Calgary International Airport II

Westjet 720 YVR-YYZ cancelled and instead the 738 flew to PDX...

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/WJA8976

[YYCguys]

Taking guests onwards to Hawaii, I believe, which were originally on a Thomas Cook 752 (WS 3004) from YYC, which made an unscheduled stop in PDX.

Yeah here it is going to OGG right now, and the Thomas Cook 752 doing YYC-OGG that made it a hundred miles over the water but turned back for PDX is here. That 752 made it back to YYC and landed a few hours ago from PDX here... maybe has an ETOPS related problem and couldn't go over the water. Crew would have timed anyway, I think.

WS was probably able to get the people on 720 onto 724, or thru YYC/YEG to get to YYZ, though they'll still be short a 738 for tomorrow in YYZ

Looks like UA hasn't cancelled anything here yet, but YEG might have a bit of a problem. Temperature there is -38

[Bigtime]

Oh man the Mad Dog departing this morning sounded so awesome!

That WestJet 738 that subbed for the 757 flew OGG-YEG yesterday. If that wasn't a ferry... that's pretty far.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by Acey

That WestJet 738 that subbed for the 757 flew OGG-YEG yesterday. If that wasn't a ferry... that's pretty far.

Winds and ETOPS fuel requirements are the two limiting factors on the WS Hawaii operations. Distance is not a major deciding factor.

With the lack of Westerly winds that West coast has been having this past winter (no rain in LA, Very few Chinooks here in Calgary) the conditions are ideal for 738 run to Hawaii.

[Bigtime]

No doubt with some nice strong winds aloft coming back is no problem most of the time for the 738. Looking at the track log they had a nice push for three hours over the ocean, ground speed around 563-515 during that time.

[yyc_engineer]

Originally Posted by YYCguys

Taking guests onwards to Hawaii, I believe, which were originally on a Thomas Cook 752 (WS 3004) from YYC, which made an unscheduled stop in PDX.

Apparently pax began to riot when they were told they'd have to go back to YYC after the unscheduled stop in PDX and refused to get on back on board. They demanded WS bring in a plane to take them to Hawaii.

I must say that the with all the hassles associated with the charter operations over the past winters, WS really needs to look into buying their own plane(s) that can fly AB->HI direct reliably. I wonder if they would get a couple brand new 767's?

Originally Posted by Cage

Winds and ETOPS fuel requirements are the two limiting factors on the WS Hawaii operations. Distance is not a major deciding factor.

With the lack of Westerly winds that West coast has been having this past winter (no rain in LA, Very few Chinooks here in Calgary) the conditions are ideal for 738 run to Hawaii.

I didn't suspect eastbound would be an issue. YEG-OGG, surely. Either way, it's probably among one of the longest legs a WS plane has flown.

Originally Posted by yyc_engineer

Apparently pax began to riot when they were told they'd have to go back to YYC after the unscheduled stop in PDX and refused to get on back on board. They demanded WS bring in a plane to take them to Hawaii.

This is believable, given the minor chaos it caused in the WS sked the following day with that 738 so far out of position. They definitely didn't want to do that. At least it was probably the best plane to do the long legs with: fin 826, their newest 738.

[Bokimon]

Ouch, I wonder with the PDX folks, how the airline deals with all those disruptions to everybodys travel plans. They lose what 1 or 2 days into their vacation and probably trying to get the airline to compensate for that loss. And then all that frantic stuff they have to do to fix all this up. They ought to have some kind of an on call emergency charter operator on their speed dials so when these things happens, they can just call up a 747 or some other heavy and quickly get the stranded pax on their way.
Heck, how about those folks at Sands corp with their 747SP or L1011, I would certainly not mind a travel inconvenience if i get to fly on these classic airliners.

Probably easier said than done. But sucks that reliability is a question with these leased jets.

Doubt WS gave them anything, they lost less than 12 hours. This assuming no one was bumped (752 capacity: 211 pax, 738 capacity: 174 pax)

[YYCspotter]

http://www.yyc.com/Portals/0/MEDIA/BR_PaxTotal.pdf

January 2014 PAX stats are out:
Domestic: +5.2%
Transborder: +8.7%
International: +10.1
Overall: +6.5%

[Bigtime]

Can't argue with those numbers!

I like seeing that international has recovered and is over the 2012 number.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Oh man the Mad Dog departing this morning sounded so awesome!

