This is kind of an aside and not related to Canadian airports per se, but today Boeing announced it would end production of the Boeing 747 in 2022.

As Airbus had previously announced the A380's end in 2021, the era of very large 4-engine aircraft comes to an end.

While I get the economics behind twin-engine aircraft and why aircraft manufacturers and airlines have standardized around the wing-mounted twin-engine aircraft design, it's sort of disappointing to see.

At one point, the airways of the world were filled with all kinds of unique commercial airplanes. Rear-mounted twinjets, trijets, big quadjets, even the Concorde. In a sense, I feel the same way I do in the "Lamenting the decline of the car" thread - we see increasing homogenization because the costs are merciless on the economics of production.

I'll still remember the first time when I went to Pearson Airport as a kid, got out of the car at the parking lot and just by chance, saw a 747 fly directly over on takeoff. It was awesome.

I think we'll still have the 747 (and the kind of ugly-ducking A380) making appearances here for a bit in Canada, but sadly I don't think I'll ever have the chance to fly on one. So, in a small sense, today's a kind the announcement of the denouement of an era.

I would not be surprised if the next quad engine aircraft is electric or at the very least a hybrid. Will any quads of any type still be built other than Hercs? I would imagine eventually something will to replace AN-124s, C-17s, etc.

TAP inaugural about to land at YUL in 40 minutes.

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/tp253

Last QR flight to YYZ was today. Flights are no longer bookable.

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/qr767

I feel this. The 747 and Concorde were in some ways the grand finale to an era of incredible progress in aviation... in the course of one lifetime we went from nothing at all to the first flight at Kitty Hawk (1903) to the first flights of the 747 and Concorde (1969). Someone born in 1900 would have taken their first steps in a world where no aviation existed, and by the time they were elderly they had the full range of modern jet-age travel available to them.

Since then it's been nothing but moderate and incremental change. Lots of tinkering around the edges, searching for efficiency, that kind of thing. But to anyone who isn't an accountant or engineer, the sight of a 321XLR or whatever will never stir the soul the way that a 747 did. I realize the search for efficiency has brought air travel to the masses and there is something to be said for that... but just the same, the era of the huge leaps in technology appears to be over for the time being.

I get the nostalgia. But....

Aviation is still progressing. The difference is the average person can't see the progression, because it has less to do with hardware, and more do to with software.

The leaps in technology you speak of are happening, but mostly on aircraft avionics or engines, to meet new performance, efficiency, and navigational standards and requirements.

EVS (enhanced flight vision system), RNAV LPV approaches, RNP AR approaches with curved segments, ADSB: These systems were not around as early as 20-25 years ago. Systems that operate behind the scenes and that the flying public in general has no clue about, but make a huge difference in the cockpit. It enable these planes to land at airports they couldn't a few years prior, especially in bad weather. Think of Paro, Bhutan, or even Castlegar or Kelowna, BC.

Airlines who want to hold on to their 30 year old frames often spend millions on them just to make sure they are up to snuff in terms of avionics requirements. AC and their A320s are a perfect example. Up until a few years ago, AC didn't even have GPS on their A320s. Simply an INS/IRU. That meant they couldn't fly all these new RNAV approaches popping up left and right at airports with no ILS, which meant that in inclement weather, they would often have to divert. Today, AC has GPS on all their A320s and can fly those RNAV approaches. It cost them a lot of money to upgrade, but they did it. But to an average person looking at an Air Canada A320, it still looks like the 30 year old planes they were back when they got them in the 90s. Not so.

Retrofit spending in commercial and business aviation is a $3-4 billion a year industry. The biggest segments in current fit and retrofit are navigation, surveillance and communications,

This is why aircraft part out and scrapping is such a big business. The airframe per se isn't worth much. Future coke cans, that's about it. It's the engines, landing gear and avionics that bring in the big bucks when reselling.

All this to say, an A321LR rolling out of Hamburg today is a far more advanced machine than the first A321 that rolled out 30 years ago. You can't see the difference or the technological advancements, but it's there. Just with the new engines and sharklets alone, an A320neo airframe is 15 to 20% more efficient than a A320ceo. That's amazing, to say the least.

