YVR, YUL, and YYC had mediocre July traffic, in terms of some sector growth and modest overall growth. This was fully expected, it's much of the same from past months with domestic dragging, but with some giant y/y growth in transborder for all three airports. In % terms, transborder growth % at YUL for example is several times higher than international, despite international getting so much attention as the big growth area. In July, international was up 3.6%, but transborder was up 16.3%, so much stronger relative performance. Ditto at YYC and YVR, although not to the same extreme as YUL (meaning the difference between int. and trans is smaller, but still significant). But really all are having the same trends, just with different figures.
Two fun YVR takeaways (fun for me at least haha no secret I'm a local booster as much as possible, so like having some good news). But YUL and YYC are killing it these days more than ever, so I'm not interested in competing, just sharing facts and having discussions, no room for drama and cattiness over stats....
The first is that transborder was over 700,000 for the first time ever I believe. Love seeing that number, especially in that sector. It was a very rocky sector really for most of the post-9/11 period, so many bumps in the road (all the terrorism weirdness, the shoe bomber, the liquids and gels ordeal, AC weakness, the CAN$ increasing, competition from Seattle for cruises, Bellingham looming like it was going to devour this market, and more people driving too Seatac even). It was a touch and go sector that either shrunk or didn't change much, over the 2001-2011ish period. Especially compared to international, which was strong because that period saw the Asian market start to grow a lot. I remember people being aghast that I was flying to LAS from YVR in those years, people couldn't believe someone would fly YVR instead of BLI, Allegiant had more loyalty than anything at YVR, it was so depressing. So this recent strength makes me happy to see, always hoped transborder would grow and not be destroyed by US airports
Second thing I noticed is YVR actually had a slight Y/Y gain in scheduled domestic pax. So YVR for some reason breaks down scheduled and charter pax, which I don't think any others do? Anyways, charter pax numbers seem to be getting weaker and weaker, in favour of more scheduled. Even for the sun destinations, the % of charter pax amongst overall pax is fairly small, and declining. For the first time I can remember, YVR didn't record any charter pax in July, not one in any sector. So for domestic, scheduled went from 1,242,427 to 1,243,405 (a whopping 978 pax increase lol, but still, I find that impressive considering the state of the domestic market all across the country. But the decline of 14,670 to 0 for charter pax dragged the sector down so it shrank in total, but entirely because of the charter sector, it's interesting. Since charter flights are not scheduled the way normal flights are (ie. you have to buy through a tour operator on sun flights and can't just fly), what we airport enthusiasts would notice is the scheduled carriers who publish their schedules and we can review their schedules and know their ops. Charters are unknown, it could be flying a hockey teams, or large organizations maybe, and then smaller airlines do fishing charters, ski charters, etc. But overall, a very small part of the market. So seeing the growth in scheduled domestic is a surprise. I wish YUL and YYC published their breakdown to see if charter losses were the culprit there. I have zero clue the size or importance of the charter market to YYC or YUL, but I assume YUL benefits more than YYC for flights. YUL seems to have many more charter type operations, I think it had more of a history in Quebec than Alberta, so there's still remnants. But likely a decline proportion of charter everywhere, except maybe places like Fort McMurray, or other remote work locations, where charters is very important. But less so at major airports
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