I doubt that very much.

"Air Canada to Make Major Montreal Announcement........a major announcement concerning air service to China."

Those two sentences tell me this is solely about Montreal and China. The fact that they are saying "major" could mean we are looking at two routes here.

Then again, "montreal" in the title might simply mean the physical location of the announcement. So it could also be YUL-PEK and YYC-PEK. Who knows. We'll find out tomorrow.

YUL-TLV? I say YUL-PVG ! We will see

Maybe. YYZ-TLV is a surprisingly popular route; between Air Canada and El Al that route has 10x/weekly. I believe there was YUL-TLV service in the past, too.

I was right!

Daily YUL-PVG on 788s effective 16 February

http://aircanada.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1061

Wow, nice. Sorta out of the blue, and yet, not really. :cheers:

I knew it !!!!

^

You the man G.S, you the man !

Well done AC ! It was either this, PEK or both. Well done. Starting off with daily service right out of the gates too ! Impressive !

AC17 YUL1330 - 1640+1PVG 788 D
AC18 PVG1815 - 1840YUL 788 D

Perfect timing to maximize connections from Eastern Canada and the US Northeast.

at 14.5 hrs, it will be the longest flight ever operated by any carrier from YUL. 11,376 km.

Add that to CA's 4x weekly service to PEK (as of Oct 30), and YUL has China pretty much covered for the time being....

CA879 PEK1310 – 1305YUL 77W x136
CA880 YUL1505 – 1805+1PEK 77W x135

I'm confident we will see AC launch 3x weekly YUL-PEK as well, to round off both destinations to daily service.

So happy to hear this!! Daily !! Loving it

Great news!!


A quick search for next summer on aircanada.com and google flights as well show 6 weekly to PEK on Air China (week of July 9th to July 15th). Every day except Friday witch is the flight to HAV. So I got curious and looked at another random week in August, but there was 4 flights that week to PEK. Is Air China going to make it more than 4 weekly by next summer? Is the week of July 9th to July 15th a special week?

This is great news for YUL, Air Canada, and Quebec. Good stuff.

Good to see Air Canada further utilizing its new long-haul fleet and Canada's allotment of weekly flights to China. China has all-but maxed out their allotment with all of the new service to YVR.

I had hoped that part of the announcement today would be the initiation (or a plan to initiate) bilateral negotiations with China to increase the weekly flight allotment.

I suspect you're right. Matter of when, not if. :tup:

Great news for YUL. Surprised it wasn't PEK due to the extensive connections on Air China's network there but happy to see a new route for Montreal.

Like SFU though I'm disappointed there was no mention of re-opening the bilateral cap. No new frequencies means PEK-YUL on Air China can't go daily and a lot of other routes wont be able to be launched or run at full capacity.

''It gives us a competitive advantage over Washington, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Denver, Miami, who have no direct service to Shanghai, and Boston.''
Philippe Couillard

http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles...tidienne.shtml

As far as I'm aware there are no talks schdeuled for at least a couple of years. It was allegedly Air Canada that lobbied against any further access by Chinese carriers into Canada. Air Canada can now take advantage of Canada's unused frequencies and there are still plenty available.

Clearly
not the case ...I believe it has been downgraded to 2 weekly beginning october ?

This article is from February though?

When the route was first announced, Hainan announced three weekly and then intended to increase it to four in October. The fourth flight was removed fairly promptly. The two weekly is only for a few months. The route is scheduled to return to three weekly by the end of March. There is a lot more to the shuffling of frequencies due to the cap on flights by Chinese Airlines. Each airline's hands are tied. There are just no more frequencies that can be used except the two remaining from Hainan. We are expecting an announcement by the end of October what they will do with those. Not ideal for what they originally intended.

http://aircanada.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1064

^

Nice additions. YYZ-TXL in particular, is a good move. YYZ-BOM will piss off LH somewhat.

In YUL, AC is clearly trying to bully around TS, AT and AH.

Nice to see AC spread the wealth across their 3 main international hubs.

Montreal-Marseille
June 9 to October 13, 2017
Three times weekly
Montreal-Algiers
June 26 to October 27, 2017* subject to government approvals*
Four times weekly

Montreal-Casablanca begins on April 19, 2017 with 3 weekly and goes daily in June 2017 ...then back to 3 weekly year round for winter season.!!! Yasssss

http://aircanada.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1066

Once I get more information I willl edit for Summer 2017 destinations for all
Major airports ....