Originally Posted by
Guy Betsy
I for one won't be flying through the US just to get to YVR. VS has to understand that many Canadians don't want the inconvenience and hassle of going through the US and then switching to DL on top of that.
VS crew told me that the YVR route was doing well and that management was thinking of doing it year round. But that was before DL bought SQ's share of VS.
Pity. I guess I can use my miles for HKG flights only.
Not sure why you would trust VS crew to give insight on how a route is performing because from my understanding the seasonal YVR flight has been a dog. Load factors (which is all a crew member would see) don't give too great an indication - it may be all Canadian tourists paying the depressed bargain sale fares from canada since Air Canada added tons of capacity. India is extremely low yielding so no surprise there and Asia is performing poorly for all the US carriers so I'm sure the story is the same for VS and all the other carriers. I don't get why everyone thinks airlines should fly routes that seem popular when in reality some of these routes are true money losers - low yielding + over capacity = nightmares for profitability.
The moves by VS seem very logical and their financial results thus far seem to indicate they are moving in the right direction and cutting the fat. I'd expect VS and DL to continue to try and gain market share in the US to UK market at the expense of BA/AA which has to be done by making these sorts of changes and adding new routes.