AC updated India schedule recently.

YVR-DEL scheduled to resume October, 3x weekly with a stop at DUB outbound.
YYZ-DEL maintains daily with non-stop 77L
YUL-DEL reduce to 3x weekly with non-stop 77L
YYZ-BOM set to resume for W22 4x weekly non-stop 77L, but they currently do not have enough 77L to run the route unless they use 789 for AC33/34.

I think this could be the plan, they may be concerned about an upcoming recession which could be quite a blow financially after just coming out of covid. Scale things back for a year or two then be ready for the next boom. They might also think the western economy will be doing better over the next few years with the price of oil.

If thats not it I don't know what they are thinking, pulling most of their fleet to the west and then adding a large order to that while abandoning the east seems like a terrible idea. YEG-YWG doesn't need 8x daily, what will the do with all these planes?

8x daily would be nice but we would happily take a full 1x daily at this point.

As for their plans, a potential recession could be part of it but the language used sounds more like a complete strategy change rather than a temporary pivot.

We may be reading more into it than it says. They are talking about reducing eastern/central Canada. They are not talking about eliminating.

Perhaps it amounts to pulling the Q400 out of Toronto and Halifax and dropping any 737 flights that are not profitable. That still leaves a good number of flights out of Pearson just slightly reduced.

There is a lot of talk about recession but there is a lot of talk of one being short. Just reading some of the business news there is word that raising interest rates is really about knocking down inflation. I think I even saw the word rate cuts by the end of 2023. Even on talk radio this morning they were saying that US consumption of gas has only decreased by 5% even though the price of gas has risen by approximately 80% over the past year. In fact I could see more people flying instead of taking road trips.

We're headed to Europe on points this summer but I book really early, almost a year in advance. Prices are up but not significantly enough if I booked a month or two ago. We still would have went. My wife flew down to SFO this morning for a short break. I will be curious to see if air travel will decrease significantly. People visiting friends and family may be up based on not being able to see anyone in the past 2-3 years.

BTW I looked at and always do look at booking YEG-YYC-Europe over the past year on WestJet. Ridiculous prices and poor or no good connections. Unless you are flying to their specific O&D international destination, it is hard to make it work. They are basically an Air Transat trying to be a legacy carrier and I feel it hasn't worked so maybe they're going back to what worked for them but again where will all these new flight options come from? I suppose they can try to steal market share from AC at YVR, YYC and YEG but many people from those cities choose AC because of AC's connection possibilities, superior frequent flyer program and in my experience better prices. The last point you can argue but the first two you can't.

If you're AC you may want to take the extra profits that come out of the east with WestJet's plan and hammer them at YYC. It will be curious how AC plays this.

Eastern Canada recovery:

Halifax Stanfield
https://i.postimg.cc/WbxK1BBX/yhz.png

Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier
https://i.postimg.cc/nL9P7pmX/yow.png

Montréal Trudeau
https://i.postimg.cc/28j9G4vR/yul.png

Toronto Pearson
https://i.postimg.cc/Sx3Zm3Pk/yyz.png

Western Canada recovery:

Winnipeg Richardson
https://i.postimg.cc/kGyJmxXP/ywg.png

Edmonton International
https://i.postimg.cc/V68Pkdhf/yeg.png

Calgary International
https://i.postimg.cc/fRtG7cnW/yyc.png

Vancouver International
https://i.postimg.cc/MTDNZtR5/yvr.png

From BNN/Bloomberg today:

Air Canada too dominant in the East for WestJet to compete, experts say
The Canadian Press

Industry watchers expect WestJet to remove routes from the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa triangle as part of the Calgary-based airline's new strategy to focus future growth on Western Canada...

... But experts say Air Canada is a juggernaut in those regions and breaking in proved difficult for the airline.

They say WestJet has made a smart decision by choosing to refocus on the region where it already has strength.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/air-cana...-say-1.1780451

This reminds me of 2015/2016 when oil crashed and they made a big deal about shifting flying east, yet not much changed long term.

We will need to see the schedule, if it means YUL-YYZ goes from 14x day on the Q to 8x 737, that could be seen as an improvement to most of the people on that route, which is the vfr, connection and frequent flyers from out west. Westjet will never really compete for the corporate crowd out of Toronto so if their plan is to still serve routes, but in a different fashion this could makes sense. It just seemed like they are implying they will be ditching alot of routes, will YYG YYT YDF etc survive?

It could also mean more routes like YQM-CUN with much less emphasis on connections in YYZ. That would play well with sunwing, if that purchase doesn't go through I wonder if this plan will have a rethink.

For me when I look at the case out of YQM where WestJet has us at one daily flight to Toronto at noon time and that doesn’t favour the early connecting flights into Toronto. Versus Air Canada that has three daily flights to Toronto and it makes it easier to connect into Toronto and offers more flexibility and buffers in case a flight gets cancelled.

Plus with WestJet with one flight a day when you return from your trip it’s almost a guaranteed overnight stay in Toronto. Until WestJet fixes that and gives us more frequency passengers will keep on choosing Air Canada versus WestJet.

WestJet has the wrong aircraft for that route. They need A220 (C-series) aircraft.

I also remember those articles talking about de emphasizing the west, and then a year and a half later they went right back to significantly increasing YYC.
To me it seems like routes such as YXU, YQM, YFC will be gone. YYG, YYT, YDF etc and others on the 737 will stay, perhaps at a lower frequency. Some regional though, like YQB and YQT, I think will be converted to 737 at a lower frequency. Triangle routes will probably be converted entirely to 737 at maybe 3-4 flights a day? LGA will probably stay as well. LGW will probably be converted to a max?

