Dorian

Wow, their route announcement is hilarious. Talk about having to work around their schedule!

http://gonewleaf.ca/travel-info/route-map-south/

yyz_atc_qq

July 25th is the new launch date....

epiphani

Either they've done a crazy amount of demand research and they've planned their flights accordingly... or they're scheduling based on aircraft availability. I'm more inclined to think that its mostly the latter, otherwise you wouldn't have such a messed up schedule.

I thought the entire way you made money in this industry was by keeping your aircraft in the air as often as possible on routes with reasonable demand. Apparently nobody flies on Tuesdays.

I'm obviously not the target market... but I think they're pretty much sunk in 12 months.

robsaw

IMHO, you are being optimistic. It all depends upon how much cash they have and how patient Flair might be with potential late payments as I expect initial cash flow will be rather lumpy.

smallmj

IIRC, they are using a few planes from an existing charter airline. Maybe the charter has pre-existing flights on Tuesdays.

From the webpage, they are using Flair Air planes. Flair has 5 737-400's. I doubt NewLeaf is using all of them.

MXM135

According to today's news, New Leaf is not targeting business travellers but is catering to leisure travellers.

They are intentionally avoiding Canada's top 4 airports - Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.

mxm135

gglave

Their schedule out of Greater Vancouver is bananas -

- Abbotsford to Winnipeg on Thursdays and Sundays
- Abbotsford to Fort St. John on Thursdays and Sundays

That's it.

No Hamilton, no Edmonton.

I would have assumed Abbotsford to Hamilton would have been their gravy train, but no.

D582

I doubt this too... I'm waiting for some maintenance issue which will cause the down-line cancellation of like 20 flights, and the subsequent whining by people on social media.

tracon

I believe start up airlines in Canada are required to have enough funding to operate for three months with no revenue.

pilotboy1985YYC

Air Canada matched the fares last time NewLeaf launched. Then as soon as NewLeaf announced it was halting ticket sales they jacked the prices back up again.

So, this time around, if I had to guess, Air Canada might wait a bit to see if this airline even gets off the ground before it matches these prices.

HangTen

When the CTA figures out the majority of New Leaf's capital comes from Minneapolis, and therefore violates the laws that all the other airlines based in Canada have to abide by, the venture will, once again, be shut down.

No matter what structure they've dreamt up to dance around the law, the CTA is mandated to look through the structure to figure out who owns and controls the venture.

If it's more than 25% controlled by non-Canadians, it will not fly, period.

Pretending that "Flair" is the "airline", when all the commercial risk is being taken by a foreign controlled and capitalized structure is a laughable argument, once again proving just how out of touch with reality New Leaf is.

Should the GOC change the law, enabling ALL airlines to increase foreign ownership to some higher amount, perhaps New Leaf will get off the ground.

Until then, caveat emptor. This dodo will not be flying anytime soon.

Even if they did, their ridiculous sched pretty much guarantees failure the moment they become reliant on cash flow from bookings beyond Labor Day, which will occur around Aug 12th.

Altaflyer

Just booked YEG-YYZ non stop for Thanksgiving weekend for $435 return Then had a 20% code and $50 WS dollars so $325 all in

Ace Cdn

I am not an expert but I would think it would be better to start with a few less destinations and increase the frequency on the other routes to more than 2 times a week.

mapleg

Reminds me of Greyhound Air, but even they had a better schedule.

Anyone remember them?

yyz_atc_qq

How does having $50 WS dollars help with booking NewLeaf?