The CSeries burns as much fuel as an E190 between YUL and YYC, carrying 40-45 more passengers and bags. These are huge gains for the industry, ones that the flying public doesn't see.

While it might not be as obvious or in your face, stating that a 787 is not a massive step forward in aviation technology or for the industry is missing a lot of the point.

That is the point, though. The changes in the early era were rapid and dramatic, we went from no flight to flight to jet flight at breakneck speed. Now it's more about refining what's already there, or incremental changes.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, obviously going from not existing to existing is the biggest change of all. Just noting that the era of rapid, dramatic evolution in a way that captures the public's imagination is over for now.

Air China seems to have resumed PEK-YUL today. (Edit: Dont know if its a one off or not, because on their website, the schedules show the route operating only as of Sept 2, 2020.)

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ca879

So, here is the list of foreign airlines (except US) that are operating or have resumed service to YUL.

• Air France (never stopped service)
• Qatar (never stopped service)
• Lufthansa
• Swiss
• KLM
• Turkish Airlines
• Aeromexico
• Tunisair
• Royal Air Maroc
• Air Algerie
• TAP (New service)
• Air China

Here is a list of carriers that will resume service, but are currently not operating

• Royal Jordanian - 1x weekly, August 13, 2020
• British Airways - 3x weekly, September 2020
• Copa Airlines - October 5, 2020

Here are the airlines that have announced they will only resume service next year.

• Corsair - summer 2021

Airlines that are uncertain to return

• Austrian Airlines (retired half their B767 fleet)
• Icelandair
• Level Airlines
• InterJet
• Azores

Anyone with info like this for Canada's other majors, please post as well.

Sure. I'm absolutely not disagreeing on that point.

My point more was that in the era past, there was a lot more variety because aircraft manufacturers were still hunting for that optimal design of what worked best.

It was like the 1960s-1980s in car design - there were several competing drivetrain layouts:

Front-engine, rear drive
Front-engine, front drive
Rear-engine, rear drive
Mid-engine, rear drive
Front-engine, all-wheel-drive

Now, the average car (excluding sports cars, expensive luxury cars and trucks) have pretty much standardized around the front-engine, front-drive/AWD layout. Modern cars are much more efficient and some pack in a boggling amount of tech (hybrids and the like), but since the secret of what layout works most efficiently has been discovered, manufacturers have flocked to it.

There's more variety in cars as they're a consumer item that can be specialized, but the general trend holds.

^
YYC didn't have many foreign carriers to start but here goes:

Currently Operating:
KLM

Planning to Resume Service:
British Airways - March 2021
Condor - May 2021
Edelweiss - May 2021

Uncertain:
Hainan Airlines (unlikely)
Eurowings
AeroMexico

Where did Icelandair say they will return next year?

I can just imagine some 50+ year olds sitting around talking in the upper lounge of a 747 in 1970, guessing at where the aircraft industry was going. I can guarantee that neither said "Gee, I really hope we come up with some kind of really great precision approach method to allow me to land in Castlegar in a thunderstorm" lol. I can just see them lamenting that they probably won't live long enough to see the coming 3 hour flights between New York and Australia or whatever. After all, we just put a man on the moon and only 10 years earlier, almost all passenger aircraft had propellers. One can only imagine what the next 50 years would bring. Just imagine their disappointment that they don't even get to sit in a 747 upper lounge anymore lol.

Sometimes technology plateaus due to physics. Or economics drives technology in a different direction than is expected. Or the hundreds of little improvements that make life easier today don't really alter life in such a dramatic fashion.

I mean, cars still have 4 wheels, a steering wheel and foot pedals to operate the gas and brakes. However, a 1958 Impala and a 2018 Impala are quite different underneath, despite being similar from a user perspective.

My 'lament' as it were is that economics drives things to lowest cost, which kind of leads to homogenization. It truly is a first-world complaint, but there is a little place in my heart for those who dare to be different. For instance, Mazda was the only automaker who used non-piston engines in their cars; they used a rotary engine. Or the 747 being a daring piece of machinery.