So really, not that drastic of a change. Just a lot more flying out of the west and still significantly less in the east, but with most routes kept.

My workmate is at home suffering from PTSD after his harrowing, 5 hour ordeal at Pearson upon his return from Taiwan.

He never wants to fly again.

I'm in YXU, and I'm curious what their plans are here. If they are getting rid of or scaling back the Q400 to the west, then that would be the Toronto flights gone. But if they are reducing service from Toronto, not much sense in feeding there anyway. But if they were going to refocus on the west, don't they still need flights out there from the east? I would think they would want to keep, even build up, flights to the west from Ontario, and especially not Pearson, given the nightmare that is travelling through there. London Airport has even been pushing the fact that it's quicker to drive to London from the western GTA, and hop on a YYZ flight than it is to originate from YYZ and wait in the lines there.

The Q400 was an attempt to cover the difference between the turboprop and regional jet market. The thinking being that they would scoop up a chunk of US and Europe regional flying. The problem: the Q400 was less efficient than the competing smaller, lighter turboprop (ATR 42/72) and slower/less customer favoured than a regional jet (E175/CRJ).

The US regionals preferred to use up their CRJ200s and replace them with something larger or just stop serving marginal routes. European operators have enough traffic that they can just use a larger aircraft. Regional operations are much smaller there, and decent land-based transport options exist due to the smaller distances from cities and higher density.

Canada/Australia are the best use-case for the Q400. Larger distances, smaller centres, inconvenient land transport connections.

Universal hydrogen conversions of Dash 8 and ATR-72? YES!!!

WS is still flying to SAN, SNA, and YHZ this summer. Not sure what happened with YHZ in July, but they are flying it in June, August, and beginning of September. And they are flying SAN and SNA as well, and SNA goes up to daily in winter. So I don't think AC kicked WS out of YVR transborder, but they definitely upped the competition on these leisure routes, no doubt. AC's mainline morning departure bank is pretty stacked, with nine flights leaving between 8:25 and 9:55 (one flight each to AUS, BOS, ORD, LAS, LAX, EWR, SAN, SFO, and SNA), plus five Jazz flights (one each to DEN, PHX, PDX, SAC, and SEA). WS has 11 daily transborder departures on their busiest day. So of course AC is ahead, but WS is hardly kicked out.

Yes, what I meant is, whenever AC joined, WS cut back. This happened before for SAN, SNA, and now YHZ. WS used to have the most seat and frequency for each of these route, but now AC provided more service. Doesn't seems like WS is able to compete with AC at YVR for routes that are not 100% leisure.

WS used to run YVR-SNA daily or at least 6x weekly year-round. Now the service is split between YVR and YYC. Right now YYC is scheduled with 2x weekly for the winter, so either YVR will be cut back to 5x weekly, or they have a second daily slot at SNA?

Similar for YHZ... WS ran 6x weekly last year, and planned for 6x weekly this summer... but cut back for 3-4x soon after AC announced the route. SAN was similar, reduced from 3x to 2x weekly soon after AC came and increase from 1x to 3x daily.

Ahh ok yes I see what you mean. When I read it originally I interpreted it as WS was forced off the route entirely due to AC and left it all to AC. Which actually wouldn't be surprising, your point is valid. I think WS wants to hang onto the routes if they can, especially SNA as that is one of their trademark routes from YVR (along with PSP). It looks like 4x weekly in October, 6x weekly in November, and daily from December onwards. Obviously still subject to change, but at least that's their plan. As for YHZ and SAN, I feel like they might hand those to AC, even if they are still in this summer's schedule. They don't seem like "must haves" for WS. But I don't think WS will give up SNA, LAS, LAX, PSP, PHX, or any of it's Hawaii routes. I feel like losing those would really be waving the white flag at YVR, but I think they have enough strength to keep those going. AC provides welcome competion on these routes after the early-late 2000s-2010s where they weren't expanding their offerings from YVR, and kind of letting WS run away with it (especially to California, Vegas, Arizona, and Hawaii). But after the 2016 expansion that saw AC launch more Express routes (DEN, DFW, PHX) to feed their Asian flights, AC now looks to really be trying to push out WS from not only connection and domestic travel, but from the transborder leisure market. I for one hope they don't succeed, I think having both AC and WS on the routes is healthy, I'd hate to see more routes turn into monopolies of one carrier.

One thing I have noticed is AC has really trimmed it's service to YYC and YEG from YVR. YEG is 5x daily mainline (737 and 319) and YYC is 9x daily mainline (737, 319, 787, 320) and once daily Jazz CRA. Pre-pandemic, AC was 100% mainline to both, and upwards of 12-13 to YYC and 8-9 to YEG. I can't help but think this is the impact of Flair and Lynx already. First place the impact is felt is on high traffic, high frequency routes like this, where price sensitive travellers could be migrating to Lynx/Flair after years of the AC/WS duopoly. AC could also be affected by the fact that they have zero China flights. They just have NRT and ICN for Asian routes, and then SYD and BNE for Australia. But those loss of all those Chinese connections is significant I'd day, and it's reflected on the flight frequency. AC's European flights from YVR are probably not a big draw for YYC and YEG. YYC at least has its own European flights, and both YYC and YEG are probably defaulted to connect in YYZ or YUL for European flights. So the two Asian and two Australian flights are not enough to fill 13x daily flights, especially with the new competition.

It’s the same thing with AC and the eastern triangle. It’ll be next summer before it’s back to pre-pandemic full hourly frequencies.