YVR Airport & Sea Island Developments Discussion

[osirisboy]

But they are still building the 747-8 so they will be around for a long time

[zahav]

Echoing everyone else, this is great news, YVR is having a banner year! Just an observation (not to incite east vs. west rivalry or anything...) but it should be noted that on Air Canada's official news releases, they had a dedicated news release for Toronto, and a dedicated news release for Montreal, but not for Vancouver. YYZ, YUL, and YVR each added two new destinations, but we didn't get our own release. Vancouver's two new destinations were announced in the general article "Air Canada Circles the World adding Six New Destinations to its Expanding International Network" but both Toronto and Montreal were mentioned here, as well as in their own news releases. See link below:

http://aircanada.mediaroom.com

[nname]

more coming?

or maybe they're just waiting for the approval for TPE route. The Toronto news release only talk about mainline Bombay route and not the rouge route to Berlin.

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by nname

more coming?

Wouldn't that be exciting!

One thing for sure is now we know at least one of the five additional rouge 763s will be based at YVR next summer.

The DUB flights are operated by YYZ based planes.

KIX utilises one daily 763. On it's "day off" (Wednesday's) it heads down to PVR and back and RONs overnight in YVR before heading back to KIX on Thursdays.

One rotates daily through LAS and either HNL/OGG.

The third one will now operate the NGO flights 3 days per week in June and July and 4 days per week in August and September. So there are at least 3 flights per week capacity still available on that plane on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. So where will Air Canada send them?

All will revealed soon I'm sure.

[nname]

Well, the 4 new rouge routes announced yesterday happened to add up to exactly 14 weekly. It feel suspicious that AC just implemented a complicated rotation that move the Rouge 767 around 3 bases to squeeze 4 routes out of only 2 planes.

I'm actually more curious about the departure and arrival time for the TPE flight. Unlike most 787 flight out of Vancouver, the flight requires probably 27-28hr blocks, and so the arrival time back at YVR will be a few hours after the departure of next day's flight (thus requires 2 planes). Since the route is "optimized for connectivity at AC's Canadian hub" and I don't see them compete red-eye flights with BR and CI, most likely the time would be similar to other TPAC flights... I'm guessing a 11:00am departure and 2:30pm arrival? So what would the plane do for the other 20-21 hours? More 787 to YYZ? 787 to YUL? New trans-con route? New ULH route?? Rotate with BNE flight??

If YVR does indeed gets one more plane, then they going to find somewhere to assign that new plane to during winter too... I smell new sun destination(s)

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by nname

Well, the 4 new rouge routes announced yesterday happened to add up to exactly 14 weekly. It feel suspicious that AC just implemented a complicated rotation that move the Rouge 767 around 3 bases to squeeze 4 routes out of only 2 planes.

I'm actually more curious about the departure and arrival time for the TPE flight. Unlike most 787 flight out of Vancouver, the flight requires probably 27-28hr blocks, and so the arrival time back at YVR will be a few hours after the departure of next day's flight (thus requires 2 planes). Since the route is "optimized for connectivity at AC's Canadian hub" and I don't see them compete red-eye flights with BR and CI, most likely the time would be similar to other TPAC flights... I'm guessing a 11:00am departure and 2:30pm arrival? So what would the plane do for the other 20-21 hours? More 787 to YYZ? 787 to YUL? New trans-con route? New ULH route?? Rotate with BNE flight??

If YVR does indeed gets one more plane, then they going to find somewhere to assign that new plane to during winter too... I smell new sun destination(s)

The new NGO flight would be based in YVR only. The flight timings have it leaving to NGO and returning back to YVR arriving the next day. Whereas the DUB flights I mentioned are definitely rotated through YYZ. Perhaps they do a CUN flight similar to the PVR flight in the summer or maybe a KOA flight. Probably too big a plane to do a once weekly to MCO in the summer.
The only other thing AC could do is send the aircraft domestically to probably either YYZ or YUL only to return either later the same day or early the next morning. I'm not sure AC would want to do that though. So that leaves me back to my original query about probably 3 weekly international flight frequencies. I'm tipping CDG, MAN, GLA. The available days outbound Wed, Fri, Sun wouldn't really work for additional flights to DUB.

The other thing is AC can move aircraft between bases between summer and winter.

[nname]

Now AC got the government approval, should start selling tickets soon

https://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/ruling/294-a-2016

[vanlaw]

Originally Posted by nname

Now AC got the government approval, should start selling tickets soon

https://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/ruling/294-a-2016

Interesting. They also issued approval yesterday for ANA to operate non-scheduled charter service to Canada. Anyone have any ideas what may be in the pipeline?

https://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/ruling/293-a-2016

[nname]

Could be anywhere, like this for this year:

http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/airl...es-canadian-charter-flights-sepoct-2016/

ANA and JAL both do these one-off charters all over the world.

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

5) I think AC will leave DEN up to UA for now. Three daily in summer, twice daily in winter. Colorado Springs on the other hand..... as friends in Denver call it... the other airport just down the road. Very underserved airport, therefore, clearly in need of more flights!

According to a quick dummy booking, DEN appears to be only 12x PW (missing the second flight on days 2 and 6).

And the second flight appears to be early afternoon so works for the early T-Pac bank but not the evening.

Originally Posted by Hourglass

Wow, a bit surprised by daily TPE as I understand it'a a pretty low-yield route. Wonder if they'll codeshare with BR?

