YVR Airport & Sea Island Developments Discussion

[osirisboy]

So what's misc int exactly? Mexico?

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by osirisboy

So what's misc int exactly? Mexico?

Yep, most of the growth would be AeroMexico's new flight to Mexico city. It also includes Misc sun flying so resorts etc...

With China Southern sending a 773 to Mexico City Via YVR next year expect those abnormally high growth rates to Misc. Intl. to continue.

[osirisboy]

Cargo always seems to be declining. What's up with that?

[s211]

And how much of that passenger growth was from itinerant house shoppers?

(oops, I guess that qualifies as trolling)

[Alpine]

Some of the major trunk routes between YVR and Europe or Asia still use smaller/older aircraft. Here's what I'd like to see:

JL17/18 upgauged to 789, 77W, or a future 359/3510 (current craft: 788)

AC3/4 upgauged to 789 in the off season (current craft: 788)

LH493/492 upgauged to 74H, 388, or future 779X (current craft: 2-class 744 with overhead TVs in economy)

What do the fine users of SSP.Vancouver think the odds will be that this occurs?

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by s211

And how much of that passenger growth was from itinerant house shoppers?

(oops, I guess that qualifies as trolling)

No, not trolling ... just being realistic: telling it like it is!

[Orcair]

Originally Posted by Alpine

Some of the major trunk routes between YVR and Europe or Asia still use smaller/older aircraft. Here's what I'd like to see:

JL17/18 upgauged to 789, 77W, or a future 359/3510 (current craft: 788)

AC3/4 upgauged to 789 in the off season (current craft: 788)

LH493/492 upgauged to 74H, 388, or future 779X (current craft: 2-class 744 with overhead TVs in economy)

What do the fine users of SSP.Vancouver think the odds will be that this occurs?

I would love to see some JL 789s in YVR! Also, all LH 744s have AVOD in all classes (currently J, PY and Y) iirc it was done as of late 2014/early 2015.

[LeftCoaster]

I would be surprised if we didn't see the JAL 787-900 in YVR in the next 12-24 months. They just don't have too many of them yet.

I'll miss seeing the LH 747s but they are definitely going soon so it would be nice to see a jumbo take this route over. Would be fantastic to see FRA send a daily 380 and MUC send a daily A350-900 (year round too ).

Don't really care what AC does on NRT, they send every plane they have here so 788 Vs 789 on the route is just fine by me. Frankly I'd rather NRT stay 788 and open up Nagoya or Sapporo on rouge or mainline.

[Hourglass]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

Those are sale prices, but that is the environment that SE carriers operate in. If you have flown in SE Asia in the past few years since the rise of the LCCs, Id' be willing to bet that you can get to a lot more places for a lot less money compared to even the European LCCs.

Travelling on short notice would be an atypical comparison as I suspect airlines realize that people who need to travel on short/immediate notice tend to be less price sensitive.

When you consider that Cathay is retrenching their flag carrier and expanding their own LCC dragonair, and with SIA's scoot airlines now flying SIN-ATH, SE Asia flying is getting more cut-throat. By comparison, flying to NA with a 787 with 10 abreast seating in Y, with no ME3s en route, charging close to NA prices would seem like easier money to me, but I'm no expert. Maybe Johnny Aussie might have more perspective on flying within SE asia/austrailia.

I suspect everyone is waiting to see how AC's delhi flight will do before they consider more flights to YVR from SE asia.

My point was simply that the AirAsia fares you cited are misleading. My Malaysian friends travel on AirAsia and complain to me all the time that the typical fares they pay are frequently not much cheaper than mainline.

Yes, LCCs such as AirAsia, Jetstar and Scoot in SE Asia has increased competition and reduced fares, but the pain traditional carriers such as SQ and more recently CX are feeling is also due to the rise of the ME3 and the fact that Chinese carriers are now offering really cheap fares to fill their planes.

Dragonair is NOT an LCC, btw.

Happy to discuss offline as I don't want to pull this off-topic.

[SFUVancouver]

Those YVR numbers are monster! Up 11% overall year over year, on a record 2015 year no less!

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

.......................................
I'll miss seeing the LH 747s but they are definitely going soon so it would be nice to see a jumbo take this route over. Would be fantastic to see FRA send a daily 380 and MUC send a daily A350-900 (year round too ).
................

Do you think we'll ever see FRA and MUC year round, (whatever aircraft they use?) That would be fantastic!!

[CareerShow]

Another question relating to Crew Bases. Is Vancouver a crew base for all Air Canada aircraft types or only a few? And what about flight attendents? And with Cathay Pacific flying between YVR and JFK do they have a crew base here as well?

[Klazu]

Of course traffic is up with LeftCoaster constantly flying in and out of YVR. I think we can safely say that this alone contributed largely to the jump.

Meanwhile on Canada section... crickets.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

Hold on to your hats!! Wow just wow!

Overall up 11.0% up 225,722 to 2,270,986
Domestic up 7.2% up 73,179 to 1,094,929
Transborder up 9.7% up 49,776 to 563,597
Asia Pacific up 18.0% up 55,309 to 362,845
Europe up 19.3% up 35,421 to 219,169
Misc Int'l up 65.4% up 12,037 to 30,446

And note total YTD is now up 8.6% and OVER 1 million more pax than 2015!

http://www.yvr.ca/-/media/yvr/documents/facts-sheets/traffic-update_july-2016.pdf?la=en

After digging in further, as in, reading more than the first 'overall' line, I'm realizing just how huge these gains are! Wow. YVR is chugging along into truly uncharted territory. Can't wait to see the new (updated) Airport Master Plan revealed later this year. With an ostensible passenger capacity ceiling of 25 million, YVR will need to stamp on the gas to get the new facilities built if this is shaping up to be a 22 million passenger year!


