Atlantic Canada airport thread

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by q12

A two hour commute to Toronto Pearson from Toronto isn't a big deal so why would it be from Moncton?

It is most certainly not a two hour commute to Pearson from downtown TO. Even if you find a cabbie who wants to take you on a tour of the city on the way out there, it wouldn't take more than 45 minutes. Most of the time I can get from my downtown hotel to the terminal at Pearson in about 25 minutes.

To compare a commute from Moncton to Stanfield to a commute from downtown TO to Pearson is absurd in the extreme. A better comparison would be a commute to Pearson from Kingston, Huntsville or Goderich. Sure, some people have to do it, but it's a pain in the —.

A principle issue for people driving to Stanfield from Moncton (or any other point west) is that for about four months a year, you really have to pay attention to the weather. The Cobequid Pass can throw a real hook into your plans in the wintertime. I have driven enough in the Maritimes during the winter to realize just how unpredictable the weather can be.

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

It's too bad that it's been canned. But, to be fair, this was an overpriced, minor route for both our airports.

I agree. This was an overpriced and ill thought out route by a minor airline that got in way over it's head. We all knew it was doomed to failure as soon as we found out the pricing structure. Another issue that a lot of people might not be aware of is that shortly after the service was introduced, the schedule was changed. Initially, the flight left the GMIA early in the morning and returned in the evening, allowing business people to spend the day in St. John's and return the same evening. Within a few weeks, PASCAN changed the route so that the plane returned to Moncton immediately. As such, business travellers were forced to overnight in St. John's in order to return to Moncton the next day. This removed one of the major advantages of having a direct route between the two cities! Stupid, stupid, stupid…….

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I don't think there's enough of a relationship between the two cities to supplement the business travel with casual travelers. It's not as though most of us know very much about each other.

Yes and no. There are more ex-patriot Newfoundlanders in Moncton than you might think, and MUN is a reasonably popular university for certain programs and does draw some NB students. Also, if properly marketed, at certain times of the year tourism could supplement demand for the service. Two months was not long enough for the service to establish itself. Of course, we should consider ourselves fortunate. The other year PASCAN announced a service out of Saint John that quite literally never got off the ground!

I think PASCAN's reputation here in the Maritimes will be destroyed for years to come……..

[MonctonRad]

PASCAN:

- A minor Quebec based airline whose only real experience is in serving remote northern communities.
- An airline whose largest plane seats only 48 passengers. The rest of it's fleet is mostly bush planes.
- An airline that most Atlantic Canadians did not even know existed.
- An airline with no experience in Atlantic Canada.
- An airline who decided to charge a fare on the Moncton- St. John's route that was about 3x what it should have been.
- An airline with no code sharing with other carriers and no real opportunity for connecting flights.
- An airline that so misunderstood the marketplace and requirements of the travelling public that overnighting in your destination was mandatory.
- An airline that is such a fly by night operation that it could not afford to give the service the 6-12 months it needed to establish itself.

PASCAN - no brand recognition, terribly expensive and little credibility (in the Maritimes at least)………

Good riddance!

What a potential St. John's - Moncton route needs is a recognized carrier (Air Canada, WestJet, Porter) capable of offering competitive fares and connections to other destinations. Ideally, Moncton would be a station stop on a larger St. John's - Toronto route. That way, the service would be supplemented by travellers going between St. John's and Toronto and Moncton to Toronto. This would improve load factors and would help to make the service viable. This is not a new concept. The Porter route from Moncton to Toronto makes a station stop in Ottawa and about half the passengers on this route embark and disembark in Ottawa. Several of the daily flights between St. John's and Halifax also operate in a similar manner with Halifax being the waypoint between St. John's and TO. This would work quite well. Maybe when the WestJet regional airline takes off, this concept could be revisited……..

[mmmatt]

LOL! All I can say is "Told ya so!"

I knew this fly by night operation would never get off the ground

[J81]

Hey all. First time poster. A few observations about pascans service. Shortly after it began they switched from the ATR 42 to the much smaller jetstream 31. About half as many seats. So passenger numbers each way must have been 10-12 each day if they can't continue a service on a 19 seat airplane. Its a shame this was service was so poorly implemented. It could work. Canjet used to fly daily 737s until they changed their business model. Westjet used to serve that route 4 times a week also. I think one of the reasons the price was so high was because the airplane utilization was so low. It would leave here in the morning and sit in St johns all day to return in the evening. It spent most of the time on the ground incurring parking fees and the crew in a hotel. Airplanes make money in the air obviously. So the fact that this airplane was basically on the ground 20 hours a day shows a clear lack of planning and market research. Most airlines utilize their aircraft at least 12-14 hours each day. I think the service could work with an established carrier which have a means of supplementing that route with others. Hopefully we'll see that eventually.

