I'm satisfied with Air Canada's YVR additions, nothing spectacular or exotic, just beefing up existing routes (not complaining, just not as momentous as new routes lol). Very happy to see they reinstated double daily service on several Jazz routes that were cut in the downturn. In the old says, Air Canada would fly 37-seat and 50-seat to all these destinations, so frequency was higher, even if capacity was lower. But when you get down to single daily frequency for intra provincial routes, it's a definite loss. I don't fly those routes myself, but I know people in smaller communities will be thrilled at getting the 2nd daily back. Shows a confidence in building up feeder traffic into YVR. I don't have complete facts on hand to back this up, but my perception is YVR is the most connected regionally to smaller cities in their province, and the regional flying appears to be the strongest performing across their domestic network. A lot of this has to do with geography and having difficult driving between many places (mountains, the island, drastic distance between YVR and northern towns, etc.). But it's not just geography; even though Vancouver is the largest, there is a very respectable number of remote cities/towns in BC that do very well for themselves, with strong economies, growing populations, and connectivity with an airline like AC shows that. A lot of major airports have service to the small towns within their province, but it's often on smaller airlines, smaller planes, not served by an airline the size of AC. But the fact that AC serves so many individual airports across the province is impressive. It's just an interesting case study as it shows so much about the service levels to the other major hubs from within their own province, and it's not strong.
For example, on an average Friday in the summer (I chose July 19), from YYZ, AC has 37 intra-Ontario flights to 7 destinations, most on DH4 or similar capacity. The exception being 12/37 are mainline flights to Ottawa, so outside of this the numbers are quite low.
From YVR, they have 45 intra-BC flights to 13 destinations. And it's not dominated by a single major route (ie. YYZ-YOW), there lots of 5+ daily routes like Victoria, Terrace, Kelowna, and many 3-4 daily.
For YUL, they only have 9 intra-Quebec flights, and 5 destinations. Quebec City 5x daily Rouge, and then the other four destinations each one daily. By far the least extensive, basically a YUL-YQB connection, and then the bare minimum 1x daily DH4 on the other four.
Again, this isn't a matter of accomplishment or fault, simply a snapshot of the unique circumstances of AC's 3 main hubs. Geography, history, economics all play a part in regional air connectivity. Arguably YUL has prospered more because there is such a lack of regional travel, it boosts international numbers. They are vastly over-achieving in AC's international network, but not regional. So it's not a trophy prize to have the most regional links, just an interesting delve into what it says about the province's development.
As people speculated for months, but wasn't actually updated until this latest release, is that YVR-YQB is continuing mainline into summer (and presumably indefinitely). As recently as last week, it was still showing as Rouge (which it was last summer). The winter schedule had changed to mainline 737, but summer was still Rouge 319. Now it's 4 weekly 737, so a good bump in seats and quality. It was Rouge's only flight here, so was really not a good fit. Some had speculated the 220 for this route, but it's 737. Of course this also means YYC-YQB is canned, again not sure if that was already confirmed or just assumed? AC gave a couple scraps to YYC for increases: YYC-YEG increased from 3 to 4 daily Jazz, YYC-YWG from one Jazz to one Jazz and one Mainline daily, and Ottawa resuming after just being chopped, basically a very sudden turnaround rather than a legitimate route gain. Still pitiful compared to the Jazz traffic that YYC used to get from all over BC, AB, and SK. And demonstrates that Westjet's growth there isn't fuelling competition and drawing AC back into the game, this update confirmed it. They basically gave them the same increases as they gave YXE, which is a fraction the size. WS's announcement of ICN couldn't be more fitting, flying routes that were once only the domain of Air Canada, and successfully wiping them out from YYC basically. I feel like it was 23 years in the making lol, they were already more dominant but AC kept up a respectable showing despite being pummelled continuously by WS, slowly but surely for almost 25 years. But then the last couple of years were a white flag or FU CYA LATER from Air Canada, they dismantled things so quick. Wild to see, YYC is so lucky to have WS as most cities would really feel the pain from losing a national carrier, and often the gaps in service never recover from losing an airline hub. But YYC was gaining more than losing, so it wasn't a huge loss.
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