WestJet announced today no middle seats sold on 737s and every 2nd seat only on Q400s.

Considering that most planes are flying fairly empty, this is pretty much a symbolic thing now. Once traffic starts ramping up, this will be helpful to mitigate things though.

CBC had an article today interviewing YOW airport authority's President and CEO.

He said that earlier in the week, only 430 passengers were registered to depart on 13 flights.

That really puts things into perspective.

The article is short and interesting if anyone wants to read it, here is the link:
CBC YOW article

That means around 850 pax per day, which is proportional to the 5,000 daily YYZ is reporting: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/mobile/ca...stry-1.4881999

It means YOW has become YQG and YYZ has become YQB...which means YQG ceases to exist (AC suspended YQG) and YQB becomes YYY.

Devastatingly unsustainable numbers.

Poor YOW never even got to witness the inaugural LH flight to FRA. YOW was heading for a record-breaking 5.3 million pax. Now I wonder if Flair will show up either...that is if they survive.

Ottawa Citizen article says this past Wednesday a mere 120 pax departed YOW. In other words, the equivalent of a full mainline AC 319. Average Wednesday would be 7,000 departing pax.

That is just staggering.

Anybody knows, if DE and EW will cancel YEG and YYC respectively? Both those routes are scheduled to start operating from June 1st! LH cancelled our service from YOW....I can’t see Condor and Eurowings starting new routes with this pandemic!

LF and AC operate under a joint venture agreement where they share revenue on these flights. So any decision on YOW was done in collaboration. I assume Eurowing being owned by LH is part of that but don't know for certain.

Condor is mostly focused on vacation travelers. Vacation travelers are spooked as they should be. I think any leisure travel business is a lost cause for the rest of the year. Perhaps in 2021 or 2022.

All the new routes across all Canadian airports this year will most likely be postponed.

That includes:

The numerous new routes AC/WS have announced out of their hubs or focus cities
Tap and Brussels airlines at YUL
Condor at YEG and YHZ (MUC-YHZ was to restart this year)
Eurowings at YYC
Lufthansa at YOW

The only exception is probably TK to YVR. They fought hard to get additional slots in Canada, so they might actually operate the route.

I'm told they are operating YYC-YYZ-YYC x1 daily and rotating the four airframes through the cycle to keep them 'active'.

If the capacity really isn't necessary right now, what is the advantage of doing that as opposed to just parking them somewhere until normal conditions return?

Modern airliners aren't really designed to sit for extended periods of time.

In fact, that's one of the issues facing the Boeing 737 MAX when it is approved to fly again. You have many airplanes that have been sitting for a year plus, so they might need much more work than ordinary to bring them back to use.

I guess Westjet figures that the costs of mothballing them and bringing them back exceed the costs of flying them.

:yeahthat:

Even with AC cutting over 90% of their flying, there has been a lot of towing going on back and forth between the AC base and the main terminal here at YUL, which leads me to believe they want to rotate frames as much as they can throughout this crisis.

Kind of annoying though, when you have more towing going on at an airport compared to takeoffs/landings. Keeps us busy I guess.

Average movements for this time of the year at YUL is around 650 flights/day. We are averaging 120-130 at the moment.

Looks like New Brunswick and PEI are pretty much cut off from air travel now.

Air Canada has stopped all flights from Saint John, Fredericton, Moncton and Charlottetown. Even Nova Scotia is down to just flights from Halifax to Toronto, Montreal and Saint Johns.

Westjet for the moment is maintaining flights to Fredericton, Moncton (1xdaily) and Charlottetown (3xweekly) according to their website.

I wonder if it might be better to just shut down YFC and YQM. (YSJ is officially closed I believe)

*Edit* Oops I missed 1 AC daily flight from Montreal to Freddy as well, and a 5xWeek Montreal to Charlottetown flight. My bad. (I suspect they ghost updated that after I first looked at it. :P )

Where is “Saint Johns”? :???:

Yes, WS is rotating through its 4 (now 5) 787s to keep them active. The 767s were going to be retired later this year anyways and likely won't return to service. They've already completely removed the 767s from the winter schedule. YYZ-BCN will probably be cancelled for this summer too.

Allows them to haul a pile of east-west freight, while keeping their 787 pilot pool all current.

