Originally Posted by
kangarooflyer88
This of course could be verified by comparing scheduled routes between Air Canada and competing airlines to see whether there are any difference in scheduled flight time. If we use Toronto to Vancouver as an example, we see that Air Canada's non-stops are scheduled for between 5 hours and 5 hours and 19 minutes. WestJet performing the same route takes anywhere from 5 hours 20 minutes to 5 hours 32 minutes. Flair is 5 hours 25 minutes and Porter is 5 hours and 19 minutes. Based on this data point, the argument made by the representative seems silly. What they are suggesting is that competing airlines are avoiding delays by simply adding anywhere from 1 minute to 13 minutes on that scheduled time. Whilst that may explain a short delay, it won't one that goes on for hours (and easily eats through any buffer AC set up).
You might also have noticed
in that comparison that AC blocks that route at 5h00-5h05 when operating a 787 or 777, while both AC and Westjet block at 5h19-5h22 when operating an A32x or 737. No comparison here is meaningful until it accounts for both the additional time to load 100-200 extra passengers, and the 30-40mph higher cruise speed of the widebodies.
Also worth noting that Flair and Lynx block that same route at 5h25 and 5h33, respectively, while operating the same 7M8 AC blocks at 5h19. Yeah, at some point you've got to ask whether AC thinks it's just more efficient than the little guys, or if the little guys are just building in more time to get it right. Realistically it's going to be some of both.
Originally Posted by
kangarooflyer88
Another key issue this statement misses is it doesn't account for cancellation. If AC cancels a flight on you, it doesn't matter what the block time is, you'll be put on another flight departing later that day or on some other day in the worse case.
...while Flair might not get you out for a couple of days.
Originally Posted by
kangarooflyer88
And that's where the deceit comes in. Customers are sold a promise that it will take 5 hours to get to Vancouver when in reality it ends up taking over a day in some cases.
In how many cases? Seriously, I'm not heckling, I'm asking; what percentage of passengers on (AC/WS/PD/F8) are delayed by that much? If it's 5% of all flights, that's thousands of people a week and that's a huge problem. If it's 2 flights a week across all routes, it's a rounding error, and that still doesn't tell us anything about the hundred flights a day that are late by half an hour.
Originally Posted by
kangarooflyer88
I think the main reason why you see operations in Europe are better than those in say Canada is the simple fact that the law penalizes airlines who operate poorly such as EU261.
An airline with an OTP of 30%, caused by flights constantly arriving an hour late, would owe little or nothing in EU261 penalties for those flights, while an airline that was on-schedule 80% of the time, but 4 hours late 10% of the time, would owe more. KLM and Iberia could easily lag well behind AC in OTP and rarely ever be penalized for it, but instead they're delivering substantially-higher OTP, period. Penalties are certainly an incentive, but they're not anywhere near the whole story.
Originally Posted by
kangarooflyer88
Indeed I would be curious if anyone has done an analysis of AC OTP ex-EU versus ex-Canada, as I reckon the OTP ex-EU will be significantly better than ex-Canada for that reason alone.
Apples-to-
Apfeln comparison is difficult at best in this area, and requires an absolute mountain of pretty granular data we don't generally have.
For example, if raw OTP numbers showed that FCO-YYZ outperformed YYZ-FCO by a greater amount in February than in June, it would seem reasonable to assume that this was largely due to winter weather, since it's less likely that de-icing will be required in Rome than in Toronto, and AC891 is less likely to be held up by passengers arriving on a weather-delayed regional connection than is 890. However, this might well completely overlook any of several other factors, like a shortage of baggage handlers or an underperforming catering supplier.
This is an area in which "simple" and "accurate" don't overlap by a lot, is what I'm saying here.