Don't want to start a feud here, but is there a specific reason YQR got daily flights on Encore, and YXE got 3x weekly on a 737? The Encore is more seats overall, and of course daily. Westjet could have done it the other way, or even done a mix of both maybe, but they seemingly gave the better deal to YQR. I don't know anything about the local dynamics, so this is an open question for anyone who might have theories. Based on pax traffic, YXE is ahead. Although they are both similar in # of airlines and destinations, YXE appears to be ahead in this regard as well. And on metro population, Saskatoon comes out decidedly ahead (funny how they are ranked directly beside each other though lol out of 41 CMAs they are #17 and 18). So you would think WS would give the daily frequency and higher capacity to YXE, and give YQR the 3x weekly. I'm sure there is a fleet scheduling thing behind it since the cities appear quite similar in demand, just wondered if anyone had theories why WS did it this way? Or maybe it was just a six of one/half a dozen of the other situation, but that's usually not how route planning works...
I really wonder if Canada and China are going to get back to decent relations politically. Right now it's so bad for so many reasons, especially for a country like Canada that usually doesn't get dragged into diplomatic spats as much as somewhere like the US. But seems lately we are, with China and India namely. The Indian spat could still prove to be a big issue since it has to do with Punjab and that's very sensitive for both countries. But so far, it doesn't seem that explosive, and India has even resumed the visas to Canada. The fact that America has now publicly said the same thing about Indian agents being in their country planning assassinations, they (India) kind of backed down a bit on the outrage of Canada's claim. They still officially are. angry about it, but they kind of know it's true and other countries say it, so they're not pushing it. I only mention this because of air travel. Canada and India were wayyyyyy under-served in terms of non-stop flights, absurdly so considering the links. It took forever to get some respectable non-stop frequency, and from multiple cities. Right now the Russian war is the bigger problem, as it has cut all of AC's YVR-DEL flights, which they would certainly be operating if not for the airspace restriction. But we get 7x daily Air India 777, which is a nicer add for the airport in terms of unique airlines and planes. No clue about the service at all, I'm not speaking as a traveller, speaking as an airport enthusiast. And it's a daytime departure at 10:15am, and gets into DEL at 1:15pm, definitely more my preference than a 2am departure or something. But my point is that flights between the two countries did not suffer as a result of the spat (and fingers crossed it doesn't happen!).
But then with China, it's insane the effect the diplomatic frost has caused. Yes it was COVID that killed the flights originally, as there were still plenty of flights up until the shutdown in March 2020. And China remained sealed off and heavily restricted air travel up until very recently, probably the last country anywhere to reopen. So in people's minds, the extended pandemic curtailments made it seem normal to not have any meaningful service to/from China. And over the last few years, that was fairly true, no foreign city had good service to China, so everyone was kind of in the same boat. I even remember making a post about how YVR was relatively decent still for China service (relative to other European and NA destinations I mean). Yet it was only 4x weekly on AC to PVG, and 1x weekly each to PEK (CA), XMN (MF), TFU (3U), and SZX (HU). That was as much as we could hope for really, the rules were so strict.
But now you can see we are being iced out purposely. Not only were we removed from the approved destination list (which is huge, that basically governs where the entire Chinese local population can and can't go). We had the designation, then lost it. And if you read aeroroutes.com (any airline/airport fan has to read it, it's the most comprehensive source for routes on the internet), you can see tons of posts of Chinese airlines finally adding back capacity, on all of their carriers and to a huge variety of destinations around the world. The reopening seems to be happening swiftly now, yet Canada is totally left out. YVR used to be one of the biggest Western airports to China in terms of traffic, destinations, carriers. So to go from that to basically getting the same amount of flights as somewhere like Budapest is ridiculous. I know there's bigger factors at play obviously, but this is an airport forum and I'm going to rant because this is a big empty void in our air service, which is otherwise well connected. Just shows how bad Canada offended them, and/or how we aren't that important to them. The US has said way worse things than us. And Australia has had their share of public issues with China as well, but they patch things up, and stay on the approved list, and are getting tons of flights again. With 138 countries on China's approved list, Canada being excluded is that much worse. It's so weird for Canada to be the odd one out and having a big rift, while the US, UK, Australia, and basically everywhere but here are invited to the party. It sure challenges the old outlook that Canada is nice and diplomatic lol, obviously not always and not anymore.
But this is about flights, bring them back!! Pre-pandemic there was so much hope and possibility for even more flights than we already had, which was already a lot. People thought China service had nowhere to go but up... it literally did the exact opposite, and now we have basically nothing!
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