YVR Airport & Sea Island Developments Discussion

[zahav]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

UA has finally loaded the Sat only flights to IAD for the summer so summer 2018 is basically the same as 2017. As we all know UA is notorious for numerous changes but as it stands now. 15 daily - 13 mainline and 2 Express with 16 flights on Saturday with the extra IAD on 739s. DEN appears to be the only route scaling back with only 2 daily (1 mainline and 1 Express) - perhaps due to AC increasing to 3 daily.

YVR is the only city in Canada, served by UA, predominantly served by UA mainline. Even YYZ most UA Flights served by Express.
Actually same for AA as well 6 out of 7 daily flights next summer are mainline.
YVR is also the only Canadian city to be served by 4 mainline US carriers AS, AA, DL and UA. And as of this winter all 4 year round as DL to MSP is now daily year round mainline.
And one of the two daily SLC in DL bumping up to a 320 instead of a 319.

Is YVR the most US-mainline-served airport in Canada?

For summer 2018 at least:

YVR 25 higher on weekends closer to 28
YYZ 20
YYC 8
YEG 2
YUL 1

Sorry for the numerous edits... just keep finding more tidbits!
Changed the title as well.

I checked several random weeks and Denver is still 3 daily on UA, 2 mainline and 1 Express? Point me in the right direction if I'm missing it somewhere?

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by zahav

I checked several random weeks and Denver is still 3 daily on UA, 2 mainline and 1 Express? Point me in the right direction if I'm missing it somewhere?

Yeah I was looking in July. By August 3 daily again. They are usually 3 daily for whole summer though.

[zahav]

Oh OK gotcha!!

I recently discovered Googe Flights (how pathetically late I know), and it is the best resource for anyone looking up flights between cities (not to buy tickets, but for AV geeks into schedules). OAG is the best but it's not free to use (only some airports have interactive timetables available on their website, liek YVR and SFO). Otherwise there was nowhere to get a proper list of flights, or at least that I knew of!

[nname]

This is the first 6+ months since AC joined the YVR-TPE route...



A bit too much capacity? BR used to have over 85% LF every month and over 95% during peak season. Now for the first time I remember, they failed to achieve 70% LF in December... And December is sort of peak-season for the route too...

[twoNeurons]

Maybe I missed it... but what's YVR-KIX going to?

I'll admit that we actively avoid the Rouged YVR-KIX if there's a similarly priced connecting flight with JL/NH/AC. AC Rouge is intolerable on a 10-hour flight.

ANA's been pretty aggressive lately with prices into HND.

[CareerShow]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

Maybe I missed it... but what's YVR-KIX going to?

I'll admit that we actively avoid the Rouged YVR-KIX if there's a similarly priced connecting flight with JL/NH/AC. AC Rouge is intolerable on a 10-hour flight.

ANA's been pretty aggressive lately with prices into HND.

Fully agree with you on Rouge. If you can fly mainline on AC or a different airline while adding an additional 2-3 hours of travel time its a no brainer from a comfort point of view, considering Rouge is only low cost for AC and not anyone else.

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by nname

This is the first 6+ months since AC joined the YVR-TPE route...



A bit too much capacity? BR used to have over 85% LF every month and over 95% during peak season. Now for the first time I remember, they failed to achieve 70% LF in December... And December is sort of peak-season for the route too...

IMO BR is getting double-teamed by CI and AC. The flight times from YVR to TPE for BR/CI are bad (~1am) but good for onward connecting traffic to other parts of asia. AC is likely taking most O/D traffic to/from Taiwan as it leaves during ~ lunch from YVR and is better for NA connections.

CI tends to have better pricing than BR as well.

out of curiosity, where can you look up LFs?

[nname]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

IMO BR is getting double-teamed by CI and AC. The flight times from YVR to TPE for BR/CI are bad (~1am) but good for onward connecting traffic to other parts of asia. AC is likely taking most O/D traffic to/from Taiwan as it leaves during ~ lunch from YVR and is better for NA connections.

CI tends to have better pricing than BR as well.

out of curiosity, where can you look up LFs?

Isn't AC/BR supposed to team up against CI? That doesn't seems to work so well...

