YEG - Edmonton Int Airport

[Airboy]

One of the best spot I have found for plane spotting is on or near Telford lake in Leduc. The days I'm on the lake you usually get planes just finishing the banking coming in or on the way out. Plus you get quite good acoustics on the lake so you can hear the various engine types.

You also get a great view of Tail art.

Plus sitting in the middle of the lake is very relaxing.

[Johnny Aussie]

Just noticed Westjet is adding the following frequencies to YEG this winter:
(comparison is to last winter scheds)

LAS up 1 to 15 p/w
PHX up 3 to 10 p/w

As mentioned before OGG will have the same frequency but will be running for much longer this winter.

WS will have 42 transborder flights per week. This is an increase of 4 flights per week compared to Winter 10/11.

International will have the same frequencies (8) as last year.

I mentioned Westjet was dropping MBJ from YEG, however, this was incorrect. WS will still have the 1 weekly MBJ flight. YYC's and YVR's flights for Sunquest will be operated by Thomas Cook (Jazz) instead this winter.

[EdmTrekker]

Thanks JohnnyA....I fly to LAS often but usually on US Air via PHX cause I collect pts. I miss my 8 am flight I used to take nonstop... now I must connect. Used to fly AC but they cancelled nonstops and I won't fly through a Cdn city with US pre-clear being here.

[Johnny Aussie]

Here is the Westjet press release....

http://westjet2.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=571

It doesn't talk about all the additions, just highlights. Usually Westjet press releases are a lot more detailed than this, but this one is bordering on the vague.

On the domestic front, Westjet is adding 2 daily flights on the YYC-YEG route. There will now be a total of 7 per day (lesser on weekends). A few other domestic routes have a tweek of a weekly frequency up or down, but other than the additional YYC flights, nothing significant. YHM is still discontinued for the winter again.

[LO 044]

A comparison of WestJet flight increases between YEG (4 flights per week) and YYC (23 flights per week):

Capacity/Frequency Increase (based on comparison of W10 vs W11):
Calgary – Cancun Increase from 6 weekly in W10 to 8 weekly in W11
Calgary – Las Vegas Increase from 14 to 17 weekly
Calgary – Palm Springs Increase from 9 to 14 weekly
Calgary – Phoenix Increase from 14 to 16 weekly
Calgary – Puerto Vallarta Increase from 5 to 7 weekly
Calgary – San Diego Increase from 3 weekly to 4 weekly (Winter operation changes)
Calgary – San Jose/Los Cabos Increase from 4 to 5 weekly
Calgary – Montreal Winter service increase from 1 to 2 Daily

Edmonton – Las Vegas Increase from 14 to 15 weekly
Edmonton – Palm Springs Boeing 737-800 replace -700 in W10, Daily
Edmonton – Phoenix Increase from 7 to 10 weekly

But at least we'll have more connecting opportunities in YYC:
Edmonton – Calgary Increase from 5 to 7 Daily

http://airlineroute.net/2011/07/21/ws-w11/

[Coldrsx]

clap clap clap

but expected

[hilman]

At least Air Canada's got our back with their impressive list of weekly flights of 1 to Cancun, 1 to Cozumel and 0 to the US lol (they cancelled the Montego Bay flight). Westjet is suppose to be offering the twice weekly nonstop to Maui for a longer period this winter as well.

[s211]

Originally Posted by EdmTrekker

Thanks JohnnyA....I fly to LAS often but usually on US Air via PHX cause I collect pts. I miss my 8 am flight I used to take nonstop... now I must connect. Used to fly AC but they cancelled nonstops and I won't fly through a Cdn city with US pre-clear being here.

I applaud your choice to try and force AC's hand.

[LO 044]

Originally Posted by hilman

At least Air Canada's got our back with their impressive list of weekly flights of 1 to Cancun, 1 to Cozumel and 0 to the US lol (they cancelled the Montego Bay flight). Westjet is suppose to be offering the twice weekly nonstop to Maui for a longer period this winter as well.

I never discount the fact that AC gives us crap service but your notion is alway that WestJet is SO much better. I disagree. And as i said before, the more that WestJet grows the more they will service YEG like AC does.

[hilman]

You are the one who continuously puts down Westjet and it's tiring. Is Westjet perfect, no, but they are a hell of a lot better for Edmonton than AC. At least WJ tries new routes and gives us choices rather than the zero flights to the US and mind boggling 2 weekly flights to the Caribbean. Fact is 70% of AC's flights from YEG go to YVR, YYC or YYZ, that is just pathetic.

[LO 044]

I can't argue the 70% figure one way or another as i'd have to add up available seats, flights, etc.

No i don't always put down WestJet. In fact, if they opened up an international (not transborder or a Sun destination) route i would take them in a heartbeat. I discount Sun destinations because all the scheduled airlines and charter airlines serve those routes. There is enough competition on those routes.

