It really does defy expectations. Star alliance still dominates the airport, but from an international standpoint represents less than half the weekly flights. Makes for great tail spotting that's for sure.

I'm not sure if it helps or hinders YVRs competitiveness though. On one hand it makes the airport attractive to all alliances, but on the other it reduces the hubbing effect that a fortress can provide.

YVR November 2015 stats

1,430,310 +5.7%

Domestic: 761,227 +3.5%
International: 318,705 +9.7%
US: 350,378 +7.0%

YTD 18,636,791 +4.9%


Decent month.

YVR has a nice international increase, but YUL still has a larger intl passenger count....;)

And in winter, a good chunk of that international capacity at YUL happens on narrowbody (A320/B737) to sun destinations. Which is why the international jetty extension is so desperately needed.

Not really.

YVR's growth has been below average for the better part of the last decade, enabling YUL and YYC to catch up ! Only these last 2 years have we seen an above average growth rate at YVR. Even the Olympics back in 2010 had nil effect on passenger count. As far as I'm concerned, YVR should have pierced 20 million at least 5 years ago.

Glad to see they are finally catching up. Let's see if YVR will be able to keep up the pace, the same way YYC and YUL did these last 10 years or so.

YUL will most likely surpass YVR ...what year? Who knows. 2025? 2030?

Step away from the liquor cabinet....:cheers:

Lolllll

United Airlines ending Newark-St. John's service

http://www.thetelegram.com/Business/...ohns-service/1

Just the other day I overheard my parents and their neighbours talking about how awful Newark was but how useful it was not to have to go to TO to get to NYC (it's half the flying time, apparently).

I think there's a bit of confusion here. What I was saying defies expectations is not the growth in PAX at YVR, but the cross alliance growth Casper was talking about. EVen with AC really boosting its presence at the airport a huge amount of the growth has come from all 3 alliances plus unaligned airlines. Like I said less than half the international flghts per week are star alliance, with significantly less being AC. IN fact only 28% of intl flights out of YVR are with AC, which I would guess is significantly lower than YYZ or YUL.

I wholeheartedly agree that YVR is simply now catching up to where it should have been years ago. Considering the airport had 15 million passengers in 1997, the fact that it just now crossed 20 million is shocking. That implies a compound annual growth of 1.69%, truly dismal. Even at 2.5% growth (inflation) YVR should be over 23 million today considering its place in the late 90s. Even with the strong growth seen lately, I honestly expect more, 25 million by 2020, as the airport anticipates, is a bare minimum, not great growth as is sometimes stated.

Wouldn't it make more sense to go through Montreal or Halifax instead of going all the way to Toronto and backtracking to NYC?

I dont know. A lot of foreign tails at all 3 airports. It might be more (especially at YYZ), but not significantly, at least not at YUL.

Purely guessing here, but I'd say YYZ is in the high 30s, maybe low 40s. YUL would be in the low to mid 30s.

It might be cheaper through YYZ, and so most people probably bite the bullet and fly the long way around.

With remarks like that, he most likely has a wine cellar in the basement, not just a liquor cabinet ! Still, all in good fun. A bit of booze always lightens the mood !

Not surprising.

Low oil prices. Plus a single daily flight, which was inconvenient because it was cancelled regularly due to weather and the fear of flight crew timing out if they had to return to Newark.

:previous:

Yeah, I heard exactly that today - that the route was infamous for delays/cancellations. Still usually sold out, though, apparently. And we have the new runway system in the works (should be fully operational next year) that'll allow all flights to land even in near-zero visibility.

http://i63.tinypic.com/121a8ly.png

Sometimes, yeah - but usually not.

WestJet's North American connections from here are usually in Toronto and they tend to beat Air Canada's prices. And, really, it's a non-issue when heading West. It's only annoying going to the northeast U.S., which is a popular destination for us, probably among the most popular. But, even then... meh. I can't get passionately upset about it. It's not like when we had to fly to MTL or TO to go to Europe. That was irritating because it ate up an extra day of your vacation. The direct YYT-Newark was just a nice to have. Not a human right like the directs to Dublin and London. :haha:

Halifax is usually the most expensive for us to connect from. I assume it's because they're also the end of the spoke in our hub/spoke system. It's cheap for us to get to as a final destination, and probably cheaper to just get another ticket somewhere else once there. But people don't do that here yet. They're perfectly fine flying direct to Dublin and then shopping for whatever European tickets they need to get where they want to visit, but for some reason we don't do that in Halifax yet. Perhaps it's expensive for them to fly anywhere too? I don't know.

Checked Jan. 4 for a one-way ticket to NYC and the cheaptest was WestJet via TO at $408. Air Canada via Montreal was $522 (6 hr 40 minutes). United's direct flight was also $522 but only 3 hr 55 minutes. And Air Canada via Halifax was $860.

The cancelled United direct flight to NYC is no hair of my back. I'm willing to pay a few hundred dollars less and add an extra 90 minutes travel time to go through Toronto. I think Air Canada also has a direct flight to Newark from YYT anyway, though it might only be seasonal.

It's off-topic but Atlanta airport became the first airport in the World to service 100M passengers in a year. They had their 100th million passenger on Dec 27.

Big moment for the aviation industry. Hopefully YYZ reaches that milestone by 2050.:P

Too bad only 10% of these actually leave the airport ;)

^^^ Ya and only 10% are international.

Happy new year boys and girls!

It doesn't really matter. The airport generates revenues and is a workplace for a lot of people. The airport economic impact was $23.7B in revenues in 2014. I would guess that's about 20% of Atlanta's GDP.

It's the same with Dubai's airport. Maybe 10-15% of passengers leave the airport but it still employs 90,000 people indirectly supporting more than 400,000 jobs and has an economic impact of $26.7B which is 27% of Dubai's GDP.

By comparison, Canada's largest airport had an economic impact of $12.7B, twice as small as the 2 big ones mentioned earlier. It's not coincidence, YYZ also has passengers numbers that was twice fewer of the big ones. There is a good reason why airports are measured by # of passengers around the World. It is the best estimate of its value no matter if those passengers leave the airport or not.

I smell a little bit of jealousy.:P

Really not jealous of Hartsfield-Jackson. As long as we get a good offer of international flights at YUL and keep growing, I'm satisfied :tup:

Using the statistics from here

So the ratio of flights operated by AC should be quite similar between YVR and YYZ, with YUL being slightly higher. Note this number does include both domestic and international.

Maybe not of the actual airport (I can't really say because I have never been there) but any aviation fan would be of their numbers. That's a massive plus economically.