Originally Posted by Mr MCO
My recollection is that crossing the border on a plane is more expensive than driving. A couple of years ago, a flight to Toronto was about double vs. flying to Buffalo. I do not recall ever seing good rates to Canada. On top of that, the current fuel prices have made flying so much more expensive.
Lest we forget, you're also looking at a tax load from both sides that starts around $64 for a non-stop RT and goes up from there. Two people going to BUF instead of YYZ, for example, could save enough for a 3-day weekend rental car to drive it out of BUF just on the difference in ticket taxes. Some sites will even list U.S. cities as alternate airports if they're close enough (SEA vs. YVR, BUF vs. YYZ). Atlanta used to have frequent specials to Canadian cities (less so now), but taxes would kill the deal if you're a price-sensitive leisure traveler and the kind that laps up $200-300 RT transcon fares. You'd essentially have to pay an $80-100 premium to go to Canada vs., say, SEA or LAX or LAS even with shorter flying distances.
If they were doing things right, LCCs would rush in under "open skies" and you'd not pay much more to fly transcon to a Canadian city than an American one. But the actual market size remains small in relation to potential. I think it's a classic case of a market that can be grown if the prices come down. But, as we know, legacy carriers are squeezing supply and letting fares go up, and doing so pretty ruthlessly on routes with little LCC competition.
IMO the only real bright spot is FF-award redemptions, which trigger only some of the taxes and cost the same number of miles as the 48 U.S. Depending on airline/alliance, Canada can be a good deal for 25K standard award redemptions.