Originally Posted by zahav
I didn't realize the transborder preclearance hours at YVR had been increased, not sure how I missed that (I'm usually pretty on top of airport news lol). This makes so much sense, a very positive move! I was actually thinking to myself the other day that there's a lot of US flights leaving from the international gates at night now. It used to be a handful, but seems to keep growing. That red eye departure with a morning arrival on the eastern seaboard must really be popular, so many airlines have these especially Air Canada lately. I remember taking a US-bound flight and being in international departures felt so weird! Having worked at the airport for years, I am just so used to transborder being separate, so seeing a flight to Dallas next to a flight to Taipei was always odd. Moving it to 23:30 (or midnight, as stated on the US government site) allows all US departures to be pre-cleared, which I don't think has ever been the case. Not sure if the other 8 airports with preclearance have a lot of late night flights? The BC coast is really the only place where the distance is long enough and time zone wise to make red eyes work. From the central and east, the distances and time differences are too close, there's nowhere in North America that would make sense with a late night departure from YYZ eastward. Late night departures to Europe/Africa work well from these areas, but not transborder. The hours of each airport's preclearance are super unique to each station, timed I assume to take in if not all, then most US bound flights. Are there any US flights from either YUL or YYZ that don't get precleared? YVR might've been an anomaly with it's chunk of US flights that weren't precleared, I think most other airports preclear almost everything. Imagine that list of red eyes that nname posted all missing out on preclearance? Would be a big gap
I did a Westjet summer 2024 service update for the "secondary" airports (still procrastinating doing YYC because it's such a huge undertaking compared to the others). I used the same standard week in July (15-21) for each airport, it's a normal week right in the summer travel season). Routes and airlines sometimes have variation in frequency from week to week on the same route, but it's rare (meaning there's usually the same frequency on a route for the entire season, rather than changing frequency and days week to week). Here are the stats for all airports listed on Wikipedia as Focus Cities for WS (hardly a scientific source I know, but WS doesn't mention anywhere as focus cities, it only mentions YYC as a hub, AFAIK...):
Week of July 15-21
YVR - 476 flights, approx. 61,000 seats, and 32 destinations
YEG - 360 flights, approx. 43,000 seats, and 29 destinations
YYZ - 311 flights, approx. 50,000 seats, and 29 destinations
YWG - 166 flights, approx. 23,685 seats, 14 destinations
I know no one will be anywhere near WS in YYC (hence it's status as a fortress hub), but YVR has quite definitively overtaken YYZ, which would have been absurd to imagine anytime pre pandemic. YVR is higher in total # of flights, # of seats, and # of destinations (not to mention it is the only airport other than YYC to have service from mainline, Encore, and Link, as well as 787 service). So it qualifies more as a hub than YYZ and YEG by any metric. YEG and YYZ essentially both have arguments for 3rd place, one based on total flights, and one on total seats. But they are kind of in the same place as each other now in terms of importance. YYZ has a somewhat inflated destination list, since there have tons of once a week sun destinations, which boosts the # of destinations but isn't adding a ton of seats. Their domestic drop has just been so extreme, the frequencies are a fraction of what they used to be, not to mention they don't have Encore or Link. Meaning their domestic feed from places like YOW, YUL, and YHZ is a single jet flight a day, so meagre, it's almost not worth it. They used to have high frequencies to lots of Eastern locations, really feeding their network. If they didn't have all the sun packages to unique Caribbean islands, they'd be even worse.
I am not even sure why YWG is on the list, informal as it may be by Wikipedia editors. In terms of stats, they are way below both YEG and YYZ in # of flights, seats, and destinations. YWG is only 46% of YEG's destinations, and 47% of YYZ's seats. And less than half the amount of destinations as any of the others. This is absolutely not a random opinion or stirring the pot, this is a straight-up number analysis, not emotional. Overall it seems the definition of "focus city" is so vague, there really is no rules about who qualifies or what the methodology is. If anyone is aware of anything more than just opinions that qualifies a city as a focus city, let me know. I just did this exercise for fun to really measure empirically the reality at each airport
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