Canadian Airport Thread

[isaidso]

Toronto Pearson, June data

Domestic 1,652,235 (+3.1%)
International 2,718,519 (+8.1%)
Total 4,370,754 (+6.2%)

Year to date 23,744,380 (+6.0%)
Last 12 months 48,471,260


https://www.torontopearson.com/en/gtaa/statistics/#

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Is the airport extremely congested now? Near or at capacity?

I've only been through there maybe 10 times but it felt full each time. If my experiences there are the norm they might be able to push it past 3 million but not any more. It's a shame as the location is superb.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by isaidso

I've only been through there maybe 10 times but it felt full each time. If my experiences there are the norm they might be able to push it past 3 million but not any more. It's a shame as the location is superb.

I prefer Billy Bishop over Pearson if my travels take me to Toronto.

My general rule of thumb (flying out of Moncton) is:

1) - terminal destination Toronto - take Porter to Billy Bishop
2) - terminal destination western Canada - take WestJet via Pearson
3) - terminal destination USA or international - take Air Canada via Pearson

[isaidso]

You can't fly to western Canada directly from Moncton?

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by isaidso

You can't fly to western Canada directly from Moncton?

Of course not, London ON is the farthest West...

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

Of course not, London ON is the farthest West...

I doubt it's obvious to most people; Moncton's the biggest airport in NB. I would have assumed you'd at least be able to fly to Vancouver direct. I guess I've never lived in a place that small.

[zahav]

East Coast to Western Canada service is brutal, it's almost all connecting through YUL, YOW, or YYZ. There are token YHZ and YYT non-stops but nothing that substantial, and super seasonal too. YQM I feel like should at least have a YYC on WS, but don't think they do. This country is too big and too thinly populated (esp. Maritimes) to make non-stops work well. Sad but true. I go to Halifax at least once a year and always with a connection

[magee_b]

Guess the hub & spoke model isn't super obvious to those who live in a hub...

[thenoflyzone]

Originally Posted by zahav

East Coast to Western Canada service is brutal, it's almost all connecting through YUL, YOW, or YYZ. There are token YHZ and YYT non-stops but nothing that substantial, and super seasonal too. YQM I feel like should at least have a YYC on WS, but don't think they do. This country is too big and too thinly populated (esp. Maritimes) to make non-stops work well. Sad but true. I go to Halifax at least once a year and always with a connection

As you said, big country + sparse population.

NS, PEI, NB and NFLD have a combined population of around 2.3 million people.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by magee_b

Guess the hub & spoke model isn't super obvious to those who live in a hub...

Requoted for truth.

The hub and spoke model is great - as long as you live in a hub.

Moncton (CYQM) is indeed the largest airport in NB (as big as all the other airports combined, with PAX nearing 700,000), but despite this the only destinations out of the airport (aside from seasonal sun destinations) are Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Halifax. Most people make connections out of Toronto Pearson (Montreal to a lesser degree). For Halifax, the vast majority of people simply drive (YHZ is 2.5 hours away), although this can be dicey in the winter time with the Cobequid Pass.

Moncton has been hard done by with the hub and spoke system. There is probably enough traffic to justify at least one flight to St. John's from Moncton a day, and possibly even Quebec City (with the Acadian population and Laval University). Instead, connections have to be made in Halifax or Montreal.

In the 1990s, there was a one-stop WestJet flight from Moncton that terminated in Edmonton, but this has not been available for a long time. All WestJet flights to Toronto (3x daily) are now on their Encore service. We also had direct flights to NYC on a US regional carrier up until about 3 years ago.

At present, aside from sun flight destinations, all passenger flights out of Moncton are on turboprops. All regular large jet flights out of the airport are for cargo.

You get better service out of Moncton if you are a lobster than a human being.

At some point, as Moncton continues to grow, I would hope more point-to-point flights will happen (especially to St. John's and the US northeast), but I don't know what population threshold will have to be passed to justify this.......

