Better than you thought? Down almost 100% is better than you thought LOL that's a low bar

May wouldn’t be any better!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYGFKUaU...g&name=900x900
https://twitter.com/MJForbes/status/1261436090801520640

Of course..I believe the directive is to not to travel at all if possible. Private industry travel is effectively zero - for economic reasons as well as virus. I can see a case made for a Fed Gov official to claim essential travel compared to a regional sales rep for some retailer, for example.

Just thought for April, out of all of our major airports - YOW would see a little bit more traffic. YYJ stats for April are out too - total of 4,261 passengers (99 transborder), which is down 97.3% yoy. I would have expected YOW to have at least triple ours, that's all.

I agree with many analysts that business travel will be reduced going forward after the pandemic - companies/agencies are finding that meetings between regional offices are quite effective with Zoom etc (not all but many).

In other words a big boost to ACAP?

YUL is taking the opportunity to finish repaving 06L/24R completely. Should be done by December 2020.

When was that planned? When did they start work? And did the change their schedule because of Covid?

I'm curious to see if mainline carriers finally start giving a shit about Y pax now that a massive amount of their J demand has collapsed and won't be back for awhile.

LH is expanding long haul to 19 destinations in the first half of June. They include FRA-YYZ. Further resumption of long-haul flights is planned for the second half of June.

https://centreforaviation.com/member...chedule-524792

Swiss plans on resuming YUL on July 1.

https://www.routesonline.com/news/38...ighlight=swiss

Edelweiss has revised YYC resumption to June 7. YVR on June 4.

https://www.flyedelweiss.com/EN/aler...d-flights.aspx

TAP intends to launch YUL on July 16.

https://www.routesonline.com/news/38...air%20portugal

All of this is subject to change, obviously.

The work started 2 years ago, but is less than 50% complete at the moment. They started with the first third of the runway near the threshold of runway 24R, which is now completed. They then moved to the threshold of runway 06L. They fucked up, and have to correct their mistake - so to speak - which is being done now. For the middle section renovation of the runway, the initial plan was to reopen runway 10/28, so that we still have 2 operational runways. That wont be necessary now, so 10/28 is officially dead. We are a single runway airport until at least December 2020.

Probably not.

I am not certain I would work with the assumption any essential travel is government and private travel is zero.

I work for a software company that primarily provides software used to run various aspects of food retail, food distribution and food processing. We are trying to do as much as possible over video conference, but there is always some level of travel. That is especially the case as the food supply chain need to readjust to home delivery at retail, and the shift of product from food services channels into retail channels.

I think in banking, energy, pharma, food retail etc. there a large part of the private sector that is considered essential services. Everyone is trying to avoid travel, however its sometimes required.

I'm worried they will give a shit but not in the way we hope. Since there will be business passengers, the economy passengers will have to pick up the slack which means higher prices. Also, less competition = less prices.

I'd like to see a significant increase in ACAP funding and a reexamination of the eligible project categories. There is a gap for numerous airports in expansion related projects, as ACAP is scoped tightly for safety related items, yet many airports can't access funding from larger streams such as the National Trade Corridors Fund.

Looking at the OAG changes for the week, looks like Delta is dropping YXE permanently.

Is that based on observation? I would have thought the flyers that come back first will be the ones who can afford J, and the physical distancing that goes with it.

Nah.

The problem with economy passengers is that there's just no margin in them anymore. Unless you're doing a LCC thing, but COVID kind of makes that model moot.

In a lot of cases, it would be cheaper to simply drop the destinations and aggregate business class into fewer flights to bigger hubs.

Ironically, this might shift the trend back towards the hub-and-spoke model instead of a point-to-point one.

The front of the plane makes the bucks for the airline. The back is just glorified filler. An airplane with a full front and empty back makes the accountants happier than vice-versa. In fact, I think many routes simply exist just because the premium demand makes it worthwhile.

Less direct roures would go against the interests of business travelers.

I've heard this before but it's more folk wisdom than universal truth that applies across the industry. The very existence and growth of single class LCCs shows that you don't need J cabins to have a successful and profitable airline. Squeezing Y is a profit maximization tool for mainline carriers.

This only true of Ultra Long Haul routes. > ~12 hrs. Anything less and LCCs like Norwegian Long Haul (or whoever replaced them) and Transat are there to compete.

Long haul LCC hasn’t been proven yet. Transat and Rouge aren’t LCC’s, at least not price wise, as your still paying 1000$+ fares to fly to Europe. As for Norwegian long haul, they’ve lost money year after year.

LCC’s work on short haul routes with huge demand. The short segments keep your biggest cost, fuel, to a minimum. Making it work on long haul is a difficult task no one has cracked yet.

Same reasons why LCC’s will struggle domestically here in canada.

1. Not much demand
2. Not much short haul, as Canada is a big country.
3. Predatory pricing by AC/WS.

Yes, but we're operating under your original assumption that business travel declines markedly. Leisure travelers will pay some premium for a direct flight, but I do not think it is enough to overcome the inherent obstacles against large scale point-to-point travel on long-haul.

If you're any airline, you're going to maximize profit, so squeezing economy to compete is a way to do that.

Single-class LCCs have worked on intra-continent travel. For a couple of hours, people will sit on Ryanair or Spirit or whoever to save a bit of money.

Long-haul LCC is very much up for debate as long-haul doesn't have the same ability to save on costs for airlines as short-haul. Utilization of long-haul aircraft is already quite high, the planes themselves are much more expensive, a larger proportion of the cost of the flight is fuel costs (have to keep the plane in the air for many hours) and you need crew changes and whatnot due to duty times. Then there's compliance with foreign regulations, currency issues, etc. etc.

Despite its cockroach-like ability to survive, I'm not sure Norwegian Long-Haul is a model to emulate, unless you like watching money burn. Transat has a premium section too, but again, if you want the business experience at current economy prices, it isn't happening on those airlines.

Something's going to have to give. Either airlines charge economy passengers much more (which will depress demand), or they'll cram more people in (which isn't a solution at this juncture), or airlines will simply stop operating money-losing flights. Especially if they don't have people in business class paying 5-10 times the cost of an economy ticket.

I'll flesh out your good points re: domestic LCC.

1. Demand is very uneven within Canada. Domestic travel peaks in summer and markedly declines in the winter. So, unless you're running a peaker-service, you're probably losing money in the off-months which could be 8-9 months of the year. Also, most domestic travel from Quebec is within Quebec or the neighbouring provinces because of the language barrier, so travel by car is very dominant there.

2. The bulk of domestic flight demand in Canada is concentrated in travel between 3 major regions - Toronto/Montreal corridor, Calgary-Edmonton and Vancouver. Within those regions, one typically travels by land means - with the exception of business flights between Montreal and Toronto. So, there's not a ton of unserved city pairs that a LCC can tap with significant demand.

3. The best route for a new airline in this country is to have an existing one go belly-up. Westjet had Canadian Airlines expire as they rose (nearly giving Air Canada a coronary in the process), so they had a major opening there. Otherwise, both healthy airlines can zealously protect their turf. Since AC and Westjet are both healthy, they can afford to stomp any competition.

The best avenues for LCCs in Canada are sun flying, summer Europe travel and skimming some off the top during peak summer domestic season, which is what they are doing now.