Originally Posted by eigenvector

I'm talking about the position of Vancouver and Calgary on the globe. All things being equal*, if you want to fly from coastal US population centres to major Asian cities, YVR is closer to your optimal route than YYC. In a business where margins can be 2% or less, why do you want to fly 10% further for no reason?

* and they're not equal. Every other factor is in YVR's favour: it's bigger, it has a stronger, more diversified economy, it has stronger ethnic community ties, it has tens of thousands of astronaut families shuttling back and forth in paid J regularly, the airport has more capacity and facilities to begin with, etc.