Originally Posted by
moorw003
But, to truly cut costs and become a budget airline like Ryanair, they'd need to stop the altitude programme being permitted on their planes, stop free luggage allowances and fly to airports 100km away from the city.
Therefore, AC are right. Rouge is not a budget airline. It doesn't mean it's good, and for sure the 29' A319 was definitely 1 row too greedy, and should have maintained a more palatable J. But it's not the horror people make it out to be.
As it is, I would say the international Rouge operations into Europe (the ones I'm interested in) are competitive and are low cost. I can't speak for US and Sun though, that may be an entirely different matter.
Flying in Europe even on BA etc is significantly cheaper than in Canada. I just flew BA LGW-BCN-LGW for a staggering 99 GBP. It came with free food - something called a Chicken Harissa sandwich. Another example would be BRU-VIE - Friday evening to sunday evening for around $200 CAD on OS. Or BRU-TXL for around $230, again on a Fri-Sun eve run - peak time for the Eurocrats. Much cheaper if you don't fly on that date or time (all flights were packed) Or BRU-HAM for $230. And so on. You'd be bloody lucky to score tickets at that price to most places ex-Canada.
Of course, the obvious counterpoint is Easyjet, which operates mainline. Besides, Ryanair is increasingly at main airports - they just moved from Charleroi to BRU.
I think it also bears mentioning that YYZ isn't a cheap airport to get to, unless you're willing to spend 1 hour on a bus, and make two connections on public transit. $120 taxi costs are a given with any flight out of YYZ if you aren't driving.
Also, a typical EUropean flight is under 2 hours. 29" for 4 hours is cutting it. IAs for the longhaul product, it depends on where you want to go and the competition on that route. I wouldn't call 30" pitch, minimal IFE and 3" of recline competitive in any sense of the word - and certainly not at mainline prices, but hey, if it works for you, great.