Today is the first day of a lot of Air Canada changes (in the west at least, probably also in the east I just don't have all the adjustments). AC started YVR-DXB, really hoping it does well so it becomes yer-round. Over at YYC, it was the last day of FRA, YOW, LAX, and YHZ. After today, it really fades away. They still have a lot of domestic flights to YVR, YYZ, and YUL (obviously, as those are AC hubs) but barely anything else substantial.
Some somewhat recent YVR tidbits:
-Fiji Airways switched to the larger 350 and up to 3x weekly for much of the winter
-Air Canada increasing HKG service to 10-11 for some of the winter period (normally it is just daily)
-Turkish Airlines up gauging to a 777-300ER
I did a quick flight and seat tally for Westjet at it's three non-YYC "hubs" (in reality only YYC is really a hub now, the others are essentially operating bases, I think that's the term?)
Using a week in January 2024, here is the flight breakdown by city and by seats (seat totals are approx. only). It includes mainline, Encore, and Link, but not Sunwing:
YVR - 425 flights, 54,672 seats
YYZ - 329 Flights, 52,778 seats
YEG - 245 flights, 33,084 seats
YYZ still very strong for WS in the winter with the amount of sun flying, but domestically and non-Florida, they are quite weak (at least compared to how it used to be even a couple years back). The reason they are far behind YVR on # of flights but not that far off based on seats is because the sun destinations are all jet flights, and Encore pulled out of YYZ. So they are a jet-only airport, hence the large # of seats despite less flights. YVR is strong for mainline plus they are strong for Encore and Link. But those planes are smaller, so they increase total amount of flights more than seats. YEG is quite a distant 3rd place, I was surprised until I did the spreadsheet and saw the numbers, I thought all three airports were closer. But keep in mind, this is January 2024, so as far from peak season as it gets, this is just a comparison with all at the same time of year.
Now switch to Summer 2024, using a standard week in July:
YVR - 469 flights, 59,911 seats
YEG - 346 flights, 43,094 seats
YYZ - 311 Flights, 49,953 seats
YEG leapfrogs YYZ to take 2nd place in # of flights. And with a very healthy bump in seats. But again, due to YYZ being all-jet and YEG having a big Encore component, they are still 3rd in seats. YEG is the most Encore-heavy of the three, at 70% of flights being operated by Encore. YVR is just under half (49%) of flights operated by Encore and Link combined. YYZ as mentioned, has no Encore.
YVR and YEG do better in summer, and YYZ does better in winter. YYZ has always been strong in winter due to such a massive network of sun destinations, it's seemingly endless, with so much capacity with Air Canada, Transat, Sunwing, Westjet, all operating, and so many individual destinations, really wild to see YYZ's "southern" destinations list. But still, not enough to lift it above YVR, which is more more consistent seasonally as well as more diverse with strong domestic, transborder, and sun destinations (of the three sectors, international is obviously weakest, but still not that bad for YVR; YVR has historically not been as strong to the Caribbean as every other Canadian airport, it is much more Mexico, the western US, and Hawaii). But it's interesting to see the patterns and performance of Westjet's "other 3 hubs". YVR very clearly in 2nd place after YYC, with YEG/YYZ closer to each other and bigger or smaller than the other, depending on the definition of bigger as well as the season. It is still so wild to me to see how viciously WS cut YYZ down, that's my biggest takeaway. They were so big for WS, and at times I think they were even bigger than YYC by seat capacity (I know I need to verify this, I will try and dig around but I do remember in the past reading that WS actually had more capacity than YYC during a certain period). So to see them in this condition is shocking, having less summer flights than YEG? That would have been inconceivable in years past. YYZ is such a crowded market, there's just so many players and so much competition. Retrenching in YYC was the smart move of course, just crazy to see the actual numbers and how far it's fallen.
I will tackle YYC later today if I have time, it will be kind of funny to just see how insane the gap is between them and everyone else.
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Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if both of them operate the type, eventually. But I agree about TS. The A330-900neo makes more sense for them.
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