Canadian Airport Thread II

[nname]

Originally Posted by Dominion301

It seems like YKF’s base will lose an aircraft, probably to YYZ. PD are definitely smiling seeing this schedule as they now no longer need to deal with F8 not only at YOW, but also YUL, YYG, YXE & YYG. I fully expect PD will launch seasonal daily YYZ-YYG next summer along with a whole host of other new stuff out of YYZ & YOW.

Do they still have YKF base? If yes, it is down to 1 aircraft, if not, the YKF-YVR/YXX can be done by a YYZ or YVR aircraft with overnight crew stay. It's always hard to figure out the YVR-YYZ flight as there's always one round-trip that's used for tail swaps and have extended stay at both ends.

Now their schedule is easier to figure out after removing all those 1 or 2 weekly flights. Looks like this is the allocation now:

YYZ 7, YVR 5, YYC 3, YEG 2, YKF 1, 1 for rotation between YYZ and YVR.. for a total of 19 aircrafts. 7.5 of those have red-eye flight.

I'm pretty sure YYZ had 7 planes for a while now, but YVR always had 4 (except for a short while before seizure). I guess YKF lost the plane to YVR then.

[Dominion301]

Originally Posted by nname

Do they still have YKF base? If yes, it is down to 1 aircraft, if not, the YKF-YVR/YXX can be done by a YYZ or YVR aircraft with overnight crew stay. It's always hard to figure out the YVR-YYZ flight as there's always one round-trip that's used for tail swaps and have extended stay at both ends.

Now their schedule is easier to figure out after removing all those 1 or 2 weekly flights. Looks like this is the allocation now:

YYZ 7, YVR 5, YYC 3, YEG 2, YKF 1, 1 for rotation between YYZ and YVR.. for a total of 19 aircrafts. 7.5 of those have red-eye flight.

I'm pretty sure YYZ had 7 planes for a while now, but YVR always had 4 (except for a short while before seizure). I guess YKF lost the plane to YVR then.

I thought F8’s fleet stood at 20? I know for a while you could figure most flights by their base by the first digit of their flight numbers. Is that still the case?

[nname]

Originally Posted by Dominion301

I thought F8’s fleet stood at 20? I know for a while you could figure most flights by their base by the first digit of their flight numbers. Is that still the case?

It was never the case. Route number are assigned by base. If it's a route between two bases, then it use the number of the larger base except for YUL.

F8 ABxx

A:
0 domestic
1 transborder
2 international

B:
1 YUL
3 YOW
4 YKF
5 YYC
6 YYZ
7 YEG
8 YVR
9 Everything else

YUL > YYZ > YVR > YYC/YEG > YOW/YKF

YUL was never a base; YXX was a base but use 900s number as everything else.

Funny now the S25 schedule only have 4,5,6,7,8. The lowest flight number is 400. Everything below that no longer operates.

[SimpleEng]

^ Thanks for the F8 flight number decoding info. YOW is still holding on to F8-300, but only for a few more days before we say goodbye to Flair (for good?).

Would anyone know how to decode PD flight numbers? Here's a few E2 departure flight numbers for reference:

• YOW->YVR - PD263, PD267
• YOW->YYC - PD271, PD277
• YOW->YEG - PD283, PD287
• YOW->YWG - PD291
• YOW->YYT - PD299
• YOW->YYZ - PD150, PD156, PD158, PD168
• YOW->YHZ - PD241, PD245
• YOW->MCO - PD505, PD507
• YOW->FLL - PD511, PD517
• YOW->TPA - PD529
• YOW->RSW - PD537
• YOW->LAS - PD651

Just having fun guessing here but something like this - PD-ABC

Axx:

• 1xx - Domestic
• 2xx - Domestic
• 3xx - Domestic
• 4xx - Domestic
• 5xx - Florida
• 6xx - West Coast USA
• 7xx - TBD - hopefully Caribbean one day

xxC:

• 🞵🞵-oddnumber - departing from a PD hub
• 🞵🞵-evennumber - returning to a PD hub

Hub priority for odd/even numbering - YYZ > YOW > YUL > YHZ

EDIT - more flight numbers and decoding theories

[zahav]

Originally Posted by Justanothermember

Flair appears to have no idea what direction it is heading in as an airline. Seems like they throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Destinations at YKF are slowing being removed, so that sweetheart deal is gradually souring.

