Calgary International Airport II

[craner]

Originally Posted by cyeg66

Indeed. YYC flirted with YUL's totals for the longest time (2 decades?) but between AC's huge expansion from there, TS trying (in vain) to keep up, and even WS adding frequencies and the occasional destination in order to maintain its tiny foothold, YUL has finally received the attention it has been craving for a long, long time.

With AC's performance in the last few years, I'd say their decision to convert their model, one which focuses exclusively on 3 hubs, was a very good decision. Couple this with Alberta's significant economic regression over that same time frame, I'm sure the decision was an easy one for AC to make. Truthfully, I'm surprised that YYC managed to keep growing despite the sad state of affairs.

Agreed.
It always seemed odd to me that YYC was so close to YUL in terms of numbers anyway.
Given that Montreal has about 3 times the population of Calgary they had to be underserved in the past - no ?

[thenoflyzone]

Originally Posted by craner

Agreed.
It always seemed odd to me that YYC was so close to YUL in terms of numbers anyway.
Given that Montreal has about 3 times the population of Calgary they had to be underserved in the past - no ?

One can argue that YUL is still underserved to this day. Domestic numbers are what drags it down.

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by zahav

Was Frontier always just seasonal service? Booking is only available until Aug 11th? Seems an odd date to stop service, right in the middle of summer?

Looks like all routes are only bookable until around the 11th August. Perhaps their system only allows bookings up to 6 months in advance.

[jubguy3]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

I'm a frequent AC traveler (and frequent lurker of this thread ) so I can comment pretty well on this topic.

Depends on what you want.

• Legroom is about identical
• Dreamliner has vastly superior seatback screen/entertainment system
• 767 has wider seats
• dreamliner is quieter
• Dreamliner has much better cabin air so you feel less jetlagged when you arrive
• Dreamliner windows are dimmable centrally so some jackass opening their window mid flight while you are trying to get a nap wont wake you

All in all I much prefer the dreamliner, despite the thinner seats, but if you're a wider set person it may be not worth the squeeze.

For me, I have found the A350 to be the best. The 787 was "designed" to have 8 seats abreast much like the 777 was "designed" to have 9 abreast. Of course, every airline except for ANA and JAL decided to start installing 9 abreast, and even they have followed in its course. It's simply too narrow. The last comfortable Boeing widebody I flew on was a Singapore Airlines 9-abreast 777, which is still a surprisingly loud aircraft and doesn't benefit from cabin pressure improvements. The A350 is how wide the 787 should have been, so the seats have an extra inch of width that makes it surprisingly more tolerable. Earlier 787's have a tough time actually dimming out the sun too, so if you're trying to sleep in a 787 on the side facing the sun, you're still going to have some level of illumination beyond what is acceptable for sleeping.

[Johnny Aussie]

Even with AM exiting the YYC market, there will still be 21 weekly flights to Mexico this summer on 4 carriers. 17 of those will be on Westjet of course. 2 on TS and 1 each on AC and WG. 8 weekly to CUN, 7 to MEX, 4 to PVR and 2 to SJD

Here’s the remaining breakdown of the 75 int’l ops per week this summer:

UK: 22 per week - 14 to LHR (7 each on AC and BA) and 8 to LGW (5 on WS and 3 on TS)

Germany: 10 weekly flights to FRA on AC (7) and DE (3)

Netherlands: 8 to AMS on KL (7) and TS (1)

Japan: 7 weekly to NRT on AC.

China: 3 on HU to PEK

Switzerland: 2 on WK to ZRH

Caribbean: one each to VRA and MBJ on Sunwing.

Overall up 2 international flights per week thanks to WS increasing CUN and PVR one weekly each. The MEX flights wash each other out.

[hollywoodcory]

Transborder is looking pretty good this summer too, even with AC cutting back IAH.

IAH - 47x Weekly (3x Daily UA, 12x weekly WS, 2x daily AC)
DFW - 21x Weekly (2x daily AA, 1x daily WS)
SFO - 35x Weekly (2x daily AC, 2x daily UA, 1x daily WS)
DEN - 38x Weekly (4x daily UA, 1x daily WS, 3x weekly F9)
LAX - 28x Weekly (2x daily AC, 2x daily WS)
EWR - 7x Weekly (1x daily AC)
JFK - 7x Weekly (1x daily WS)
BNA - 3x Weekly (WS)
SEA - 49x Weekly (3x daily AS, 3x daily DL, 1x daily AC)
MSP - 14x Weekly (2x daily DL - both on mainline)
ORD - 33x Weekly (3x daily UA, 6x weekly WS, 6x weekly AA)
LAS - 29x Weekly (1x daily AC, 22x weekly WS)
SLC - 14x Weekly (2x daily DL)
PSP - 5x Weekly (WS)
PHX - 14x Weekly (1x daily AC, 1x daily WS)
MCO - 1x Weekly (WS)
PDX - 14x Weekly (2x daily AC)
SAN - 3x Weekly (WS)

May have missed some, but that equals out to about 357 weekly flights.