Unfortunately, I realize I'm part of the problem. For all the interesting things that are produced, I've never owned a rotary-engine car, nor have I paid more to fly on a 747.

Similarly, when aviation first took off, there was a huge diversity in wing designs. Everything from one wing to more than you can count, wings in the shape of circular wings, and three sets of wings...

AC released their Q2 results today. The airline reported a loss of C$1.75 billion, compared with a profit of C$343 million, a year earlier. The company has $9.12 billion in liquidity as of June 30.

Total revenue for the quarter was $527 million, half of which was from cargo. Air Canada projects a net cash burn of $15-$17 million per day, on average, in Q3 2020, compared to $19 million a day, on average, in Q2 2020.

Passengers carried was down 96% in Q2. Capacity in Q3 2020 will be 80% lower compared to the same quarter in 2019.

Some interesting comments by Rovinescu.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...KCN24W1HB?il=0

Now threatening to cancel A220 orders. Let's see if that will hit home with Trudeau.

Yeah, they only announced cancelling flights this summer. After further digging, no flights are bookable in S21 so far. So they belong in the uncertain category. Thanks.
Copa also pushed back their resumption date to October 5, 2020.

a look at air canada during covid

• Video Link

It's a cargo flight.

PEK is currently not a port of entry airport for China, so the return flight YUL-PEK must be a cargo flight.

Right now there are 2 Canadian flights to PEK
CA YVR-SHE-PEK
HU YYZ-XIY-PEK


Here is the list of YVR

• Japan Airlines (never stopped service)
• All Nippon Airways
• Korean Air
• China Airlines
• EVA Air (never stopped service)
• Air China (never stopped service)
• China Southern (never stopped service)
• Sichuan Airlines (never stopped service)
• Xiamen Airlines (never stopped service)
• Cathay Pacific (never stopped service)
• Philippine Airlines
• KLM
• Lufthansa
• Aeromexico

Many of the airlines run very low frequency (some were every 10-14 days for a month or so I believe). Anything beyond that I put them in the stopped service category.

Planned to resume/new service:

• China Eastern - August 4, 2020
• British Airways - September 1, 2020
• Turkish Airlines - September 2, 2020 (new service)
• Air France - October 25, 2020
• Air New Zealand - October 25, 2020

Anything beyond Oct 25 I'll throw them in the questionable category:
Qantas, Beijing Capital Airlines, Hainan Airlines, Interjet, Condor, Edelweiss Air, Icelandair

The list does not include the following airlines with fuel stop and crew change at YVR:
Air France, Air Tahiti, French Bee

^

The fact they used the regular passenger flight numbers threw me off. Are all Chinese carriers doing that?

The only other major carrier (besides Chinese) that I’m aware of doing that is BA. BA98/99 to YYZ never stopped running, but it was solely a cargo flight for a month or two.

I like AC’s and other majors’ system better. Cargo flights have separate flight numbers. Regardless of route. Makes it easier to figure out what’s what.

Actually, a lot of the Airlines in Asia are doing that. The cargo flight numbers are only used on cargo planes, while passenger plane carrying cargo uses passenger flight number.

For instance, CZ used to run almost daily CZ329/330 to YVR. Only 1 of the flight carry passenger while the others are cargo. There are a few instance where passenger and cargo flights were operated on the same day at almost the same time. The passenger flight was CZ329, and the cargo one was CA329A.

Even for AF, the first flight for CDG-YVR-PPT was merely for reposition, crew, and maybe cargo and was not opened for sale. Flight number was AF74, the same as other passenger flights to start on the following week. If it was AC, it would have been AC70xx or AC22xx.

I'm curious about how much of AC's loss was aircraft writedowns. They dumped their Rouge A319s, Boeing 767 fleet and E190s. Not that the rest of the financials look good, but Q2 will likely be the worst from that point of view.

