Quote:
Originally Posted by fanofYOW
I was thinking about all those narrow body slots at LHR myself. But I don't think AC will forever keep YOW-LHR as a narrow body. Before COVID, they must have seen good demand for this route to want to upgrade it to a 788. Unless the only reason why they wanted to do that is so they can use their 767 for cargo? But I'm not sure if they were planning for that back then.. Also I think the thing about LHR as apposed to LGW is that a lot of these people going to LHR isn't O&D traffic, people are connecting there with AC's partners. There isn't as much connectivity selection in LGW. For example, I know someone who used to use YOW-LHR to grab a flight from LHR to BEY on MEA. That's not an option from LGW.
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You are thinking of this in one dimension. Namely how would AC connect YOW to LHR? But that is not how any airline planner would look at this. They are looking at two sets of demand from each city I mentioned: origin-destination demand to London/UK and connection demand through LHR.
Canadian cities have high o/d to the UK. Most secondary metros like YOW can support at least a daily if not double daily. Prior to this order AC didn't have any aircraft that would let them offer year round service with lie flat business to all these secondary Canadian metros. Now they will. And London bound traffic is not very likely to be sensitive to which London airports they use. If they can't get Heathrow slots, they'll open Gatwick. WestJet and Air Transat go to Gatwick and can fill widebodies there without many connections at that end. No reason can't fill 1-2x YOW-LGW.
Once the above demand is separated out, what's left is traffic that is transiting through LHR. And that traffic is fungible. It can transit elsewhere. Not just at LHR. Your friend, for example, could transit at CDG or FRA just as easily as he could at LHR. And here AC is highly motivated to have as many passengers transit through FRA and MUC (their JV partner hubs as possible. A high secondary motivation is freeing up another Heathrow slot for a widebody from YYZ, YUL or YVR.
Next, consider the need for frequencies and how it trades off with capacity A single daily widebody means a large chunk of demand is still going through YYZ and YUL because of scheduling. But 2x/day XLR offers nearly as many J seats as one 789 or 333 and about slightly more than a quarter more economy seats while substantially improving scheduling. AC can run this schedule year round and sub in a single widebody during peak season for one of the dailies.
I look at all the above and I think AC would practically own long haul out of Ottawa if they did double daily to London and Frankfurt. Maybe even a daily to Paris. And then during the back hours of those 4-5 aircraft r they run double daily to Vancouver and San Francisco. This seems like a great strategy to both attack Porter at YOW on high value long haul and fight off potential Transatlantic competition from both Eurolegacies and discount carriers.
YOW will get the international connections it wants and needs. But that same type may also put a cap on YOW's Transatlantic growth because they'll also open up a whole bunch of secondary destinations in Europe from YUL allowing AC to absolutely hammer Air Transat and massively increase competitiveness with IAG and AFKL. YUL, particularly, is likely to see a substantial increase in the number of Transatlantic destinations offered and the frequencies to them.
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