Hmmm retreating to the three biggest domestic hubs after years of trying smaller point to point pairings? Sound familiar lol, it is exactly what WS did after trying with YHM, trying a zillion small town routes with a 737, and not getting anywhere. Then they ditched YHM and moved to YYZ, even after championing the practice of flying to a secondary airport to avoid high cost ones. And yet, the numbers must have been glaringingly obvious that they had to shift to the bigger airport. They (WS) were also known for starting and ditching so many smaller cities. Flair has followed the same steps but obviously even more extreme, widdling down destinations and focusing way more on the big 3 airports (domestically lol, I know YUL is #3 overall). I am surprised that YYC is bigger for Flair than YEG is, I thought Edmonton was larger for Flair. Especially with WS basically competing for the same markets as F8 in YYC, so I am surprised they are bigger there than YEG

[JakeLRS]

Originally Posted by zahav

Hmmm retreating to the three biggest domestic hubs after years of trying smaller point to point pairings? Sound familiar lol, it is exactly what WS did after trying with YHM, trying a zillion small town routes with a 737, and not getting anywhere. Then they ditched YHM and moved to YYZ, even after championing the practice of flying to a secondary airport to avoid high cost ones. And yet, the numbers must have been glaringingly obvious that they had to shift to the bigger airport. They (WS) were also known for starting and ditching so many smaller cities. Flair has followed the same steps but obviously even more extreme, widdling down destinations and focusing way more on the big 3 airports (domestically lol, I know YUL is #3 overall). I am surprised that YYC is bigger for Flair than YEG is, I thought Edmonton was larger for Flair. Especially with WS basically competing for the same markets as F8 in YYC, so I am surprised they are bigger there than YEG

YYC is a bigger market, so it they have more room to play with.

I’m terms of YEG, they did try to expand but last spring westjet launched the exact same routes as flair (BNA/SFO) and flair backed out quickly as they couldn’t compete with them. Flair has developed a name for itself on core routes and haven’t had much luck expanding with new offerings either because of poor awareness or because westjet will likely match them.

The only consistent thing from flair has been their offering from YEG.

[Myst]

With questions about their viability still overshadowing Flair, a portion of the public would choose other options even if they wanted to support the market disrupter. So I’m not surprised hometown advantage wasn’t enough to help Flair in the fight against Westjet. Although I don’t think Flair has done the best job of marketing that idea, either.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Myst

With questions about their viability still overshadowing Flair, a portion of the public would choose other options even if they wanted to support the market disrupter. So I’m not surprised hometown advantage wasn’t enough to help Flair in the fight against Westjet. Although I don’t think Flair has done the best job of marketing that idea, either.

Part of the problem is Flair business model does not work for smaller centers in Canada. You need to sell connecting tickets for any of this to work.

WestJet, Air Canada and Porter can make a city like Victoria work because they are connecting into a hub with onward connections. Flair I guess could perhaps make Las Vegas or Toronto work from here, but I don't think anything else would have the daily demand to fill a nonstop without connections.

Same thing for a city like Saskatoon.

[nname]

Originally Posted by casper

Part of the problem is Flair business model does not work for smaller centers in Canada. You need to sell connecting tickets for any of this to work.

WestJet, Air Canada and Porter can make a city like Victoria work because they are connecting into a hub with onward connections. Flair I guess could perhaps make Las Vegas or Toronto work from here, but I don't think anything else would have the daily demand to fill a nonstop without connections.

Same thing for a city like Saskatoon.

Flair do sell connecting flights though. Now they allow you to book flight for routes like YYJ-LAS, YYJ-GDL.. with YYJ leg on Pacific Coastal to feed into their flight out of YVR.

And then there are all those crazy international options that I don't think anyone with their right mind would book with Flair... like YYJ-FRA, YVR-BOM, or even KIN-SIN

[samuelx88]

It seems like Pascan will launch 9 weekly YQB-YHZ flights starting on 31st March using their SAAB 340

https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-yhz-to-yqb

[casper]

Originally Posted by nname

Flair do sell connecting flights though. Now they allow you to book flight for routes like YYJ-LAS, YYJ-GDL.. with YYJ leg on Pacific Coastal to feed into their flight out of YVR.

And then there are all those crazy international options that I don't think anyone with their right mind would book with Flair... like YYJ-FRA, YVR-BOM, or even KIN-SIN

Interesting and weird. You have to recheck baggage. Very strange wording on the missed connection. They will only rebook you one, if your flight miss connects twice on the same trip the second time is not the responsibility of the airline.

You can't make this stuff up. What a weird interline/codeshare arrangement.