In honour of the celebrity and avgeek Travolta twitter sensation, I here by Travoltify your name as "Meh-dogga eighty lubber".

[Cage]

Originally Posted by YYCspotter

http://www.yyc.com/Portals/0/MEDIA/BR_PaxTotal.pdf

January 2014 PAX stats are out:
Domestic: +5.2%
Transborder: +8.7%
International: +10.1
Overall: +6.5%

A snowy back half of November and cold December will get Calgarians into the sky looking for warm weather and sandy beaches. This will also affect the Domestic stats as Calgarians go through YYZ and YUL to get their Florida and Eastern Caribbean fix.

Expect impressive numbers for both February and March as well.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by Bokimon

Ouch, I wonder with the PDX folks, how the airline deals with all those disruptions to everybodys travel plans. They lose what 1 or 2 days into their vacation and probably trying to get the airline to compensate for that loss. And then all that frantic stuff they have to do to fix all this up. They ought to have some kind of an on call emergency charter operator on their speed dials so when these things happens, they can just call up a 747 or some other heavy and quickly get the stranded pax on their way.
Heck, how about those folks at Sands corp with their 747SP or L1011, I would certainly not mind a travel inconvenience if i get to fly on these classic airliners.

Probably easier said than done. But sucks that reliability is a question with these leased jets.

The root cause of the problem is dealing with long haul travel. Even the newest airplanes have trouble and when the flying is north of 6-8 hours, any disruption due to unplanned mechanicals or weather will have a significant impact on someone travel plans. Have you seen the dispatch reliability with the 788s, absolutely abysmal stats and airlines are not flying them to full schedule (12-15 hours per day). UA is getting about 9 hours a day out of their 788s and still only 95-97% reliable. The AC sardine cans are getting north of 12 hours per day with 99% dispatch reliability.

The missing piece to having standby charter availability is that there is no spare widebody capacity in Canada. Going the USA route results in 12-18 hour application process with Transport Canada, and this assumes the airline can call in a favour (in reality scare Transport with a massive PR nightmare if they don't call in overtime for their approval managers). During the January YYZ melt down WS had to take a 12 hour delay to get the spare Atlas Air 747 qualified to fly a domestic run. In the end WS was only ever certified to run the one flight with no hope of a repeat. AC on the other hand had 2 777s and 767 flying their transcon rescue missions.

Its dealing with the regulatory mess that restricts Sands Corp from wanting to sub out their flying capacity.

[YYCguys]

Operated WS 3009 HNL-YYC last night on TCX 752 with a record 5:21 flight time! We left a bit late due to late arrival of the aircraft (de-icing and then heavy head winds going west) and still ended up being 15 mins early! Woot! Woot!

[cyeg66]

I've been doing my sim training for the parallels this week. That is gonna be sweeeeeeet. Without even breaking a sweat, anywhere between 44 and 56 arrivals/hr. Some confusion as to when the actual opening date is, June 15th or 28th, but who really cares? Can't come soon enough. Long gone will be the days of crossing runways and wearing the "missed approach" crown of Canada. Imagine: planes landing into the exact same winds! I know, right? A novel concept. Plus, parallels a much simpler operation = better qualification rate = more bodies = more time off. Yay.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by cyeg66

I've been doing my sim training for the parallels this week. That is gonna be sweeeeeeet. Without even breaking a sweat, anywhere between 44 and 56 arrivals/hr. Some confusion as to when the actual opening date is, June 15th or 28th, but who really cares? Can't come soon enough. Long gone will be the days of crossing runways and wearing the "missed approach" crown of Canada. Imagine: planes landing into the exact same winds! I know, right? A novel concept. Plus, parallels a much simpler operation = better qualification rate = more bodies = more time off. Yay.

Does Navcan have any precedent for unique runway operations in the playbook. I am thinking of DEN which does the following during periods of high intensity arrivals. For Den the runway configuration is as follows:
- Arrivals on 16R and 16L (western most N-S runways)
- Arrivals on 35R and 35L (Eastern most N-S runways)
- Departures on 25
- Departures on 8

DEN uses this configuration when there has been a short traffic disruption/delay caused by thunder storm.

Using this example could YYC do the following:
- Arrivals on 17R and 35R
- Departures on 11.
This would help during the evening arrival crunch when there are few departures.

The reverse could also be utilized on the morning departure bank:
- Departures on 17L and 35R
- Arrivals on 29.