AC really growing YVR!

With BR and CIs 747s retiring there will be some capacity unserved on this route. I think AC will do just fine on this route and was really expecting this one given the bilateral constraints.

Originally Posted by Cage

I trust the announcements by AC this year have satisfied even the most hardened "No love from AC" town criers.


Finally we are over 10,000 posts so I welcome the opportunity for one final post before this thread is locked.

Don't think there is much serious no love from AC in Vancouver these days, hasn't been for some time. I think the only thing you still see is exploration of how AC can feed the generous allotment of new intl routes from further south, predominantly the US.

There's no longer a 10,000 post limit to threads since SSP migrated onto the new servers a little while ago.

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

My guess is that the Japanese are getting used to LCCs so Rouge isn't put in as bad a light as we like to give it.

Helps that average height and weight of Japanese people makes smaller legroom and seats not much of an issue.

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by nname

Now AC got the government approval, should start selling tickets soon

https://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/ruling/294-a-2016

Yes. So hopefully the mystery of the flight times will be solved shortly.

Then we can speculate what they will do with the plane in between TPE flights.

Most likely with the NGO flights being added as well YVR will definitely now be at capacity for the international wing between 1000-1400. Some creative gate juggling perhaps!

[red-paladin]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-co...ctices-says-competition-bureau-1.3784274

[mezzanine]

^wow, i'm glad craig richmond is fighting the competition board. the 2 catering companies seem to be both unionized (one company just averted a strike this summer) and likely provide more protections and benefits to its workers than a system with no regulations.

"Vancouver Airport Authority decided not to permit additional in-flight caterers at YVR at this time for the purpose of maintaining healthy competition between the two full service caterers currently operating at the airport," said Craig Richmond, VAA President and CEO.

"We are committed to providing economic benefits to our communities, and one way we do this is by attracting and retaining long-haul carriers whose needs are met through the range of quality options provided to airlines and passengers by the in-flight caterers currently operating at the airport," he said.

[casper]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

^wow, i'm glad craig richmond is fighting the competition board. the 2 catering companies seem to be both unionized (one company just averted a strike this summer) and likely provide more protections and benefits to its workers than a system with no regulations.

I agree with the competition board. The airport has no business deciding who is permitted to work out of a public facility. It can set standards of services but at the end of the day it needs to get out of the way and let the market decide who the best catering outfit is.

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by casper

I agree with the competition board. The airport has no business deciding who is permitted to work out of a public facility. It can set standards of services but at the end of the day it needs to get out of the way and let the market decide who the best catering outfit is.

But YVRAA isn't run like a typical public company - its board has to generate revenue to be self-sustaining and further fund capital improvements. It has an interest to maximize profits for YVR, which may go against opening up catering.

Reading other news sources YVR is more opaque on its reasons. Would it reduce company concession fees it receives? Would off-site kitchens worsen traffic on sea island?. Maybe I was naive to think that it was to help kitchen staff but i was surprised to see YVR want to maintain the duopoly after the strike threat in august.

[Vagabond]

While I'm digging all the new AC flights ex-YVR, I'm sort of hoping that WS shows Vancouver some love in 2017 also. It would be great to see more WS cross-border routes, even just for the summer (selfishly, I'm hoping for a return of YVR-ORD).

[Cage]

Originally Posted by casper

I agree with the competition board. The airport has no business deciding who is permitted to work out of a public facility. It can set standards of services but at the end of the day it needs to get out of the way and let the market decide who the best catering outfit is.

I am sceptical about the competition board's position. I have a strong feeling that some key elements are being left out. These key elements would likely defend the VAA position through regulatory processes or pose increase costs to the airport.

The following is pure speculation, let's say the new entrant wants to complete food preparation at an off site location. Then drive the commissary items to a screening location for the pertinent authorities to inspect. The standard approach is for the airport to require caterers to have preparation on airport property as this is the method that best suits airport regulations. This "innovative" solution would increase costs for the airport (adjustments to Regulations, additional inspectors to the offsite location) and decrease revenues (less rent revenue). In this speculative instance, the competition board is going after the airport to break up the vertical integration of regulator and landlord in hopes that splitting the two roles would improve competition.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

There's no longer a 10,000 post limit to threads since SSP migrated onto the new servers a little while ago.

Thanks for the inside baseball update.

So who should we be welcoming as our new data centre overlords? Just wondering as AWS appears to be taking over the cloud computing world. At some point there will be limited data centre competition (AWS and either Azure or Akamai). Kind of like the current situation at YVR for catering services as described above. There is your reference to keep this post on topic.

[Klazu]

Living high above Metrotown there is a splendid view of planes approaching YVR. One plane that always catches my attention is of course BA's A380 which is just noticeably so much bigger than any other plane.

Here are few zoomed-in shots of A380 landing on YVR as seen from our balcony. The airport is 13 kilometers from us and all the approaches are like a silent movie. Only sometimes can we hear planes taking off from YVR if they the wind is from west and planes are departing west, but that's only very occasionally. Still interesting that the noise can travel so far.

[Johnny Aussie]

^^
Excellent photos! That view is amazing!

Hope I get the same view when I stay at the Hilton @ Metrotown between Xmas and New Years!! Hoping for a clear day ������������ not sure if it's high enough though ������������

Couldn't help but notice that Omni Air 767 in the last shot... Westjet still having issues... What an f'ing disaster!