[Dominion301]

Originally Posted by samuelx88

It seems like Pascan will launch 9 weekly YQB-YHZ flights starting on 31st March using their SAAB 340

https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-yhz-to-yqb

Pascan may finally be the airline to succeed at YQB-YHZ as they have the properly sized equipment to operate said route. Hopefully it's properly timed to connect at YHZ to/from YSJ & YQY. Still not bookable though.

[samuelx88]

Originally Posted by Dominion301

Pascan may finally be the airline to succeed at YQB-YHZ as they have the properly sized equipment to operate said route. Hopefully it's properly timed to connect at YHZ to/from YSJ & YQY. Still not bookable though.

For now only the return leg appears on the system but the schedule is as follows. It seems to be timed to connect on Air Transat YQB-CDG but that might not be the goal of this flight. Also, it's twice daily from Monday to Thursday, once daily on Friday and no flights during the weekend.

YHZ-YQB
09:15 - 09:34 P6 920 Saab SF340A/B
18:00 - 18:19 P6 926 Saab SF340A/B

[Myst]

Originally Posted by casper

Part of the problem is Flair business model does not work for smaller centers in Canada. You need to sell connecting tickets for any of this to work.

WestJet, Air Canada and Porter can make a city like Victoria work because they are connecting into a hub with onward connections. Flair I guess could perhaps make Las Vegas or Toronto work from here, but I don't think anything else would have the daily demand to fill a nonstop without connections.

Same thing for a city like Saskatoon.

I’d agree. Canada doesn’t have enough large enough cities to run a true point-to-point ULCC operation.

Strictly speaking they could adapt to the market reality while still avoiding the complexities of connections. In its earlier days Westjet ran some one-stop routings, which could be a viable alternative model to a hub carrier or a pure point to point carrier. Winnipeg-Calgary-Victoria can serve traffic between all 3 cities. Same with Saskatoon-Edmonton-Vancouver. But it does have a cost trade off, and isn’t as adaptable to US routes. Still, there’s lots of primary and secondary routes that could be strung together.

[casper]

Speaking of Canada and India. This is a weird one, for the Canadian military to get involved with....

Canadian Forces to help Air India passengers stranded in Iqaluit after emergency landing: Sajjan

IQALUIT, Nunavut — Canada’s emergency preparedness minister says the passengers of an Air India flight that landed in Iqaluit due to a bomb threat remain stuck there, and he has approved a request for the military to help them.

Harjit Sajjan posted on X late Tuesday that the airline “hasn’t found a solution” after the plane landed in Nunavut’s capital with 211 passengers on board earlier in the day and that they are “stranded.”

He says in the post that despite great efforts, Iqaluit is not equipped to house the passengers, and that after consulting with Transport Minister Anita Anand, he has given the green light for Canadian Forces resources to “ease the pressure on Iqaluit and send passengers safely to their destination in Chicago.”

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/air...y-landing-in-iqaluit-after-online-threat

Basically the Canadian Air Force dispatched an aircraft to pick them up and transport them to Chicago (their final destination).

I do hope the Canadian government send the bill to Air Canada.

[thenoflyzone]

Originally Posted by casper

I do hope the Canadian government send the bill to Air Canada.

Freudian slip?

[casper]

Originally Posted by thenoflyzone

Freudian slip?

Yes. I mostly fly on Air Canada, comes out by instinct.

Should have said Air India.

[Djeffery]

Justin isn't using the Husky enough to get the crews their hours so they get to fly stranded people from the Arctic to Chicago?

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

Justin isn't using the Husky enough to get the crews their hours so they get to fly stranded people from the Arctic to Chicago?

More likely a potentially embarrassing Hotel rooms triple up if Iqaluit could even pull that off. The RCAF probably had two choices, Fly a Husky to Iqaluit then Chicago or activate the Barracks across the Main runway. Hmm, better to get our Indian guests on their way. Probably a good training exercise for a Husky as they may be escorting CF-35's there in the future.

[Dominion301]

Originally Posted by Djeffery

Justin isn't using the Husky enough to get the crews their hours so they get to fly stranded people from the Arctic to Chicago?

If you've never been to Iqaluit it may be difficult to grasp what it's like there. A 77W full of stranded pax would cripple the city. For context, a full 77W is the equivalent of 5% of Iqaluit's total population. The 3 hotels in town wouldn't be adequate given the regular visitors that'd be coming in on the 5T flights for a given day.

Iqaluit it a fascinating town that few Canadians will ever actually get to. I think I've been there about a half dozen times and it's unlike anything in the south or even Yellowknife.