Alberta is the province with the most vaccine hesitancy in the country. Will be interesting to see how that factors into WS's European ambitions this year and next. They're going to need to rely on connections from out of province even more to fill these flights.

I doubt these are permanent slots. These are most likely ad-hoc slots granted to WS, same as what happened at LHR.

With the slot alleviations granted in Europe for S21, a lot of airlines were able to return slots they didn't need. This in turn enables airlines wanting access to places like AMS or LHR to operate their routes, for this summer only.

Likely. These flights are only loaded August 5-November 1 and don't appear in 2022 as of now.

The WestJet flight is timed for connections from major points in western Canada and some of their US destinations at the Calgary end and KLM flights within Europe on the Amsterdam end.

The KLM flight is timed for onward connections from Amsterdam into Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

They are each playing to the strength of their network at their hub.

How exactly they compensate each other on the code share side is a confidential detail they are not going to share with anyone. It could be pre-rated based on number of miles of it one airline is always operating the overseas flight they have a fixed price they are paying for the connecting flight. We don't know. Where the two airlines deliberately plan who is going to operate which route and under which conditions is something that would illegal unless they have anti-trust immunity as part of some time of joint venture. I don't believe WS is part of any such joint venture over the Atlantic.

Last thing to add is Air France and KLM are basically the same company with Air France serving the more premium heavy routes. The fact Calgary has KLM and not Air France is probably a good indication their premium market in Calgary is fairly limited.

Sector May-20 May-21 % Change
Dom: 8,386 / 21,599 / +157.6% - with Flair's arrival, I'd expect June numbers to almost double.
TB: 535 / 0 / -100.0%
Int'l: 0 / 0 / #DIV/0!
TTL: 8,921 / 21,599 / +142.1%

Sector / YTD 2020 / YTD 2021 / % Change
Dom: 752,871 / 117,426 / -84.4%
TB: 162,874 / 0 / -100.0%
Int'l: 168,382 / 0 / -100.0%
TTL: 1,084,127 / 117,426 / -89.2%

12 Months Rolling / % Change vs Year End 2019
Dom: 396,592 / -90.1%
TB: 219 / -100.0%
Int'l: 0 / -100.0%
TTL: 396,811 / -92.2% - the first time this has gone up since COVID-19 struck was 384k in April

The meaningful indicator these days
Month-Over-Month Change
Sector / Apr-21 / May-21 / % Change
Dom: 20,716 / 21,599 / +4.3%
TB: 0 / 0 / #DIV/0!
Int'l: 0 / 0 / #DIV/0!
TTL: 20,716 / 21,599 / +4.3%
Avg/Day: 691 / 697 / +0.9% - newly added stat to compare daily averages - for comparison, May 2019 was 14,209!

Maybe, but we are nearly at 70% and the majority who would be using these European routes were probably the firs to get pricked.

All good.:tup:

Alberta's vaccination rates are not drastically different than other places in Canada really, it's splitting hairs when you get above 70-75ish. I wouldn't say any airline would look at small percentile differences. And I also don't think 2x weekly summer is enough to boot KLM out. If they go to year round daily, that's a different story. Maybe we'll see what happens when Westjet formally joins Skyteam.

Air Canada announces a slew of route resumptions and new services from YUL-YDF, YUL-YXE-YQR, and YUL-YLW. I thought AC already had served YDF and YXE/YQR from YUL? But they are calling them new routes, so I could be mistaken. I am so surprsied by all these airlines starting service to YLW, I didn't think it was a draw for anoyone outside BC or Alberta, I am shocked the amount of flights added there. And they aren't a massive originating source for connecting flights either, so can't see the push or pull factors. And AC doesn't even have direct flights from YVR-YHZ or YVR-YQB even now with the A220. It actually appears AC is dehubbing YVR to an extent, they are totally bypassing it with all of the new domestic connections, and aren't even recommitting to most international routes. I think they might be realizing demand is too soft to sustain it

https://aircanada.mediaroom.com/2021...iently-Connect

Flair adds Grande Prairie, AB as 20th Destination

Service to Grand Prairie starts August 1st. 2 Non-Stop Destinations.

Vancouver 2x Weekly
Toronto 2x Weekly.

This is really interesting.

https://twitter.com/lufthansaNews/st...49831547469832

LH is tweeting they're launching FRA-YHZ 3x weekly on their Eurowings Discover brand from June 13, 2022.

YVR doesn't have A220 based there, the smallest plane is MAX. Same as YYC. There aren't enough A220 to share between all 4 bases.

So has YOW been forgotten yet again? 🙄

Whose money is Flair burning through?

How many times do we need it proved that Canada can really only support two large airlines?

Oh that makes sense, but still it seems like AC isn't really giving YVR anything, in fact they seem to be purposely undercutting it by launching routes to many destinations that would otherwise have connected in YVR (HNL, YLW, all the China/Japan flights now out east). These are all destinations that would've connected in YVR in the past. If I were some of the YVR based Air Canada crew I'd be a bit worried that these cuts will stick around even after travel recovers,

If this is a YVR-YYZ flight with a station stop in a small community it probably is fairly low risk. They can fill the flight with YVR-YYZ passengers and pick up a few extra seats they sell at bit more of a premium with local passengers.

That should be expected on the China and Japan routes. It significantly longer to stop in Vancouver.

I don't think HNL is going to last. AC is just searching for any traffic. One things get going they will be back to optimizing the routes they fly for profit and this one will disappear.

No, they are replacing some routes, perhaps the worse performing ones.

YVR-YQU replaces YEG-YXS (the plane will run YVR-YXS-YVR-YQU-YVR instead of YVR-YXS-YEG-YXS-YVR)
YYZ-YQU replaces YYZ-YLW

Yup. Multiple people on that twitter thread asked about YOW-FRA and the reply was 'not this year'. So let's see, YHZ for summer 2022 looks like it'll have:
GLA - WS
DUB - WS
LGW - WS
CDG - WS
LHR - AC
FRA - LH (Condor?)

YOW will have (at this point): _______ = zip! Yup, makes sense for a city nearly triple the size to have nothing.

You have to remember though that Ottawa is closer to Montreal than Halifax is to Moncton, and thus it is easy for Ottawa residents to fly out of Montreal to overseas destinations. Halifax on the other hand is the largest hub for an entire region of Canada.

We now know what Swoop are doing this winter with that 10th frame. They're adding 3 new cities SAN (announced yet again), PIE & SFB (not MCO...product differentiation from mainline I guess). Routes:

YEG-SAN 3x
YEG-SFB 2x
YYZ-PIE 3x
YHM-PIE 2x
YYZ-SFB 4x
YHM-SFB 2x

https://www.newswire.ca/news-release...859027640.html

I knew that would be pointed out. Ottawa is always at the Montreal & Toronto squeeze disadvantage to Halifax. Now it's being taken to an extreme.

Condor's S22 schedule is presently a carbon copy of what was planned this year, but I suspect there will be changes. I don't see YYC supporting three airlines to FRA next year.

YOW & YEG have become the forgotten brothers at this point, although YEG at least has KLM.

I wonder if WS will take another stabb at MAN with the MAX back in play?