Why do you say AC has no award seats to Hawaii in the summer? Obviously, the demand for award seats will be high in the summer months on these flights since most claimants will be using them to fly through to SYD. Having removed its winter peak flights from the YVR and YYZ routes, AC is limited in the capacity it can provide into Hawaii from NAmerica since because they are also feeding its Australia flights.

US carriers always have a surplus of seats in the summer because they generally run dedicated service to their 59th state which is not connecting onward across the Pacific. AC redeploys its aircraft from season to season to meet the variable patterns of its travellers. US carriers have a fixed capacity to Hawaii, based on forecast loads and available aircraft. Because they are configured for domestic service, these aircraft cannot as readily be diverted onto international services as AC does with its fleet.

There are a lot of variables to consider, so you cannot draw conclusions from what the American carriers do and expect the circumstances to be the same for AC. Read the op ed piece in today's Financial Post by a York business professor . He basically puts to rest the misleading assumption that Canada can sustain a multi- carrier airline market, or that even allowing foreign entrants would change the situation, other than to replicate the AC/CP days of money losing battles to the end.