[MonctonRad]

Welcome to the forums!

Sounds like you're involved with the airline industry in some form. You seem quite informed.

I remember the CanJet service. I don't recall WestJet on a run from Moncton to St. John's, but I don't doubt your assertion. I think CanJet was popular and the only reason that the service was suspended was because CanJet changed their business model from being a regularly scheduled service to charter only......

I think the service could work with an established carrier which have a means of supplementing that route with others. Hopefully we'll see that eventually.

I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. If an established carrier operated a St. John's - Moncton - Toronto service on a daily basis, the plane would not be idle on the tarmac, and each station stop would contribute to passenger load, thus increasing the profitability of the service. This is the only way to go.

Air Canada is too wedded to the hub and spoke concept to be enthusiastic about this service. If something like this were ever to occur, it would be WestJet or Porter that would bring it to fruition......

[Trevor3]

And what I've been waiting to hear, 5 day service to St. John's is restored. Now if we could just get a daily flight to Halifax.

PAL to Reinstate 5 Day Service

After Christmas, on Jan. 6, we’re going to reinstate that flight to five days a week, which will obviously help out the business community. If the need is there, obviously we’ll do more, but that depends on what’s happening here in Stephenville and the surrounding area, as well.”

She said there is also room for growth when upgrades to a hangar space at Stephenvile’s airport are completed.

...

Other new features that Ms. Baker-Foster mentioned was online check-ins and connections to airports in Labrador and Quebec.

http://www.thegeorgian.ca/News/Local/201...ive-day-flight-service-to-Stephenville/1

[KnoxfordGuy]

I did the flight from Halifax to St. John's and back and both flights were packs. When I was waiting in St. John's to go back to Halifax over the loud speaker they said the flight was full and sorry to those wishing for a last minute seat.

[J81]

Westjet used to have quite a presence in moncton. 2 daily flights to Toronto in addition to the Hamilton route. The 2nd flight from yyz continued to St johns 4 days a week and to gander the other 3 days. Saturdays there was an Ottawa flight and Sundays there was a flight to Edmonton. Those days are long gone sadly.

[MonctonRad]

WestJet still has a daily flight from the GMIA to Toronto Pearson and, from June to September a daily flight to Hamilton as well.

In addition, WestJet also has winter service from the GMIA to Orlando and Cancun.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the new WestJet regional service launches in the east.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. If an established carrier operated a St. John's - Moncton - Toronto service on a daily basis, the plane would not be idle on the tarmac, and each station stop would contribute to passenger load, thus increasing the profitability of the service. This is the only way to go.

Air Canada is too wedded to the hub and spoke concept to be enthusiastic about this service. If something like this were ever to occur, it would be WestJet or Porter that would bring it to fruition......

Porter does this to the extreme. When I was booking my flight to TO for tomorrow, the Porter flights were all 9+ hours with several stops. That's just too much.

A couple of short stops and a total travel time of less than 5 hours is my maximum tolerable standard.

And it'd be nice to support Moncton's airport.

If I could get a flight that's under five hours with stops in Stephenville and Moncton, that's what I'd purposely choose.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by Trevor3

And what I've been waiting to hear, 5 day service to St. John's is restored. Now if we could just get a daily flight to Halifax.

PAL to Reinstate 5 Day Service

http://www.thegeorgian.ca/News/Local/201...ive-day-flight-service-to-Stephenville/1

Congratulations!

When I went to college in Stephenville, I usually took the bus home but flew a few times. It's such an unbelievable treat to turn that 11-hour drive into a short hop on an airplane.

[J81]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

WestJet still has a daily flight from the GMIA to Toronto Pearson and, from June to September a daily flight to Hamilton as well.

In addition, WestJet also has winter service from the GMIA to Orlando and Cancun.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the new WestJet regional service launches in the east.

Its actually 6 days a week to yyz. No flight on Saturdays. It goes to Cancun instead.

I'd like to see some movement on the cargo side of things. Bluebird cargo has had a weekly service to Iceland since Feb or March.