Even some routes that people want and can be supported they don't open, specifically Newark. Why not reroute one of those YEG-YYC flights to a YEG-EWR flight? Or why not compete on flights to ORD, SEA, DEN, IAD? Why not open a YEG-DFW route to compete with the YEG-IAD route and have their American Airline friends take us further? All i see is WS doing the same thing to YEG as AC but on a smaller scale because WestJet's network is smaller. You can't possibly tell me that an increase in passengers to Calgary ONLY worth 2 daily Boeing 737's has suddenly appeared. Calgary received 6 times as many weekly flight increases as Edmonton. Again we have a similar population as Calgary yet YYC gets 8 flights a week to Cancun while we get 3 flights a week. Explain these discrepancies of flights?

[MalcolmTucker]

Over the past 3 years Calgary's New york service by all airlines has be pulled back a fair bit. In this environment you want someone to try to open a new service? When you can fly to Toronto and connect to New York on any flight from Edmonton, would a single direct flight even get 50% of route traffic? Even 33%?

[LO 044]

Fair enough but what service can YEG possibly get that YYC doesn't already have?

[MalcolmTucker]

I would try to court Iceland, for connections through to Europe (fly too often and it might kill LHR however), cargo, and as many nothern connections as possible. With bigger and more economical planes being viable as the northern cities get bigger, guarding that gain is gonig to be a challenge.

[LO 044]

Canada 3000 flew via KEF a while back but i believe that had more to do with refuelling the 757 than to let people off at KEF. Iceland Express did a pretty bad job last year from YWG. Not sure how they're doing this year.

[hilman]

Originally Posted by LO 044

I can't argue the 70% figure one way or another as i'd have to add up available seats, flights, etc.

No i don't always put down WestJet. In fact, if they opened up an international (not transborder or a Sun destination) route i would take them in a heartbeat. I discount Sun destinations because all the scheduled airlines and charter airlines serve those routes. There is enough competition on those routes.

Even some routes that people want and can be supported they don't open, specifically Newark. Why not reroute one of those YEG-YYC flights to a YEG-EWR flight? Or why not compete on flights to ORD, SEA, DEN, IAD? Why not open a YEG-DFW route to compete with the YEG-IAD route and have their American Airline friends take us further? All i see is WS doing the same thing to YEG as AC but on a smaller scale because WestJet's network is smaller. You can't possibly tell me that an increase in passengers to Calgary ONLY worth 2 daily Boeing 737's has suddenly appeared. Calgary received 6 times as many weekly flight increases as Edmonton. Again we have a similar population as Calgary yet YYC gets 8 flights a week to Cancun while we get 3 flights a week. Explain these discrepancies of flights?

I agree with most of what you say but my problem is the incessant whining about WJ for providing less flights than YYC, yet you never bash AC for providing 2 flights a week versus the 45+ like WJ, why is that?

[LO 044]

Not sure what the 2+ and 45 stand for. I simply state that many drool about how great WestJet IS TO EDMONTON. I believe there are more similarities than differences between the 2 airlines of how they treat YEG relative to YYC except that AC's scale is greater since their fleet or number of passenger seats is greater than WestJet hence the differences that exist are greater. And if you fly to Abbotsford, Hamilton, or Kelowna then you of course love WestJet. If you fly to London Heathrow then you love Air Canada. I don't agree with people discounting codesharing like AC does to Chicago for example. We will probably never see an AC aircraft on this route or one to Denver. Why would you waste 2 airlines with 2 crews serving one destination while selling seats on eachothers aircraft anyways? Do you honestly think that American will ever fly the YEG-LAX route or that WestJet will ever fly YYC-DFW? Doubt it. I just think there's nothing wrong with that because WestJet still does well as a company with the codeshare and perhaps enhanced the other carrier to come to YEG becasue of WestJet's connections to YEG.

[hilman]

Well since you just provided links to both AC's and WJ's winter flights, I assumed you knew that 2 and 45+ were the weekly flights to the US/The Caribbean, which is pretty remarkable and should make you drool.

Why does AC fly AC planes with a lot of routes (not codeshare) out of YYC? Seems they can do it there yet literally let other airlines do the work to serve YEG and is why I will not fly AC unless I absolutely need to.

[LO 044]

I provided capacity increases for WestJet over last year and compared what WS gave YEG and what WS gave YYC. If you want to drool over flights that Air Canada, Air Transat, Sunwing and WestJet offer then we'll agree to disagree.

You definitely have a point there about AC's flights from YYC, especially on a flight like YYC-FRA. You win that argument.

This argument will go in circles anyways. Here's an example. AC offers 8 flights a day to Toronto. WS offers 6 flights a day to Toronto. Does this mean AC service to Toronto is better than WS? After all, you have more choice for when you want to leave and better options at connections regardless of the connecting airline.

[EdmTrekker]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Over the past 3 years Calgary's New york service by all airlines has be pulled back a fair bit. In this environment you want someone to try to open a new service? When you can fly to Toronto and connect to New York on any flight from Edmonton, would a single direct flight even get 50% of route traffic? Even 33%?

Good grief..why on earth would anyone connect via Toronto when you can pre-clear customs here to Chicago or Minneapolis and connect with better frequency to anyone of the 3 NYC airports.