Haha, actually Margarita Girl was right up until now (was trying to rack up the statusmiles), but I'm actually on track to hit SuperElite (too) early and would be more than happy now to put away with the wasted stopover times in SFO or DEN and take the nonstop SAN-YYC flights.

Sadly, the reason I can't take the SAN-YYC or YYC-SAN nonstop flights is because of their horrible schedules! The YYC flight leaves at 12:55pm and the SAN flight leaves at 12pm - both smack in the middle of the day. Obviously AirCanada has NO interest in making this an option for businessfolk. I fly weekly (sometimes up to THREE times return) between SAN and YYC, and I either need an early AM flight out of either city to make an early afternoon meeting in the other city, or a late afternoon/evening flight out of either city so that I can get off work at 4/5pm, catch the flight out, and be in the other city the night before for that early AM meeting.

The middle-of-the-day schedule is even bad for leisure travel in my opinion. My husband will be coming up to Calgary for a visit, and taking either mid-day flight (there or return) basically wipes out a half-day of time that we could be spending together, vs. an early AM or late PM flight. So sadly we just booked flights all on UA (he'd rather put up with a stopover in SFO or DEN and get in after work the night before rather than taking the direct flight the day after at noon and lose more than half a day of 'together'time; Same with the flight back - rather than cutting his visit short at noon on a Sunday, he'd rather take the 7pm out of Calgary and put up with a stopover)...

Heck if they had even simply pushed either departure flight a little later into the afternoon, folks could still get in a half-day of work (AM) and then get to the airport in time to catch an afternoon departure...

Dont' get me wrong - I'm thrilled that I have another option (even if it's practically useless for my business/leisure travel), but me thinks this was purely designed to facilitate 'connections' to SAN for those outside of YYC (ie. YYZ) and leisure travellers who don't mind wasting a whole vacation day by travelling in the middle of the afternoon...