PAL is aggressively going after market share in Halifax. It would cost nearly $1,500 to fly from St. John’s to most of these locations on our own airline lol

https://i.postimg.cc/3rSXNttp/463434...66-A01-D34.jpg

Cheap flights are potentially really good for Atlantic Canada because of the complicated geography and not so great land-based travel options. Saint John is only 200 km away from Halifax but it is a 400 km drive due to the Bay of Fundy. Corner Brook to Halifax is about 600 km but takes 14 hours or more.

Similarly Halifax-Boston is 650 km but it's a 10.5 hour drive.

YQM to YHZ is only 200 km (2hrs) away from each other. When Air Canada ran this route I could never understand why. It's a very comfortable drive. The times spent leaving and arriving in airports add serious time to get there making it almost more viable to drive
.

Presumably it is useful for connections?

Same reason why they fly YUL-YQB (233 km) or YOW-YUL (152 km). Mostly for connections.

Except for the brief year that AC competed with Bearskin on YOW-YUL, AC has, for whatever reason, pretty much only wanted connections on that route since they took over CP. Last week they were selling YOW-YUL one-way for over $400, lol. Why they don't sell $79 one-way seats is beyond me. It looks especially ridiculous when at the same time they're selling YOW-YEG for $94.

Back in the 80s when you had AC, ND and CP all on YOW-YUL the O&D on the route was actually around 100,000 pax a year. $25 fares and the fact in the 80s you could still show up at the airport without a checked bag 20 minutes before departure were a big difference back then.

Flair’s first flight out of YKF, to YEG/YVR, departs Saturday at 0700hrs.

Duplicate

Saw pictures on Facebook of the aircraft arriving at YKF this afternoon to a water canon salute.

The problem I see with PAL Airlines is that their hubs don't connect together, as if they had 2 separate networks (Québec and Atlantic Canada) completely disconnected from one another.

One of their largest hub is YQB from which they fly
YQB-YUL 3X daily
YQB-YZV 10X weekly
YQB-YGP 3X weekly
YQB-YYY up to 5X weekly

However, if someone from YQB wants to fly to their new hub in YHZ, the shortest flight is 18h long and 3 stops, while the average PAL airline flight is up to 28h and 5 stops. It goes without saying that YQB to Sydney or Charlottetown with a stop in Halifax is impossible. The same applies from YUL or anywhere else in Québec. They should add 2-3x weekly YQB-YHZ to connect every part of their network together.

Also, I think PAL should improve their interline with Westjet in a way that can easily be booked from Google flights or even Westjet website. It would be nice in a post-covid world to be able to book YGP-YQB-YHZ-CDG on the same ticket. If PAL doesn't improve that, Pascan might take more market share with their interline with AC in Eastern Québec than PAL.

^
Quebec-Maritimes isn’t what PAL is after. With the current Maritimes bubble, no one could fly those routes anyways.

PAL added flights in Quebec to serve the intra-Quebec market. The only non intra-Quebec route they are launching, YUL-ZBF, will only begin August 2 (the latest start date compared to all the other routes) and that’s probably only if the restrictions are eased.

Here is the current S22 schedule loaded for AC. Comparison is made based on S19 schedule and frequency, so this should include many of the routes already announced and running. The number in the () means weekly frequency, and no number means daily flight.

Note that this should include all Rouge routes, so any Rouge long-hual that is not mentioned, chances are it's not coming back in S22. AC 1000-1020 are also used for European routes (OTP,KEF,BUD,ZAG).

No longer in schedule (mainline flights only)
YVR-TPE,CDG
YYC-NRT,CUN
YUL-GRU,TLS,BOD
YYZ-SNN
YYT-LHR
YOW-LHR,FRA

Mainline
YYZ-VCE(3),BCN,ATH,OTP(2),BUD,ZAG(3),MEX(14)
YUL-VCE(2),BCN,ATH,OTP(2),NCE(4),ALG(4),MEX

7M8 Transcon
YYZ-EDI,MAN,KEF(4)
YUL-DUB(3),KEF(3)
YHZ-LHR

New
YYZ-DOH(4)
YUL-DEL(3),CAI(3)

Frequency Change
YVR-LHR(14)
YUL-LHR(14)
YYZ-DXB(3),MXP(4),MAD(3),BOG(4),SCL/EZE(4)


For some questionable domestic/transborder mainline/rouge flights... Here are a few that I checked for S22

Still loaded/added
YYZ-YMM(223)
YVR-BOS(7M8), YHZ(7M8), ANC(7M8)
YYC-YHZ(7M8)
YUL-SEA(223), YLW(223)

No longer exist/never loaded
YYZ-SJC,YXX
YVR-SNA
YYC-BOS
YOW-YYJ

Rouged
YYZ-YLW,YYJ,YCD
YUL-YYJ

For Express... Basically AC renumber the whole thing, so flight number is almost certain to be different compared to S19, so I'm not going to check what's missing and what's not... Basically the new flight number is as follow:
AC 7900-8550 domestic
AC 8590-8999 transborder

All routes with multiple daily flights are grouped together. I only checked for YVR, which basically still have all the express routes from S19, but some with frequency reduced.

Where do you find this info? I'd love to take a look at it

https://www.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/...schedules.html

Although it's not as easy to look past 355 days, but the schedule until the end of Oct 2022 is already in there if you find a way to get it.

New AC flight numbers that I'll use to look up long-hual routes from now on:

Data was gathered from current schedule from Mar, Apr, July, and Oct 2022 combined.

Almost all the flights are now grouped nicely by geography. The hole for LHR had been filled up with additional flights to YUL and YVR... Seems like AC is looking at additional India/South Asia flight (AC 48)? Another German flight (AC 838)??

I'm assuming you use an API key? I wish WS had a similar tool to look up schedule changes, but I guess for now I'll stick to searching through OAG schedules. (Maybe they do and I'm not that skilled to know how to do it properly :haha: )

WS hasn't loaded/filed any schedules beyond April 30, 2022 anyways. I'm interested to see if any cuts they've made this year are permanent. (So far only about 12 routes have been removed for S21.)

Interesting. The AC online timetable (PDF) shows both YOW-LHR and YOW-FRA on the route map.

YOW-LHR was AC888 pre-COVID but was supposed to change to AC868 I believe. Seems that number change has been abandoned (?) because AC868 is taken and AC888 is unassigned. If we’re to believe the map YOW-LHR might return under its familiar number (?).

YOW-FRA is even more interesting. AC flew it as AC838 for years then handed it off to LH pre-COVID (but it never got a chance to fly due to it). If we’re to believe the map then maybe AC is planning to take this back under the familiar AC838 (?)

Brute force method:

By flight number
https://services.aircanada.com/porta...ABC975DFD72085

By route
https://services.aircanada.com/porta...ABC975DFD72085

And yes, I wish WS have something like this... AC, TS, WG, F8 all have something similar that can quickly pull schedule from (flight status and/or flight schedule lookup). But WS we can only do dummy booking from their website....


AC never bother to update the route map in the flight schedule PDF, and it still shows all the Rouge routes that we know they're not coming back.

If you want the latest route map, check out the ones from the enroute magazine.....

https://issuu.com/spafax/docs/air-ca...rch-april-2021

Page 94-97.

Really professional to continue showing flights on the sched that haven’t existed in their network for as much as 2 years. :rolleyes:

This one is still listed in April. Here's hoping it sticks around, I switched my loyalty from Cathay to AC when they launched this route.