Presumably they would want service to Beijing or Shanghai. Putting aside the restrictions on flights into PEK right now, you have a distance of ~10,600km from Halifax to Beijing.

To go to Shanghai, you're looking at 11,600km.

The best aircraft to do that would likely be a Boeing 787-8, which Air Canada stuffs with 251 seats.

You might see a stopover with a cargo aircraft, but I doubt a passenger flight would be viable given the market.

While it seems extremely remote, I'd imagine that the north pole is well within ETOPS-180 limits, and maybe even 120. Thule airport is pretty far north and I'm sure there is something on the Russian side. You could probably do it with a 787 pretty easily.

^^^ Ya and the article seems more focused on lobsters to China than people. Even a cargo flight if it doesn't already exist would be a gain.

I would be surprised if Air Canada did it. Canadian airlines have lots of rights to add extra flights, the Chinese airlines are maxed out.

Vancouver has routes to a lot of smaller centers in China. Speculation is this is driven by the rules China has of only permitting one Chinese airline to operate a given route.

I wonder if this is part of a move by the Chinese government when negotiating with the Canadian government to get more frequencies that it is airlines are permitted to operate.

Smaller.

Population of all the smaller centers that have (or will have) direct flight to YVR (by metro population):

Shenzhen - 44.3 million (incl. Guangzhou)
Hangzhou - 21.1 million
Chengdu - 18.0 million
Tianjin - 16.0 million
Nanjing - 12.7 million
Shenyang - 12.3 million
Qingdao - 9.0 million
Kunming - 6.6 million
Zhengzhou - 4.9 million
Xiamen - 3.5 million
.
...
.....
Halifax - 0.3 million


The fact that AC hadn't add direct flight from YVR/YYZ to SZX, CTU (both *A hubs), or even CAN.. I don't think a direct flight from NS to China is even close to being on the list. Even with the population, and this recently-developed culture of travelling all over the world, the Chinese airlines are able to open most of those routes only because the local government typically subsidize about 70% of the loss (and sometimes 100% for routes like Kunming-Nanjing-Vancouver, shared by both local governments). The subsidy applies to foreign airlines too, but even then AC does not bother with them.

On the other hand - route from PEK or PVG to secondary Canadian cities are not subsidized. This is why Chinese airlines prefer routes like Tianjin-Vancouver rather than Beijing-Edmonton.

Even if Chinese carriers have unlimited right and unlimited subsidy out of every city, I would see them flying to Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Quebec, another airport in Toronto area (Hamilton/Kitchener/London), Victoria, Abbotsford, Kelowna, Whitehorse, .. before even start to consider Halifax...

Holy jeepers you're right. Less than 10 kilometres away!

https://s33.postimg.org/8in40hran/map_2.gif

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=YHZ-PEK

Are there any other flight paths in the world that pass that close???

YHZ is a hub for Atlantic Canada, which has 2.3 million people. It is the 8th busiest airport in Canada, roughly tied with Winnipeg. Having a direct flight to China isn't really that far-fetched. I would guess that it will happen sometime over the next few decades given how important China is economically.

YHZ is just a domestic hub. International flights are being expanded mostly to the big 3. Even Westjet is setting up YYZ/YVR as their de facto international hubs. So all YHZ ever needs is good connections to the big 3.

The question isn't whether there will be more flights out of the larger airports though, it's whether there might be at least one single regular flight out of Halifax someday to a Chinese city. All I'm saying is that this doesn't seem particularly far-fetched.

You can already fly from Halifax to places like Munich, Reykjavik, or Montego Bay without first flying to Toronto. Part of the reason for this is that Toronto is a 2 hour flight away. It adds a huge amount of extra travel time.

Halifax to Europe is a no-brainer. Halifax to Asia is a little more far fetched. Never say never, but I don't think we will see it any time soon.

As for adding extra travel time, airlines don't actually care about that. For years the only flights to Montreal from Saskatoon had me heading west first to Calgary. Airlines don't care.......

