Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicko999
That is the only viable option. It doesn't even have to cost an insane amount of money. Build a small terminal that is easily expandable and go from there. You already have a runway, a tower.
Like thenoflyzone said however, ADM made the decision to stick with YUL which is 100% the incorrect one.
YMX has the potential still to become Montreal's main airport but as long as those clowns at ADM operate it, nothing will happen.
People might think I am a bit harsh on ADM but you have no idea how bad traffic is the summer months. Last year was about 1hr in traffic during peak time. YUL simply does not have enough space and the situation will keep worsening no matter what.
I am boycotting the airport this summer, it's time my fellow Montrealers wake up.
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You think ADM's decision to stick with YUL was wrong? It seems like the right decision to me, Mirabel was too damaged (reputation wise) at the time and YUL was closer to the city (a huge plus. And of course the transborder and domestic connections, with transborder especially proving to be a growth sector and hand in hand with international growth (ie. US pax to Europe via YUL). There is still room to expand, look at airports like Heathrow and Gatwick, and you can see how you can accomodate with limited resources (Heathrow is in a tight land base, but keeps increasing their capacity, Gatwick has over 40M pax with one runway ffs, YUL is able to accomodate (I don't know anything about ADMTL as an organization, so not commenting on their abilities to do it properly), but just that it was the right choice to keep YUL and grow it, and leave Mirabel until absolutely necessary. Hopefully they can smooth out the growing pains and handle the steady increases. It's a nice problem to have, too much demand. In a competitive world, most places biggest struggle is to grow and gain routes/carriers, if they can get that they will figure out the proper growth. Mirabel was the polar opposite, large facilities, newer, wide open space, but lacked the demand. I would much rather have the demand than the shiny empty terminal that cost a fortune and no one flies to...
The domestic declines continued in May at both YUL and YYC, still curious for me. Declines for 3 months straight for both (% declines shrunk for both in May, so could be a good sign, 3 months is hardly long enough to develop a trend). But at least the declines are not accelerating, so that's important. I just didn't realize domestic was weak right now in Canada, all indicators other than Lynx folding seemed to point to a healthy market. Porter expanding, AC expanding at its hubs, ditto for WS, Flair somehow still flying lol. Even the smaller, regional carriers like Air North (Yukon) and the various other Northern and Indigenous-focused airlines seem steady. I didn't think Lynx shutting down would have such a noticeable effect on stats, I don't think it did. The domestic declines at YUL don't seem like a big deal at all, it's no secret that it is weaker domestically, and even YUL boosters like AC don't put a ton of energy into domestic. So minor under 5% declines shouldn't raise any eyebrows, I was more curious is all. With their massive international and transborder growth, airlines are obviously allocating capacity the right way.
YYC also improved (ie. declined less) than the previous months. But because of WS's dominance in domestic, you can somewhat infer the health of their routes by the overall numbers. AC had already axed most of their routes by last May, so don't think there'd be much measurable change in their domestic pax year over year. Flair has a decent showing, but again, not sure how much they changed year to year. So the declines could point to weakness at WS domestically. I will be curious to see how the big international expansion affects domestic in the summer months, I know they really want to capture more market share with connections. WS is odd in that they have surprisingly strong transborder offerings from lots of airports, they don't seem to funnel pax through Calgary that much (and with the DL cooperation, they have decentralized YYC even more by codesharing with DL or vice versa in most of their airports in western Canada at least. This resulted in route pairings like YVR, YEG, and YWG to ATL, YVR to DTW, YXE and YQR to MSP. These were all recently added by WS on many routes previously served by DL, or some all out new additions. My point is, their transborder strategy seems to be much less hub-centric, and a lot more evenly spread. Of course there is still way more transborder from YYC and lots of people probably still connect there, but they offer a healthy # of destinations and frequency from lots of places they could easily force to connect in YYC if they really wanted to. But they saw the support and demand for more point to point transborder wise, and I think it was the right strategy. They massively increased their transborder direct connectivity all across their Western Canadian airports, and are the only game in town for transborder in many cases. Having no non-stop options to places like LAS or PHX would make people very disgruntled. Yet for domestic and international (for the most part), WS really uses YYC as a connection point for most Western airports. Ya they throw the standard CUN or PVR flights to most airports, but all of the more exotic sun destinations, and of course all Europe/Asia flights go through YYC, and most people understand that (Regina isn't delusional enough to think they would get Seoul, Barcelona, Rome, Belize, etc., so routing through YYC is understood as a reality. Same with the insane domestic offerings at YYC, just miles ahead of the other western airports, and why almost everyone Manitoba and west connect in YYC a ton when flying to points east.
This is all just a random musing, I haven't done the spreadsheets to empirically back it up. But just observing the scale of WS's transborder service in YYC vs. other west airports (# of unique destinations, frequency, as well as codesharing with DL because that should be factored in). Then comparing the transborder service levels to domestic and international, the difference is much less (again, YYC is still far above all other western airports for transborder, but to a smaller degree than their comparative lead in domestic and international service.
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