An airline cannot afford to operate half empty airplanes, thus the route cutbacks. Calgary service may have been paired back, most likely by consolidating low-yield flights in the schedule. Given the experience out of YVR this past summer, with flight scehdules being altered daily based on loads and aircraft availability, AC is fine tuning based on now proven booking levels. They now know when the demand is present, and thus when to cluster more flights, and when to spread them out. Calgary may be booming, but flight patterns may be into the US and westerly more than to YYZ. Remember, AC has also added more routes into the US that now no longer require a connection in YYZ. This, like the expanded YOW services from both YYC and YEG, reduce demand on the trunk YYC/YEG-YYZ route.

And you seem to be discounting the impact of C3K, and even WestJet on long haul traffic from both cities. C3K will have up to three flights a day into YYC. And as long as FlyerAl is around, WestJet will have its links into southern Ontario via its YHM gateway. This has proven a viable route for them, and taken many thousands of AC back cabin customers, also reducing aircraft capacity needs on the YYC-YYZ route.

When I flew YEG-YYZ between 1998 and 2000, I noticed a distinct change in the make up of the front cabin. Many of the execs and managers who were flying with me no longer report to head offices in Edmonton. Telus has moved to Vancouver, and that represented a lot of regular CP passengers between YEG and YYZ. CTV shifted its western Canadian operations from Edmonton and Calgary to Vancouver, so its execs all overfly Alberta now. Same with Global. CN and CP's links are directly with Montreal, not Toronto. Oxford Properties has moved out of Alberta. There are just not the corporate links as there were even five years ago. All this has an impact on airline routes and capacity.