LOL reminds me of the old Hotels.com character Captain Obvious haha! But yes, it is an understandable add. That two way market is so colossal it's insane, just capacity on top of capacity. I used to think it was analogous to YYZ-LON (LHR and LGW together), but YUL-PAR (CDG and ORY) is definitely higher. Without French Bee even factored in yet, 9-10 daily, whereas YYZ-LON is 8x daily. And both routes entirely** on a mix of wide bodies that are similar ie. 777s, 787s, A330s (**it looks like Transat operates the A321LR on some YYZ-LGW flights, but otherewise it's wide bodies for both).
The domestic declines are still surprising to me, I didn't think Lynx was that important traffic wise, especially as AC and WS usually add capacity and absorb any losses. It's just weird to have several months in a row with negative growth at 3/4 of the biggest airports, and likely at YYZ too if they bothered reporting. Usually consistent declines are seen when there's a significant event (ie. Sep. 11th, onset of Covid, SARS, or something like the 2008 economic crash which really happened in a very quick cascade starting in Sep. 2008, and having impacts right away). Ie. a very economic shock. But that isn't the case here, despite mixed economic signals and some obvious storm clouds and weakness, it certainly is not like March 2020, Sep 2001, or even fall 2008... So I guess it is just Lynx? The fact that transborder and international are strong at all 3 airports kind of weakens the economic argument a bit, as during the big shocks to traffic that I mentioned, every sector was affected. But this time, other sectors aren't just inching up, they are growing in big numbers (ie. YVR transborder up 24% in May?! That's very hefty, and then YYC up 20.7%, also really big). So a very mixed picture, and not a classic economic slowdown (well, yet, but hopefully not). Would be interesting if the airports provided data on how much is inbound visits from the US and how much is Canadian travel outbound. Ie. a measure of foreign traffic in vs. Canadians going out. I feel like maybe there's a StatCan data set on this, but maybe not.
I am actually surprised Asian traffic at YVR is even where it is (basically at 2017 levels). By 2017, our China traffic was already pretty much at its peak, we didn't gain many airlines or frequencies after that, the main growth was up till then. So comparing the those days of the PEK, PVG, CAN steady frequencies plus all those secondary cities at lower frequency, it was a lot. So to be even close to that level, with only 4x weekly AC to PVG, and then a smattering on random single weekly flights by Chinese carriers) is quite surprising. And other than adding Singapore and Fiji, the other routes are not drastically higher than 2017 in terms of frequencies overall, so that tells me the planes are fuller? To be almost at 2017 Asia traffic, while facing a notable frequency reduction, must show fuller planes, because the equipment used isn't so different than before?
Also interesting to see such strength on transborder traffic. Anecdotally, at least in Vancouver, a lot of people are doing a US trip, so that traffic isn't just more Americans coming in, I think there's a lot of popularity to places like Florida and leisure destinations in the West (ie. Phoenix, Orange County, San Diego). I guess the Canadian dollar has been so low for so long now, Canadians aren't basing decisions on the exchange rate or anticipating much change by holding off on booking. Conversely, the low dollar is certainly still a factor in Americans coming here, the built in discount on coming here is essential. Basically it just brings us to even with the US for cost of many things, as prices for most things are higher here. So that discounted dollar is making higher prices palatable. I might be exaggerating here, the low $ is probably way more of a savings than the higher prices add, and it isn't a wash. But imaging a dollar at par is terrifying, we would be insanely pricey and could lose a lot. Here's to hoping the low to mid 70s will last, once we get into the 80s I get nervous for tourism.
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