I wonder how Flair are doing and how much they're still flying? While only 1 flight, on 26MAR20 they had an incident on a YWG-YYZ flight with only 26 'people' on board = max 22 paid pax.

WS has now "sold out"/cancelled a ton of Transborder/International flights from June 1 until further notice. Most of what is bookable beyond those dates are thru Delta codeshares. From May 5-May 31 it appears as it normally is scheduled.

The long haul routes to LGW / CDG / DUB / BCN / GLA & FCO appear unaffected for now.

Edit: May have been glitch, some of the US routes are re-appearing.

https://www.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/...vel.html#/na-1

EDIT: Aircraft types & frequencies added by destination - flights/day unless indicated by 'WK'

Here's the number of flights (up to per day or week) still operating by airport for AC:
YYC: 46x/WK - YYZ: 1X 220 & 1X E90, YEG (daily) & YMM (3X/WK): DH4, YWG 3X/WK: CR9, YVR: 2X 319, YQU 3X/WK: DH1 - AT LEAST 1 -100 LIVES ON!
YEG: 31x/WK - YYZ: 1X E90, YVR: 2X CR9, YYC (daily) & YZF 3X/WK: DH4
YMM: 3x/WK - YYC: DH4
YQQ: 3x/WK - YYC: DH4
YZF: 3x/WK - YEG: DH4
YYG: 5x/WK - YUL: CRJ - SO YYG COVERS YQM, AND...
YFC: 1x/DAY - YUL: CRJ - YFC COVERS YSJ
YQB: 1x/DAY - YUL: DH3
YQR: 8x/WK - YYZ & YVR 4X/WK EACH: CR9
YXE: 8x/WK - YYZ & YVR 4X/WK EACH: CR9
YSB: up to 1x/DAY - YYZ: DH3
YQT: 5x/WK - YYZ: CR9
YTS: 4x/WK - YYZ: DH3
YHZ: 16x/WK - HUGE DROP FROM LAST WEEK! - YYT: 4X/WK DH4, YUL: 5X/WK CR9, YYZ: 1X 320 (220 OPS DAY 7)
YOW: up to 7x/DAY - YUL: 1X DH4 & 1X DH3, YYZ: 5X E90 (UNTIL AC447 ON 15APR20), THEN 5X E75 - NO MAINLINE AT YOW, WOW!
YWG: 15x/WK - YYC 3X/WK: CR9, YVR: 5X/WK CR9, YYZ: 1X E90
YYT: 16x/WK - YHZ 4X/WK: DH4, YUL 5X/WK CR9, YYZ: 1X E90
YLW: 1x/DAY - YVR: DH4
YCD: 1x/DAY - YVR: DH4
YYJ: 2x/DAY - YVR: DH4
YXY: 3x/WK - YVR: CR9
YXT: 4x/WK - YVR: DH4
YXS: 3x/WK - YVR: DH4

AIRPORTS WITH TRANSBORDER & INTERNATIONAL OPS:
YUL:
up to 12/DAY domestic - YYZ up to 5X: 1X CR9, 1X 77L & 3X E90 (these are mostly 320 & 220 up to 15APR20) YVR 5X/WK: 330, see above for other domestic YUL routes
+
11/WEEK transborder - 5X/WK ORD: E75, FLL & MCO 3X/WK EACH: 319
+
up to 13/WK international: 1x CDG: 788, 2X/WK LHR: 788, 4X/WK FRA: 789

YVR: up to 14/DAY domestic - YYZ: 1X 789 & up to 2X 220, see above for other domestic YVR routes
+
3/DAY transborder - SEA: 1X DH4, SFO: 1X CR9, LAX: 1X 319
+
5/WK int'L - LHR: 3X 789, HKG: 2X 789 - NRT SUSPENDED 08APR20

YYZ: up to 24/DAY domestic - see above for all YYZ domestic routes
+
up to 8/DAY transborder - BOS 1X CRJ, FLL & MCO 3X/WK EACH: 319, LAX: 4X/WK 789, SFO: 3X/WK 319, IAD/DCA/ORD/EWR 1X E75 EACH, IAH: 1X E90 - surprising to see mainline on this one
+
20/WK int'l - LHR: 1X 789, FRA: 1X 789, MEX: 4X 319, BGI: 2X 319

That's now it for AC until probably the end of May at least. Not surprisingly the two 'busiest' routes by frequency are the Rapidair routes.