After looking through the summary table (link), what I'm always interested in is "total tonnes on runway" (weight of aircraft) vs "total growth" (enplaned and deplaned passengers) vs "total arrivals and departures" (aircraft):

Total Tonnes on Runway 1,810,528[Jul '16] 1,681,328[Jul '15] 7.7%[yoy change] 10,531,520 [YTD '16] 9,908,360[YTD '15] 6.3%[yoy change]

Total Pax 2,270,986[Jul '16] 2,045,264[Jul '15] 11.0%[yoy change] 12,746,077[YTD '16] 11,738,611[YTD '15] 8.6%[yoy change]

Total arrivals and departures 32,353[Jul '16] 32,113[Jul '15] 0.7%[yoy change] 185,439[YTD '16] 185,053[YTD '15] 0.2%[yoy change]

So, what does this tell us? It tells us that year over year the number of aircraft is flat (actually a touch positive) but the number of passengers went up substantially and the aircraft tonnage went up, too, but not in lock step with passenger numbers. Therefore, the increase in passengers came through higher load factors on existing aircraft (more people in the same type of aircraft) and the up-gauging to larger, higher capacity, heavier aircraft. Since there are some entirely new routes and new carriers, this further tells us that there has been some rationalization (cuts) by carriers of the number of flights and/or routes they offer, but they are also using larger aircraft.

I think that this is a neat trend to observe and it helps explain how YVR is able to keep up with such sustained growth without a commensurate increase in the number of gates or enduring uncharacteristic congestion for departure runway slots.

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by Hourglass

My point was simply that the AirAsia fares you cited are misleading. My Malaysian friends travel on AirAsia and complain to me all the time that the typical fares they pay are frequently not much cheaper than mainline.

Yeef, not trying to mislead. I did mention it was a sale and linked to the page. If you play with some non-sale, regular routes, some (most?) of Air Asia's prices are mindboggingly low compared to NA standards.

Yes, LCCs such as AirAsia, Jetstar and Scoot in SE Asia has increased competition and reduced fares, but the pain traditional carriers such as SQ and more recently CX are feeling is also due to the rise of the ME3 and the fact that Chinese carriers are now offering really cheap fares to fill their planes.

And in all this milieu flying to NA/YVR seems more viable, at least to SE Asia carriers.

Dragonair is NOT an LCC, btw.

Fair enough.

Happy to discuss offline as I don't want to pull this off-topic.

My point was that YVR to SE Asia is viable, but time will tell.

[teriyaki]

I get the sentiment that fares are lower everywhere else, mostly that of Europe and SE Asia. The local competition that is here in NA and that of SE Asia and Europe is just different, and this is especially so in Canada that doesn't even have a true ULCC let alone LCC.

There was an article awhile back detailing the type of taxes and fees that one has to pay just to get in the air, even with a base fare of $0 to the airlines. Just these fees alone amount to more than the entire fare of these low cost airlines like AirAsia and EasyJet.

On the flipside, YVR enjoys some of lowest long-haul fares anywhere (especially to Asia) in North America due to the intense competition that is readily available. Having flown many roundtrips to asia in the $400-$700 in the past few years, i'm incredibly thankful that we have this many options. A simple comparison with our neighbour to the south at SEA. I have never, ever found a lower priced flight that originated in SEA vs originating in YVR on the routes that i've tried to book. Not having one single dominant carrier here that can dictate prices is our biggest asset IMO for pricing pressure.

[excel]

Originally Posted by CareerShow

Another question relating to Crew Bases. Is Vancouver a crew base for all Air Canada aircraft types or only a few? And what about flight attendents? And with Cathay Pacific flying between YVR and JFK do they have a crew base here as well?

YVR is a crew base for most of AC aircraft types. But this changes with aircraft scheduling. Flight Attendants are usually type specific and are based once again in line with aircraft scheduling. Cathay used to have a YVR base but no longer do.

[Johnny Aussie]

Speaking of Cathay.

Just saw on Twitter from airlineroute.net

Effective 24 March 2017 CX will increase YVR from 14 to 17 weekly.

AND the additional flights will be on A350s.... So we have YVR's first scheduled A350 flights confirmed.

New flights:
CX856 HKG 1100 - 0755 YVR 359 246
CX855 YVR 0925 - 1345+1 HKG 359 246

The good news just keeps on rolling.

[Hourglass]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

Speaking of Cathay.

Just saw on Twitter from airlineroute.net

Effective 24 March 2017 CX will increase YVR from 14 to 17 weekly.

AND the additional flights will be on A350s.... So we have YVR's first scheduled A350 flights confirmed.

New flights:
CX856 HKG 1100 - 0755 YVR 359 246
CX855 YVR 0925 - 1345+1 HKG 359 246

The good news just keeps on rolling.

Surprised it took them so long -- maybe aircraft availability?

Peak season flights during the summer are pretty much always filled to capacity, and fares (ex-HKG anyways) are really expensive -- think C$1.5-2K for a seat in Y-class.

[Johnny Aussie]

EWR: is being upgauged to daily 789s
LAX: 4th daily being added and 2 upgauging to 321s
SEA and PDX: all flights upgauged to DH4s

Last winter of course LAX and SFO were all rouge routes. This winter SFO will be 3 daily mainline 319s and LAX 2 daily 321, 1 daily 320 and 1 daily 319 all mainline.

LAS, HNL, OGG and KOA are exactly the same as last winter.

And as previously mentioned:
SAN: new daily CRA
SJC: new 2 daily CRA
ORD: new daily E90
PHX: 4 weekly 763
PSP: 3 weekly 763