Another thing I've noticed that AC seems to have the most consistent LF not only on monthly basis, but on each direction too. Here is the December stat:

	->TPE	->YVR
AC	85.6%	79.6%
BR	77.0%	62.5%
CI	91.6%	71.7%

For this month, it is normal to have more people going to TPE while it is reversed for next month (there is no break over Christmas in Taiwan). Based on this year's calender, the peak travel for YVR->TPE should be around Dec 9 - 22; and for TPE->YVR around Dec 29 - Jan 7. But there seems not much difference in AC's LF for both direction. And from past experience the TPE->YVR flights are usually full for the last few days of the year, the LF for BR for the beginning of the month must be very very low...

If you can read Chinese, here's the source

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by nname

Isn't AC/BR supposed to team up against CI? That doesn't seems to work so well...

Another thing I've noticed that AC seems to have the most consistent LF not only on monthly basis, but on each direction too. Here is the December stat:

	->TPE	->YVR
AC	85.6%	79.6%
BR	77.0%	62.5%
CI	91.6%	71.7%

For this month, it is normal to have more people going to TPE while it is reversed for next month (there is no break over Christmas in Taiwan). Based on this year's calender, the peak travel for YVR->TPE should be around Dec 9 - 22; and for TPE->YVR around Dec 29 - Jan 7. But there seems not much difference in AC's LF for both direction. And from past experience the TPE->YVR flights are usually full for the last few days of the year, the LF for BR for the beginning of the month must be very very low...

If you can read Chinese, here's the source

Thanks for the link.

In the absence of a joint venture agreement with BR (AC has them with LH and UA, for instance) IMO there won't be a lot of close cooperation with AC and really would be more of a 'frenemy' competitor.

searching on google flights, most connections on AC to the rest of asia seem to be on ANA thru japan or even interlines with KE and CX via ICN and HKG respectively. I haven't seen any connections with AC and BR via TPE come up as a single trip.

[nname]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

Thanks for the link.

In the absence of a joint venture agreement with BR (AC has them with LH and UA, for instance) IMO there won't be a lot of close cooperation with AC and really would be more of a 'frenemy' competitor.

searching on google flights, most connections on AC to the rest of asia seem to be on ANA thru japan or even interlines with KE and CX via ICN and HKG respectively. I haven't seen any connections with AC and BR via TPE come up as a single trip.

Which I finds very interesting, because at TPE, basically BR is responsible for everything that happens outside of the plane, including ticketing, check-in, print boarding pass, baggaging, announcements, boarding, and any other customer services. AC plane always parked in one of the BR gates, among all the BR planes, uses BR check-in counter (with screen changes to AC for the duration), uses BR connection counter with agent calling all passengers from AC11 connecting to Thai Airways (!). You will not see any AC personnel until you actually get onto the plane.... and yet there's no cooperation....

[casper]

Originally Posted by nname

Which I finds very interesting, because at TPE, basically BR is responsible for everything that happens outside of the plane, including ticketing, check-in, print boarding pass, baggaging, announcements, boarding, and any other customer services. AC plane always parked in one of the BR gates, among all the BR planes, uses BR check-in counter (with screen changes to AC for the duration), uses BR connection counter with agent calling all passengers from AC11 connecting to Thai Airways (!). You will not see any AC personnel until you actually get onto the plane.... and yet there's no cooperation....

AC contracts BR to provide the staff and facilities to perform those functions. Basically if the AC flight is empty or full, BR makes the same amount of money out of the deal.

In the case of the arrangement AC has with Lufthansa as an example, both airlines financially pool the expenses of operating the flights between Canada and Europe. They then split the profit. It is more of a joint venture type setup.

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by nname

Which I finds very interesting, because at TPE, basically BR is responsible for everything that happens outside of the plane, including ticketing, check-in, print boarding pass, baggaging, announcements, boarding, and any other customer services. AC plane always parked in one of the BR gates, among all the BR planes, uses BR check-in counter (with screen changes to AC for the duration), uses BR connection counter with agent calling all passengers from AC11 connecting to Thai Airways (!). You will not see any AC personnel until you actually get onto the plane.... and yet there's no cooperation....

^ I wouldn't say there's no cooperation bet AC and BR.

To walk myself back a bit, the timing of AC's and BR's YVR-TPE flight seems to be optimized to feed into their networks respectively. AC seems to be taking more of BR's traffic. If they had a JV, BR would not be worried as things like revenue sharing on the routes would be available for BR and AC.

They would have to cooperate along the lines of alliance rules (check-in, ground staff, lounges, etc). otherwise i am not sure what leverage BR has with AC to share the wealth.


