Originally Posted by
yulred
Ah yes, this route. I remember hearing about it a while back. Apparently it was a very important route for AC and Transport Canada. So important, apparently, that AC's CEO used it to illustrate the need for protecting AC.
And here we are four years later, with YEG-LHR and YOW-FRA reduced to seasonal services and a couple of thousand jobs at Aveos gone for good measure.
I'm sure there are perfectly legitimate reasons for these 'developments'. However, one cannot help but marvel at the cynicism involved: "Protect us to protect these routes...which we'll scrap for completely unrelated reasons whenever it suits us". It almost seems...dishonest.
I wonder if Transport Canada will hold them to account. One would expect that a transport authority that agrees to protect an airline on the basis of protecting certain routes, will notice - and take issue - with the erosion of those routes. Not that I expect them to.
We don't ask for protection we ask for a level playing field.
There have been some changes since the flights you mentioned were introduced.
Iceland was granted open skies to Canada on a promise to fly year-round service to YHZ. This never materialized. YEG offered an incentive to FI to fly to YEG and unfortunately the YEG-tatlantic market could not support 2 players during the slow winter so we redeployed our asset to a more lucrative opportunity.
Canada unlike the US and many other countries does not mandate gvt employees to fly locally based airlines. The recently introduced increase in ON jet fuel tax does not help either.