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by hollywoodcory

Transborder is looking pretty good this summer too, even with AC cutting back IAH.

IAH - 47x Weekly (3x Daily UA, 12x weekly WS, 2x daily AC)
DFW - 21x Weekly (2x daily AA, 1x daily WS)
SFO - 35x Weekly (2x daily AC, 2x daily UA, 1x daily WS)
DEN - 31x Weekly (3x daily UA, 1x daily WS, 3x weekly F9)
LAX - 28x Weekly (2x daily AC, 2x daily WS)
EWR - 7x Weekly (1x daily AC)
JFK - 7x Weekly (1x daily WS)
BNA - 3x Weekly (WS)
SEA - 49x Weekly (3x daily AS, 3x daily DL, 1x daily AC)
MSP - 14x Weekly (2x daily DL - both on mainline)
ORD - 33x Weekly (3x daily UA, 6x weekly WS, 6x weekly AA)
LAS - 29x Weekly (1x daily AC, 22x weekly WS)
SLC - 14x Weekly (2x daily DL)
PSP - 5x Weekly (WS)
PHX - 14x Weekly (1x daily AC, 1x daily WS)
MCO - 1x Weekly (WS)
PDX - 14x Weekly (2x daily AC)

May have missed some, but that equals out to about 350 weekly flights.

Good work... should be 357 up from 347 last summer.

DEN is 4 daily on UA and you’re missing SAN 3 weekly on WS.

[hollywoodcory]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

Good work... should be 357 up from 347 last summer.

DEN is 4 daily on UA and you’re missing SAN 3 weekly on WS.

Edited those in, thanks.

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by hollywoodcory

Edited those in, thanks.

Yeah. Impressive. So averaging about 51 daily flights of which approx 26 are mainline and 25 are on regional/express flights

[msmariner]

How’s the new terminal handling this amount of flights. Are there times of the day where it’s getting close to capacity?

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by msmariner

How’s the new terminal handling this amount of flights. Are there times of the day where it’s getting close to capacity?

Short haul international (ie sun flights) keeps the intl terminal busy in the mornings in the winter.

As expected, in summer there is a much reduced sun schedule (23 flights per week) so once those are gone.... There are on average 8 long haul international flights in the summer and relatively spread out during the day. Of the daily long haul flights BA arrives early evening and departs late evening. NRT arrives from YYZ and departs early afternoon. Both AC Europe flights are on the ground at the same time. And KL departs just before AC FRA arrives. Of the 17 remaining weekly long hauls.. and depending on the day of the week you may see one or more of TS, HU, WS, DE and WK on the ground at differing times of day.

[msmariner]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

Short haul international (ie sun flights) keeps the intl terminal busy in the mornings in the winter.

As expected, in summer there is a much reduced sun schedule (23 flights per week) so once those are gone.... There are on average 8 long haul international flights in the summer and relatively spread out during the day. Of the daily long haul flights BA arrives early evening and departs late evening. NRT arrives from YYZ and departs early afternoon. Both AC Europe flights are on the ground at the same time. And KL departs just before AC FRA arrives. Of the 17 remaining weekly long hauls.. and depending on the day of the week you may see one or more of TS, HU, WS, DE and WK on the ground at differing times of day.

Between all the transborder airlines, how many gates are used at the same time. Must be close to all gates being used

[zahav]

The new terminal better not be reaching capacity yet, that would horrible short-sighted planning! Or is it that some times are really busy, and then other times are quiet? With only around 10 international flights a day, seems odd it would be at capacity?

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by Acey

Since many of the gates serve both international and transborder flights, measuring just the international flights is useless aside from estimating the number of people in the int'l holdroom (which itself is useless because we ditched CTG)

The number of int'l/transborder flights departing daily from IFP is ~50, not including the domestic flights that depart from the swing gates.

There are times when every gate at IFP from 70 through to 95 is occupied... but that is not necessarily a good metric of how close IFP is to capacity. People seem focused on the afternoon heavies, but what presents a bigger crunch is the narrowbody banks, i.e. WS int'l push on a Saturday morning, WS transborder 10 am bank.

