almost everyone is going to be making an onward connection.

If you want to travel between Vancouver and Victoria there are also float planes, and helijet doing downtown to downtown service.

YYJ-YVR is serviced by AC and WS, however it is also served by Pacific Coastal who go into the YVR south terminal and has connects from their to points in the interior of BC. YVR South Terminal is a much nicer experience than the main terminal.

A lot of low-capacity spoke flights feeding into hubs seem designed to discourage point to point traffic without connections. The per mile cost of YYJ-YVR is probably stratospheric.

For instance, YWG to any US city (MSP, ORD, DEN) is typically priced quite high and it generally costs less to fly a connecting segment to a UA or DL hub. No one I know flies to MSP (a 7.5 hour drive away) unless it's on a company dime... few will pay $500 to fly to MSP when $450 will get you to LAX, using the same YWG-MSP flight for the first leg.