[Sunnybrae]

FYI for the aviation enthusiasts, Air Canada just selected the Boeing 737 Max for it's narrow body fleet renewal program. No more Airbus in the mainline fleet but some A319's are going to Rouge. The order is up to 109 aircraft with deliveries starting in 2017.

[Trevor3]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Porter does this to the extreme. When I was booking my flight to TO for tomorrow, the Porter flights were all 9+ hours with several stops. That's just too much.

A couple of short stops and a total travel time of less than 5 hours is my maximum tolerable standard.

And it'd be nice to support Moncton's airport.

If I could get a flight that's under five hours with stops in Stephenville and Moncton, that's what I'd purposely choose.

If Porter gets the OK to expand Billy Bishop, I fully expect a service just like that. Something is going on at our airport right now, Weston's out of Gander just took over the restaurant that has been dormant for years and I can't see that doing business without some sort of passenger traffic, all summer the west ramp hangar was being restored, and this fall the airport auctioned off a lot of it's old equipment and replaced things like seating, furniture, etc...

I fully expect to see something that connects us to either Halifax or Moncton, and then on to Toronto, materialize in the next couple of years. If St. John's were included in that route it would do wonders to bring down the cost of travel across the island.

[jeddy1989]

Goose Bay Airport needs expansion 2 years after reno

Just two years after major renovations to the Goose Bay Airport, the general manager says there's a big need for more expansion.

Goronwy Price said the airport gets really crowded during peak times, and that's due to the growing number of charter flights for workers at the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric construction site.

Price said there are only a couple of charter flights a day right now, carrying approximately 50 passengers, but that's soon going to change.

"There's not going to be one or two charters. There's going to be possibly three or four on the ground at one time, which means that numbers are going to expand, so we have to look at that and make sure we can handle it," he said.

According to Price, the airport corporation is currently working on ways to get the expansion underway.



"Our board of directors of the corporation understand that based on the numbers and based on the experience that we have now, we have to do something in order to make the flow work," he said.

Price said the board is looking at building a new gate for passengers who will be travelling to the coast and on charter flights, but no final decisions have been made.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundla...s-expansion-2-years-after-reno-1.2471532

[SpikeyT]

Noticed today that WestJet Encore is searching for Customer Service reps in Charlottetown. The posting closes in March. I wonder when Encore will start on PEI?

[jeddy1989]

Deer Lake Airport Sees Increase in Traffic

Deer Lake Regional Airport recorded a modest increase in passenger traffic last year, just above the yearly record established the previous year. The total number of passengers recorded coming in and out of the west coast airport in 2013 reached just over 310 thousand, up by just over 47 hundred in the previous year.

Deer Lake remains the fourth busiest airport in Atlantic Canada behind Halifax, St. John's and Moncton.

http://www.vocm.com/newsarticle.asp?mn=2&id=42422&latest=1

[NBNYer]

Originally Posted by jeddy1989

Deer Lake Airport Sees Increase in Traffic


http://www.vocm.com/newsarticle.asp?mn=2&id=42422&latest=1

That's a lot of traffic for a very small community, more than Saint John, Fredericton or Charlottetown. I assume geographic isolation and a large catchment area could be contributing factors, but still, it seems like a very large number. Any other factors explaining this?

[Trevor3]

Originally Posted by NBNYer

That's a lot of traffic for a very small community, more than Saint John, Fredericton or Charlottetown. I assume geographic isolation and a large catchment area could be contributing factors, but still, it seems like a very large number. Any other factors explaining this?

Tourist traffic and a large commuter workforce between the west coast of Newfoundland and Alberta. Provincial Airlines also routes much of its Labrador traffic through Deer Lake.

A lot people go back and forth from NL to AB every 2-3 weeks, so that adds up over a year. As our major industries suffered and shutdown or scaled back operations, the former employees found work elsewhere but refused to move their families. Deer Lake is smack in the middle of 3 major centres for the island that lost most/all of their paper industry and countless others that survived on sawmill operations. Most of that activity is gone and the workers go to the oil patch for a few weeks at a time now.

Over the years they siphoned off a lot of passenger traffic from both Stephenville and Gander and were a major reason for both airports entering bankruptcy protection within the last decade and having to completely reinvent their business models.

[magee_b]

Originally Posted by SpikeyT

Noticed today that WestJet Encore is searching for Customer Service reps in Charlottetown. The posting closes in March. I wonder when Encore will start on PEI?

They now also have an Encore posting up for Deer Lake. Good way to get a sense of where they plan on servicing to initially.