Wpgjetse

You could say that with every airline in the world. IE - CX with HKG, LH with FRA, BA with LHR, ...., ..... It defines the term HUB.

YEG_SE4Life

My guess is that it is because AC has limited resources and they work on determining (right or wrong) the most profitable effective way to deploy those resources.

WR Cage

I don't subscribe to the notion that AC is ignoring YYC. By all relevant measures AC should have dehubbed YYC long ago when WS became the 50% traffic winner, I believe that WS is holding steady at 55% of pax.

AC has been upguaging flights with Q400s where as 10 years ago it was mainly 50 seat Dash8 or CRJ. YYZ has 2-3 widebodies per day. The E90s have been taken off both YYC-YYZ and YYC-YUL infavour of A320s with twice the capacity. NRT is now solid performer. LHR and FRA have withstood AC seat densification and larger aircraft.

WS did not follow through with their planned 5% cut, it was only 2-3% cut in Alberta mostly because AC increased capacity on the transcons. WS had to provide a competitive response. Finally most of the WS cuts have come from YMM and YEG, YYC has barely seen a reduction.

With regard to new international destinations. AC made the decision to beef up YYZ and YVR to eat the market before WS could enter the space in a meanigful way. As it stands, WS is attempting to move into TransPac because AC mainline and rouge has soaked up all the capacity. AC's actions have even drawn the notice of USA investment analysts and the US3. It was a great decisions for AC to say "we will take markets 1-2-3 and give you the fourth market".

The dissappointment, in my opinion, has been WS which continues to over fly their hub with nonstop services from YEG/YQR/YXE/YWG etc.

ridefar

Let me throw out another suggestion which I haven't seen directly from other posters: there is no premium cabin traffic to support any YYC expansion. I think the paid premium cabin traffic has declined significantly with the death of the oil and gas business in YYC. Both for personal as well as business travel. This is purely an (educated) guess and based on personal observation, but I would bet that paid premium has declined by 50%.

RatherBeInYOW

Maybe you should stop strawman-ing and start responding to the portions of the responses that actually address your core question.

To repeat again, it is fairly clear that AC isn't seeing enough O/D traffic to YYC and isn't seeing enough competition from WS or whomever else on direct routes to offer more direct routes themselves. You can bet that if YYC connecting pax through YVR on to PEK dropped drasticly as a result of a direct YYC-PEK flight from a competitor AC would do something. The blazingly obviously answer, which you keep avoiding, is that they're seeing no impact and don't see the demand and thus aren't adding capacity.

/thread

eigenvector

What is this so-called "flying over"? In YWG, YXE and YQR, WS has the only nonstop flights to the usual southwest USA sun destinations (PSP, PHX, LAS) plus a smattering of MCO flights. That's a competitive advantage for them versus AC, which forces everyone to connect coming out of the Prairies. Why would they give that up?

The pettiness of western airport competition never ceases to amaze me. Two entire provinces should lose all their nonstop services to beef up YYC?

Stranger

Precisely.

YXUFlyboy

Off-topic - but I think WS uses point-to-point services from many Canadian airports as a competitive advantage of capturing more market share from these smaller airports. That's generally their business strategy and it seems to work for them.

WR Cage

Premium traffic on the LHR, FRA, NRT routes continues to attract pax. Otherwise AC would keep the 789 on FRA (30 J class version 40 on the 77L) and maintain the 763 on NRT. PE class is also driving a significant demand compared to legacy preferred seats.

A couple of years ago I was weekly pax on WS 8am YYC-YEG Monday morning. The aircraft turned to YEG-CUN along with half the pax (about 40-60 people). These pax were flying YYC-YEG-CUN due to capacity issues on the nonstop YYC-CUN.

I also had the opportunity to fly airmiles award (wife account) and the options were LAS-YYC or LAS-YXE-YYC. At the gate 20-30 pax for LAS-YXE had final destination of YYC because the LAS-YYC flight was full.

You flow pax over the hub because there is more margin with multiple daily flights.

Does the YYC-LAS pax want to leave at 8am, 10am, 4pm or 7pm?

(1) If you move the 10am flight to YXE-LAS, the yyc traffic could be lost to a competitor leaving at 9am and doing a connection in DEN, SFO, or SEA because they dont want to be at the airport for 6am to catch the earlier nonstop.
(2) The YXE based pax need to be willing to pay a premium for the nonstop over the one stop services.

Its for these two reasons why Hub overflights rarely work out.

Diabeetus

Agreed. Many of my friends in YYC have kept their jobs, that were formerly frequent fliers (business and/or personal) have had their number of trips cut (lower status for upgrades) and the travel costs cut (less paid J).

newcdn

No it doesn't

Wpgjetse

But it's close. Also, YVR tourist numbers are way higher than YYC, plus YVR has a large cruise ship season, which fill many flights per day.

YXUFlyboy

Vancouver is about 60% bigger than Calgary. Not double.

Yes, we get the local market is going to have more traffic. But the post is around hubs, which implies routing traffic through other places.

quantumofforce

what is Hainan to do, fly to Vancouver which is already awash with TPAC traffic, or run a route to YYC with limited competition.

I know I prefer to run my businesses where I have limited competition. Your mileage may vary.

keitherson

Umm... actually Hainan wanted to fly to YVR. But the rules from the Chinese government don't allow it. YYC, whether you like it or not, was sloppy seconds.