I view aircraft cancellations as inevitable. The Boeing 737 MAX has the greater risk of being a pariah in the current climate, given the poor perception of the plane and AC's previous cancellation of 11 of them in 2020. Given that Boeing has to work out compensation for the grounding still, a pain-free exit from several more orders may be AC's strategy.

The A220 probably will suffer from reduced orders as well, but I'm not sure it'll really hold much sway with the Trudeau Liberals. The airliner industry is already a bloodbath and Bombardier's basically out of the business now, so the benefit of handing cash to AC won't really change the outcome of what happens to the A220.

That being said, I'm not hugely surprised at the attempt for shaking the government down for some money.

$295 million.

Page 8.

https://www.aircanada.com/content/da...020_FSN_q2.pdf

If I was the government I would play hardball with AC. The main reason is AC is playing games and that is waste of time for everyone.

The government should remind AC the deal was they buy the aircraft and the government lets them out of the requirement to do heavy maintenance in Canada. They want out, so they now need to present the plan for bringing heavy maintenance back to Canada.

The government then needs to go the other airlines, and say "Interest free loan to buy Canadian made A220; who is interested?"

AC (and WS) are in a fight for survival. Why would you play hardball with them?

Lots of other countries, including the USA, have given aid to their airlines. Why Trudeau, after handing out money left and right, is reluctant is a mystery.

A 767 to a 787 is not merely a step forward or 'refining', but a radical new approach to how an aircraft is engineered.

Yeah, but you are missing the last line of that quote, which is the point. Capturing the public's imagination. It wasn't that long ago that the A380 first started flying into Toronto, and people used to line up on the sides of the highways around the airport to see it. A 787 might be light years ahead of a 767 in technology, but the general public aren't lining up on 27 to see it, or particularly caring whether they have one on their flight.

Fair.

When I went to Australia last fall we had a 380 and it was a wonderful experience.

One might argue the wage-subsidy program is a form of aid.

I think the government is trying to avoid favouritism by aiming the relief packages wide. By giving each industry an arbitrary package, the government would encourage everybody to come to the them and cry 'bail me out!'.

To be fair, that's not true of only them, and not only in an economic sense.

Both AC and WS have benefited from the wage subsidy program that is paying anywhere from 75& to 100% of their front line employees salaries until December 15th. That is without any strings attached requiring them to fly.

If AC was upfront asking for help I would say the government should try to help.

If AC is publicly suggesting canceling the A220 order (for jets made in Montreal) as a way of generating political pressure for a better deal from the government then they are playing games and should be treated as such.

I would harbour a guess that AC is bluffing. They know that the A220 is a excellent fit in their fleet plan and really couldn’t make do without it.

I would agree. AC is playing games. The A220 is a low cost operator that would replace some of the smaller jets in the fleet. Given the depressed market for the next few year it is a better fit that most of their narrow body fleet.

The government should reward companies that are straight shooters and punish those who waste time with silly games.

The wage subsidy program helps the employees not the company. If the company is till having to pay medical and other benefits those surplus employees are a drag on its bottom line. As is the 25% top up to full salary. It would be different if a restart of normal travel was imminent but it isn't. But axing thousands of workers does the government no good either.

No, but Air Canada isn't keeping people on just to keep seats warm. They laid off a whole pile of employees. Westjet culled a bunch of employees too.

They're getting a 75% discount on the labour they currently do employ, which is not an insubstantial subsidy.

The US government had a different problem with large-scale airline employee layoff. Unemployed people there don't have health insurance, which tends to be bad during a pandemic. So, the CARES act provided a subsidy to keep people employed, but mandated a whole bunch of continued airline service. So, basically, planes were flying around empty because the Department of Transportation mandated that certain routes had to be maintained.

Wasn't the idea of the wage subsidy that you couldn't lay off people if you wanted to take advantage of that program? I thought AC originally laid off 16,000 or so people, then called them back to take advantage of the wage subsidy for all 35,000 or so employees.

AC can't claim the wage subsidy on the people on lay off. It can claim it on the people it still has on payroll. I believe the strategy was to issue lay off notices to those who are unlikely to come back in the next year or two and keep the staff that are likely to be recalled on payroll.