Interesting how AC flights to BKK via TPE are with TG and not BR.

[casper]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

^ I wouldn't say there's no cooperation bet AC and BR.

To walk myself back a bit, the timing of AC's and BR's YVR-TPE flight seems to be optimized to feed into their networks respectively. AC seems to be taking more of BR's traffic. If they had a JV, BR would not be worried as things like revenue sharing on the routes would be available for BR and AC.

They would have to cooperate along the lines of alliance rules (check-in, ground staff, lounges, etc). otherwise i am not sure what leverage BR has with AC to share the wealth.


Interesting how AC flights to BKK via TPE are with TG and not BR.

AC And BR have had a "distant friends type relationship" going back years. I remember flying BR from TPE to YVR about 10 years ago on an AC code share. This was before BR joined Star Alliance. You could only pre-book your seat in this small block near the rear of the 747 allocated to AC customers. Checking in at TPE as soon as they saw it was an AC code share involved a phone call and someone coming over with some pre-printed paper work. They asked for your Aeroplan number and made another phone call dictated the number over the phone to another agent that would handle the points credit.

[twoNeurons]

Sooo...

Anyone have a news release or an article about what's happening to YVR-KIX?

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

Sooo...

Anyone have a news release or an article about what's happening to YVR-KIX?

What do you mean a press release or an article about what’s happening?

Nothing’s happening. It’s still seasonal rouge.

[Vagabond]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

IMO BR is getting double-teamed by CI and AC. The flight times from YVR to TPE for BR/CI are bad (~1am) but good for onward connecting traffic to other parts of asia. AC is likely taking most O/D traffic to/from Taiwan as it leaves during ~ lunch from YVR and is better for NA connections.

CI tends to have better pricing than BR as well.

out of curiosity, where can you look up LFs?

Not pretending to substitute a hunch for professional route analysis, but I would imagine that a couple more South Asian connectors would help loads between YVR and TPE. CI's DEL flight connects pretty well from/to YVR, but there are no non-stops from TPE to BOM, MAA, or BLR (unlike CX from HKG, which seems to be eating CI/BR's lunch on these routes, and could probably do with some competition).

Considering most flights connecting to/from India leave YVR mid-day and arrive around/after midnight, having 1-2 more red-eye options through TPE (with daytime arrivals/departures on the India-end) would have some appeal to a lot of potential customers (incl. my family). The issue would probably finding a suitable daytime slot at these airports (esp. BOM), which are bursting at the seams with domestic flights during "regular business hours".

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by CareerShow

Fully agree with you on Rouge. If you can fly mainline on AC or a different airline while adding an additional 2-3 hours of travel time its a no brainer from a comfort point of view, considering Rouge is only low cost for AC and not anyone else.

I’d argue that if you travel in steerage on an AC 777 it’s worse than the a Rouge 763 now that the mainline aircraft have high density seating. Just bring your own laptop or tablet for entertainment. Is the Dreamliner any better?

[Orcair]

Originally Posted by whatnext

I’d argue that if you travel in steerage on an AC 777 it’s worse than the a Rouge 763 now that the mainline aircraft have high density seating. Just bring your own laptop or tablet for entertainment. Is the Dreamliner any better?

Depends on what you want! The 777/787s have ~1 inch narrower seats, but 1 inch more legroom and AVOD versus Rouge's 763s. The 777s are also getting wifi more quickly than the 763s and have larger overhead bins. 7-abreast seating is a definite benefit of the 763 though (versus 9/10-abreast).

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

What do you mean a press release or an article about what’s happening?

Nothing’s happening. It’s still seasonal rouge.

I read a few pages back that frequencies are being reduced. But I suppose that was talking about how it was rouged ( which is better than it was before... which was... non-existent )

[trofirhen]

Metro, living, if I may say it this way, sort of "on-off" in Canada and Japan as you do, it is only natural that you seek out the best deals and take interest in Japan-YVR flights.
Here in Paris - although I will admit having fewer means to pay and thus fewer flights home than you do - the best deal it seems - as long as you're ok to change palnes - is Icelandic*1.
There are other combinations, Delta to Seattle incl(?) plus the AC and *A combos, plus the AF nonstop, but I'm into it too; except that I'm half the planet way. (Northern Hemisphere)

(1.The only possible issue being tat it operates out of Orly Sud terminal: Crowded, grubby, ..."vétuste"... so different from modern, pleasant Orly Ouest, let alone CDG.)