CloudsBelow

Has KLM announced YEG? Where are you hearing 4w YEGAMS??
Edit: Poking around online seems lots of speculation it's just a matter of time until KLM announces YEG 4w. Good for them. An interesting TATL summer season coming to YEG in 2015. Who's going to blink first?
YOWLHR has had day of week reductions in previous winters.
O/D traffic is far more profitable than CNX.

hearna

Considering that this requires a significantly earlier departure and an in-convenient 2h ride to Montreal I call shenanigans on that.

And you really expect people to connect to YYZ in the winter out of YOW? One difference between YOW and YYZ is YOW operates when a sprinkle of snow comes across her, unlike YYZ that shuts down for 3 days stranding thousands. Maybe those bean counters should perhaps count the beans again keeping in mind the thousands, nay millions lost in hotels/meals/overtime/idle aircraft/fuel, etc etc etc wasted at YYZ for winter ops versus say YOW. Maybe instead of cutting flights, those same flights should be cut/reduced in YYZ and increased or have new routes launched in the winter months to take advantage of an operable airport?

Oh wait, none of this has anything to do with LOGIC, or YOW, or profit; rather directly related to, we need another plane converted to ROUGE.

I suppose things might be different if there wasn't a delay to the original arrival dates of the 787, but I can guarantee that if you are scared of AF/KLM/LX siphoning traffic with the bus service and you cut the direct flights, only more will say to hell with it and take the bus or the lousy US connection.

kevy_boy

Are you under the impression that AC would axe a profitable route?

yulred

If restricting capacity can boost yields on other flights, then why not? Save the cost of operating a marginally profitable route, and change the demand supply dynamic for the connecting flight.

CloudsBelow

You think Ben made up the AF/KL bus service notion? Or, the bus service exists, It just runs back and forth without passengers?
Or YUL.
I do agree with you though. I've driven to YUL through snowstorms a couple times because I knew my Dash-8 would be delayed or cancelled on YOWYUL. Always want your first flight to be on the bigger aircraft. That's the real downer for Ottawa travellers losing FRA service this Winter.
Haha. Exactly. We all know AC will cut profitable routes exYEG for laughs and spite, but Ottawa too?? No way

yulred

Nope. It exists. Its still a red herring since its pretty obvious that it only caters to price-sensitive travelers who have time to burn. AC can just as easily cater to that crowd, but isn't interested because its too low-yield. Portraying it as a serious competitor inolves a little too much exaggeration. Its not going to be popular with the business crowd, even those flying in Y, for obvious reasons.

I'm not surprised its going. It was always cited as a marginal case. I suspect its the same with 888/889. Last time I tried to book LHR-YOW on a Monday (IIRC in May), it simply wasn't operating.

CloudsBelow

Agreed. Always thought the YOWFRA marginal route talk from AC was posturing wrt ME3. Guess not.

Bottom line, YOW gets 7w to LHR this Winter instead of the 11w total between LHR and FRA. Really only hits the beyond Europe connections as double connect or USA connections are far from a sure thing during Winter ops.

PLeblond

I have a friend that often uses Via fro YUL to Ottawa. Often takes less time than connecting. I would assume it doesn't always work time wise, but when it does it appears to me a good alternative.

Also FYI, YUL does back up when it snows... only because of delays in/out YYZ. I remember many years back in ORD flying home and looking at the board. YYZ-cancelled. BYF, cancelled, BTV cancelled, YOW cancelled, BOS cancelled. Montreal-On Time. We were the second last flight in and the NW 727 that landed after us taxied off the runway into a snow back and needed to be pulled out. Got to love YUL for that.

hearna

It also hits when irrops WILL (key word) happen in YYZ, those passengers wont have the extra option of being routed through YOW….

Less choices will simply impact more people and have less options for IRROPS

Gus2013

Having flown YOW-FRA many times, I would tend to believe the "85% of passengers connect in FRA to their final destination" statistic, but the final destinations are quite diverse (Europe, ME, Africa, India,...).

They are only going to be able to support a small number of those destinations on *A out of LHR, and I am surprised that they can support a daily LHR flight on O/D and a limited number of connecting flights. For all the FRA-connectors, they are hoping/planning that enough will deal with a connection in YYZ/YUL to raise the loads on those flights and are willing to forego the rest.

AC economics aside, it is pretty sad that a greater than 1-million person market cannot support more than one TATL flight in the off-season. YOW in general seems to be going backwards, losing on US connections, losing FRA, ... but building lots of parking garages.

Wallace99

I'm sure AC caters to those people too, they can just connect them to YUL in the air while AF/klm can't so run the bus. They have to fill those HD planes somehow.

hearna

If this was a HD thing then LHR would have been axed over FRA....

ProudEdmontonian

I'm not pleased at all that it was cut. I'm enjoying AA now.

No punishment anymore. Now that EIA and YEG have wised up to the charade, we have plenty of air service and it does not have to go via YYC or YYZ.

jcamp028

It is unfortunate what's been happening with YOW over the last few years. But in all fairness, the tech sector is nowhere near as strong as in the past, and the Feds have been axing travel in addition to cutting jobs. I remember hearing that YOW actually at one point had a daily direct flight to San Jose!

And on the parking - I seem to recall there was actually a report published about 2 years ago that actually criticized the airport and said that they make far too much money on parking (and that they should lower their rates). So what did they do? They raised parking rates even more!

However, it does remain probably my favourite Canadian airport.

TheGreatestX

Not surprising, YOW is stagnant compared to the other major Canadian airports.

YYZ: Jan-June 18,371,030 (+5.6%), rolling 12 mo: 37,088,499
YVR: Jan-July 11,151,541 (+8.1%), rolling 12 mo: 18,808,653
YYC: Jan-July 8,765,398. (+7.5%), rolling 12 mo: 14,930,945
YUL: Jan-June 7,155,071 (+3.0%), rolling 12 mo: 14,304,334
YEG: Jan-July 4,769,759 (+8.1%), rolling 12 mo: 8,054,263
YOW: Jan-July 2,701,958 (+0.2%), rolling 12 mo: 4,584,278