I think that is the best anyone can hope for. If your not likely to be recalled in the next year or two, why keep those ties and hope of being recalled. Better to know you need to start to looking for something else.

YWG reports some pax stats.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7225496/c...rport-95-drop/

Compared to YOW, 56,000 in Q2 is pretty good. YOW had just over 36,000 pax in the same timeframe. YWG is keeping with the theme of more pax at the western airports. It shows two things: 1) Flair at these airports and 2) for the few essential travellers, given the lack of rail and the vaster distances out west, it means flying is more of a necessity.

Porter Airlines has pushed its service resumption date to October 7 from August 30. Assuming operations return in October, this will be a shut-down of 200 days since the carrier's March 21 service termination.
Press Release

This is unfortunate but I don't know what else they could do.

Their main business is YUL/YOW-YTZ for business travelers (which there are almost none of right now) and VIA Rail or driving in a car by yourself is much safer right now for those that do need to travel.

YUL/YOW-YTZ-USA (and vice versa) was a huge market for Porter and the border is "closed"

Further, their YOW-Maritime operations (with connections from YTZ) is off the table due to the travel restrictions and 2-week isolation required for those entering the Maritimes.

I can see Porter restarting if the Maritimes no longer require the 2 week isolation when entering. Until then, its most likely not at all profitable to fly.

The irony is the perennial #3 carrier on YOW-YTO is now #1 (in terms of seat capacity - AC's still #1 in frequency)...although WS are cancelling 1 of their 4 daily 737s most days...so it's kinda' still AC.

Looks like AA is suspending YVR completely in September. They appear to be only operating the following in September (subject to change):

YYZ-CLT
YYZ-ORD
YYZ-PHL
YUL-PHL
YYC-DFW

United September:

YYC-DEN
YYC-ORD
YYZ-EWR
YYZ-ORD
YUL-ORD
YVR-SFO

Air Transat announced it's winter program. As already stated, all the international flights will be operated out east. The only Western Canada destination served appears to be YVR.

https://www.transat.com/en-CA/corpor...eleases/124324

You forgot ORD-YQB with United, which will start operating 3x weekly starting Thursday this week, and it will increase to daily in September

Thanks for catching that, I was sure I missed something.

AC starting to update their international routes for the fall, some planned resumptions:

Sept
YYZ-GRU
YYZ-CDG
YYC-FRA
YVR-DEL

Oct
YYZ-HKG
YYZ-NRT (thought they only flew to HND from YYZ)
YYZ-BOG
YYZ-SCL-EZE

https://www.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/...html#/south-am

Ah, I see their teasing YYC-FRA for the 900th time. :haha:

As the actual schedule wasn't updated yet, I imagine YYZ-NRT will take over AC1/2 for the moment?

YYZ-NRT will be AC21/22. Reservation is currently open until Feb 28.

This might mean YUL-NRT may not be coming back before at least next spring? Unless slot restriction no longer apply during the pandemic.

So far NRT hasn't cancelled slot restrictions for W20 season.

https://www.iata.org/contentassets/4...20-level-3.pdf

That being said, whether they do or don't, I can't see AC resuming YUL-NRT this fall or winter season. Next spring would be a logical time for the route to resume.

Sunwing will return to the skies with a limited schedule in September.

https://news.paxeditions.com/news/to...ting-september

YYZ to CUN/CCC/VRA/PUJ/MBJ
YUL to CUN/CCC/VRA/PUJ

I wonder what their winter schedule will look like? I'm guessing the gov't will permit out-and-back sun flights to outside of the big 4 given TS' schedule announcement earlier this week that includes YOW, YQB, YQM, YXU, YHZ and YHM or is these still subject to gov't approval?...especially since YQB is also supposed to have a weekly CDG.

The government already allows international flights to Mexico/Caribbean & the US from any Canadian destination.

Only flights from Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia are required to arrive at YYZ, YUL, YVR and YYC.

As for YQB-CDG, TS probably thinks the gov't restrictions will be gone by then.