[q12]

There are currently this summer:

4x daily non-stop Calgary <-> Halifax
1x daily non-stop Edmonton <-> Halifax
4x Weekly non-stop Winnipeg <-> Halifax (Seasonal)
1x daily non-stop Vancouver <-> Halifax (Seasonal) Longest domestic flight in Canada (6 1/2 hours from Halifax to Vancouver)

Halifax current direct non-stop flights (2019 Winter Charters not shown)



Moncton current direct non-stop flights (2019 Winter Charters not shown)

[MonctonRad]

While we're at it, here is the current proposed listing of seasonal sun flight destinations out of Moncton (CYQM)

http://cyqm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2018-2019-Winter-Sun-Destinations-soleil-dhiver.pdf

Orlando, Florida - Air Transat, Sunwing
Cancun, Mexico - Air Transat, Sunwing
Punta Cana, DR - Air Transat, Sunwing
Puerto Plata, DR - Sunwing
Varadero, Cuba - Air Transat, Sunwing
Montego Bay, Jamaica - Sunwing

The main difference from last year is the absence of the WestJet flight to Orlando. It's still possible we may see the Celebrity Cruise flight to Miami again. It was added to the schedule quite late last year.

Moncton does pretty well for sun flights, and our connections through Montreal and Toronto are pretty good (currently 10x daily to Toronto on Air Canada, WestJet and Porter (via Ottawa), and 4x daily to Montreal). The flights to Halifax are 4x daily and to Ottawa 2x daily. The main holes in our schedule are directs to St. John's, possibly Quebec City and ideally New York/Boston.

We will never be able to compete with Halifax in terms of number of direct flights because of our size, and internal competition within NB with other airports in Freddy and SJ.

[someone123]

The Maritimes are probably the least hub-dominated region of Canada. Halifax has more flights than Moncton, sure, but compare Vancouver to Victoria or Toronto to London.

If the Maritimes were one province they'd have the one hub and a couple of Sydney type airports (e.g. maybe just Moncton to serve NB and PEI) that would pretty much only have regular flights to Halifax and Toronto. I doubt Charlottetown's airport would be what it is today, for example, given the existence of the bridge. Moncton and PEI combined have maybe 400,000 people, are about an hour apart in terms of where most of the people live, and have 2 full service airports.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Requoted for truth.

The hub and spoke model is great - as long as you live in a hub.

I realize Moncton's smaller but still assumed Moncton served the same purpose for NB as Halifax does for NS. Moncton is 'The Hub City', is it not?

[EtobicokeSouth]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Toronto Pearson, June data

Domestic 1,652,235 (+3.1%)
International 2,718,519 (+8.1%)
Total 4,370,754 (+6.2%)

Year to date 23,744,380 (+6.0%)
Last 12 months 48,471,260


https://www.torontopearson.com/en/gtaa/statistics/#

In just 6 months, YYZ has already handled more passengers than YUL and YYC's annual numbers! And almost as much as YVR's annual passenger count.

Really shows how dominant YYZ is compared to every other Canadian airport, but it also slows down the growth and connectivity of small airports across the country (including the Maritimes), because travellers from across the country just feed into it.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by isaidso

I realize Moncton's smaller but still assumed Moncton served the same purpose for NB as Halifax does for NS. Moncton is 'The Hub City', is it not?

Rail hub yes. Road hub yes. Air hub, not so much.

Freddy, Saint John and Charlottetown all have decent sized airports that eat into regional business that might otherwise come to Moncton.

Moncton has roughly 700,000 PAX. Freddy is roughly 400,000 PAX, Saint John about 280,000 PAX and I believe Charlottetown is somewhere over 300,000 PAX.

Add them together and that's still only about 1.7M PAX (less than half of Halifax Stanfield).

Moncton gets the rails and the roads.
Halifax gets the seaport and the airport.

[Nouvellecosse]

Hmm, I honestly didn't realise you can go direct all the way from Halifax to BC and Alberta. It seems like every time I'm flight hunting all I see are connections in YYZ, YUL, or occasionally YOW.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by EtobicokeSouth

Really shows how dominant YYZ is compared to every other Canadian airport, but it also slows down the growth and connectivity of small airports across the country (including the Maritimes), because travellers from across the country just feed into it.

The hub and spoke system really inflates PAX numbers in the hub airport because a lot of those passengers are in transit and never set foot outside the airport.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Hmm, I honestly didn't realise you can go direct all the way from Halifax to BC and Alberta. It seems like every time I'm flight hunting all I see are connections in YYZ, YUL, or occasionally YOW.

The only western city with decent service to YHZ is Calgary (4x daily). Unless you have the luxury to fly on the airlines schedule, of course you will be stuck with connecting flights to get where your going.

[Nouvellecosse]

And the direct flights are probably twice as expensive as the lowest priced options, and I tend to be, let's say, a "value oriented' flyer. So I probably just scrolled right past without even looking.