JFK-PEK is 250 miles further than YHZ-PEK…..following a similar route very close to the pole and I don't think flying with 2 engines pose any problem as JFK and EWR to PEK are flown with ‘777s and ‘787s.

Which feeds a variety of non-stop International destinations.

Summer:
AC to LHR
Westjet to Glasgow
Icelandair to Reykjavik
Condor to Frankfort and Munich
ASL French Airlines to Dublin and Paris

Winter:
AC to LHR
Numerous Sun destination in Florida, Cuba and the Caribbean

Cargo Carriers include:
Korean Air
Qatar Airways

In my 30 years of flying to Europe....I've never had to backhaul to YYZ or YUL just to find myself flying over YHZ again 5 or 6 hrs later on my way across the pond!

... and all of which are useless for Chinese connection, as it would be faster (shorter distance), more flexible (multiple daily), and cheaper (China-Europe can be about the same price as YHZ-Europe) for both passengers and airlines to just fly direct from China to Europe.

As I said before, the Chinese side will not subsidize route from PEK/PVG/CAN to a international secondary destination. The only way route like PEK/PVG-YHZ will happen is to be heavily subsidized by the Canadian side. And I don't see this happening.


I remember reading somewhere that planes are not allowed to fly directly over north pole. The furthest north they can go is 89°N.

AC regularly fly that far north in routes such as YYZ-HKG and YVR-DEL.

For instance, the flight plan for AC45 (DEL-YVR) on Nov 3 is:
VIDP DIRIP G490 DEVID DEKMO 8500N/13000W 8000N/13000W 7500N/12900W 7000N/12800W 6500N/12700W 6000N/12600W 5500N/12500W ELIDI WHSLR4 CYVR

The waypoint DEVID is located at 89°00'00"N 168°58'24"W

Agree.....I was replying to craneSpotter's post that YHZ is just a domestic hub.

I believe radar/ navigation equipment goes amok over the true north/south poles. There is a magnetic north pole and the true north pole and these are different points of land. This is very simplistic explanation, If I am wrong I apologize

They switch from using magnetic to true heading when they enter polar region.

This is a cool video with cockpit video of an Air Canada flight on a polar route. https://youtu.be/unYKJgUYmi8


As for Halifax, I don't think it makes business sense. It may make sense if the Chinese want to use it as leverage to gain more rights to flight into Canada.

They do care. They would like to use as little fuel as possible and have you in a seat on a plane for as short a time as possible. It's just not the only thing they optimize for.

I would love for them to explain how their fare system works. Inevitably the cheapest fares to distant destinations are the ones that involve like 3 stops. Winnipeg-Toronto-Paris will typically cost more than, say, Winnipeg-Ottawa-Toronto-Frankfurt-Paris. But why do they incentivize me taking up a seat on 4 flights instead of just two?

And it's also annoying to see fare alerts pop up on twitter all the time where people from the US can fly to Europe dirt cheap via Toronto on Air Canada while it's always pricy out of Winnipeg.

Presuming they're talking about passenger flights (I don't think they are, but let's make that assumption anyway) I think that Halifax would better spend its energies on flights to more 'realistic' destinations, such as Frankfurt or London-Gatwick.

It's like Winnipeg talking about direct flights to the Philippines. Let's worry about getting something useful and tangible in the next decade as opposed to what is close to a pipe dream now.

The airlines use demand modeling. Certain flights are cheaper/more expensive based on demand or availability of seats. So, that Toronto-Frankfurt flight may have lots of open seats, whilst the Toronto-Paris might be close to capacity. Thus, you get weird pricing and routing, despite (logically) assuming that the fewest flights would be cheapest.

One of the things they've noticed is that one of the reliable ways to get people to pay more for a seat is to offer a direct flight. People will actually pay a premium for that.

AC's strategy regarding cheap flights from the US is to lure American customers away from the Big 3 airlines down there and improve loads on their overseas flights. That seems to be a one-way street, unfortunately for us in Canada the Big 3 don't seem to see Canada as much of a market to do the same.