Sounds like the IFP really is an operational mess. As my summary highlighted above in the summer there are only up to about 3 narrowbody sunflights in the morning. And in the evening / afternoon only 8 long haul flights. So on average maybe 11 flights a day. Putting aside the Transborder ops at around 50 per day. If that massive new terminal cannot handle that level of flights due to "operational reasons" that's just pure poor planning.

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by Acey

IFP fully handled S17 and will be the same for S18. My post was in response to the inquiry of whether or not there are points in the day where all gates are occupied, the answer is: yes, briefly, depending on the day.

Is IFP anywhere near capacity? No.
Would TS benefit from a swing gate always being available for LGW-YYC-YVR? Yes.

If AC is running NRT-YYC-YYZ and YYZ-YYC-NRT and simultaneously occupying 4 swing gates, is that a fault of IFP that there's none left for anyone else? Not sure.

To summarize, the only "crunch" of any sort is in regard to swing gates. Nothing else. Gate utilization across all concourses remains very low, relative to a LAX/DFW/DCA type of situation. A swing gate crunch simply means more airplanes get towed, or planes are scheduled to do less swings, as Cage has talked about.

Yeah I was sort of focusing on the last paragraph too. Operationally the towing factor must be a PITA. So potentially poor planning knowing that Westjet was going to be the biggest player here and getting bigger. I’m sure overall gate utilisation would be very low with 22 gates serving around 70 flights per day. In any event most items I’ve read about the IFP haven’t been very positive.

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by Johnny Aussie

Even with AM exiting the YYC market, there will still be 21 weekly flights to Mexico this summer on 4 carriers. 17 of those will be on Westjet of course. 2 on TS and 1 each on AC and WG. 8 weekly to CUN, 7 to MEX, 4 to PVR and 2 to SJD

Here’s the remaining breakdown of the 75 int’l ops per week this summer:

UK: 22 per week - 14 to LHR (7 each on AC and BA) and 8 to LGW (5 on WS and 3 on TS)

Germany: 10 weekly flights to FRA on AC (7) and DE (3)

Netherlands: 8 to AMS on KL (7) and TS (1)

Japan: 7 weekly to NRT on AC.

China: 3 on HU to PEK

Switzerland: 2 on WK to ZRH

Caribbean: one each to VRA and MBJ on Sunwing.

Overall up 2 international flights per week thanks to WS increasing CUN and PVR one weekly each. The MEX flights wash each other out.

Nailed it except you missed one FRA frequency as Condor has upped it's offering to 4 weekly for summer 18.
https://www.routesonline.com/news/38/air...dor-s18-long-haul-changes-as-of-26jun17/

Here's my chart:

[msmariner]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Nailed it except you missed one FRA frequency as Condor has upped it's offering to 4 weekly for summer 18.
https://www.routesonline.com/news/38/air...dor-s18-long-haul-changes-as-of-26jun17/

Here's my chart:

How about sun destinations ie.. Mexico/Caribbean etc?

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by Acey

AC844 is a 77L, BA is showing mostly 788 from what I see here, and KL is a mix of 789/333. Also it looks like WS tentatively plans to send some 738's to MEX but that won't show for a while.

Thanks!

I've got FRA in there as a 772 (assuming that's the same as a 77L, since it's not a 77W).

I'll update BA to a 788, virtually identical number of seats though. The first class is probably unnecessary on the Calgary route so 788 probably makes more sense.

Originally Posted by msmariner

How about sun destinations ie.. Mexico/Caribbean etc?

I haven't included them in my charts, because to be totally honest I find them uninteresting. I started doing these charts to track wide-bodies, I only throw in the odd narrow-body flight if it's somewhere interesting like Mexico City, Reykjavik or something like that.

Also this is summer schedule so not a ton of sun flying anyway.

[Johnny Aussie]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Nailed it except you missed one FRA frequency as Condor has upped it's offering to 4 weekly for summer 18.
https://www.routesonline.com/news/38/air...dor-s18-long-haul-changes-as-of-26jun17/

Old info (from June 2017) the increase isn’t happening... back to 3 weekly!

[Canadian74]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Nailed it except you missed one FRA frequency as Condor has upped it's offering to 4 weekly for summer 18.
https://www.routesonline.com/news/38/air...dor-s18-long-haul-changes-as-of-26jun17/

Here's my chart:

AC 772 has 300 seats, that is 2100 weekly