I took my best shot at updating WS summer schedule to include WG. It was an extremely tedious and imprecise task, and I am putting this disclaimer as obvious as possible: these figures were based on doing dummy searches on Sunwing's website and are in no way verified. Using the WG website was the only way, WS may have absorbed them officially, but the flights are not merged into WS's booking engine or any other sites like Google Flights, which is where I do most of my flight schedule searches. The WG website is still up and running, and is where you book flights and packages still. The only way you would known they are part of WS is when you choose your package destination/dates, and you get to the screen where you chose your hotel etc, and under Flight Details it shows a WS flight #. So I had to manually check destinations from each of the WS secondary cities (these are the cities I always post about for comparison, YYC is so far in its own league it doesn't belong in the discussion). And my reference week was July 14-20, that's all. So any future changes etc. are not factored in here. A few notable findings:
-YYZ (+43) and YUL (+39) saw the largest increase in WS flights due to absorbing WG, which makes total sense as they had the most WG flights as well, so these migrated over. I never did a WG flight schedule breakdown before so I can't say how much capacity WS is keeping, but they definitely added significant flight frequencies from both YYZ and YUL to sun destinations. Another indicator that the new flights are just a migration of WG and not rebuilding hub connections is that neither airport showed noticeable growth in domestic flights. So these WS adds are just O&D for sun travel, basically what WG was
-Other than YYZ and YUL, other airports had little or no any change due to the WG integration. YVR, YWG, YHZ didn't appear to gain even one former WG flight. YVR does have Sunwing offerings through the summer, but all flights appear to be existing WS flight numbers already in the scheds, no new adds. YWG and YHZ don't have any summer offerings on the WG page or from WS. YEG looks like it gained one flight frequency to CUN, and that's it. Again, more or less consistent with WG being relatively smaller outside of YYZ/YUL especially in summer. Winter will likely be more impactful, I'll do a comparison of that when I have the energy.
-YVR maintains its position as 2nd largest WS base in terms of total flights, seat count, and Encore frequency. They are also 2nd largest in flights and seats in the domestic and transborder sectors
-YYZ jumps ahead of YEG in total flight count with this boost from WG. YEG had been ahead previously and last year, but always very close. YYZ was always ahead in seat count even when behind in total flights (YYZ was mainline only, so had more seats than YEG which has Encore). YYZ also leads in # of destinations (42) and international flight frequency
-YEG now a clearer 4th place overall, previously being neck and neck with YYZ when it came to flights. This is not a reflection of YEG declining or being ignored by WS obviously, simply the WG integration benefiting YYZ and doing nothing for YEG, it was a blg enough add to push YYZ in front. If that didn't happen, I'd be shocked. Honestly I expected a bigger gain for YYZ than what I'm seeing, but I have no idea how big WG was before, but I think WS is letting some of the capacity get absorbed by their existing sun service that was already part of their schedule
Here is a breakdown of the stats for the reference week, including any WG adds:
YVR
Total Flights: 516 (368 mainline, 148 Encore)
Total Seats: 69,302
Destinations: 34
YYZ
Total Flights: 393 (all mainline)
Total Seats: 61,682
Destinations: 42
YEG
Total Flights: 372 (288 mainline, 84 Encore)
Total Seats: 51,754
Destinations: 32
YWG
Total Flights: 190 (157 mainline, 33 Encore)
Total Seats: 27,215
Destinations: 15
YHZ
Total Flights: 99 (all mainline)
Total Seats: 15,538
Destinations: 14
YUL
Total Flights: 66 (all mainline)
Total Seats: 7,280
Destinations: 14
YVR clearly holding onto the #2 position, biggest hub outside YYC. Even the transborder offerings appear to have held on fairly well, all things considered. I certainly didn't expect to see weekly frequencies like 12x LAS, 10x LAX, 7x HNL, 7x BOS, or 15x ATL still on the scheds. The losses were not nearly as severe as I feared, I hope it lasts, but fear the worst. Domestic still strong, and sun destinations steady but with a small volume.
One of my biggest takeaways is YYZ's performance overall. Even with the effect of WG's integration, WS is still way behind compared to years past. They're not even close to recovering the losses from when WS demolished their YYZ base and basically only kept it's sun routes. YYZ even surpassed YYC in many metrics before, now they are worlds apart. I even thought YYZ might jump past YVR for 2nd place, but at least this summer it isn't the case at all. Winter might be different, but for the summer reference week, the gap is still big.
WS at YUL proportionally gained the most from WG's integration, by a huge margin. They went from only serving 3 domestic destinations this summer to serving 11 international destinations plus the 3 domestic. Gaining WG gave WS some face at YUL, where they otherwise were so minor it was shocking. But while it was a big gain proportionally, WS's integrated stats at YUL still show it noticeably behind even YHZ, even with a new roster of sun flights. But at least it has more heft now, time will tell if people embrace WS or migrate elsewhere.
YHZ has definitely bounced back with the new international servicw, but it is still significantly behind YWG for seats and flights. YWG's domestic offerings still outweigh the new transatlantic flights at YHZ, but Brandon and Thunder Bay just aren't as glamorous at Paris or Rome, but they add more pax
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