blue2002

What, like this one? SKODA SUPERB Perfectly adequate for a premium transfer that lasts all of 5 min. Skoda has flourished quite nicely under VW ownership.

jc94

rankourabu

Some of us enjoy flying sitting next to the people we fly with

Fiordland

After two summers in LGW, WS still does not have a codeshare or interline agreement with easyJet. It code shares with the likes of Air France, KLM, Delta, Japan Airlines, a bunch of Chinese airlines. It also interlines with Air Ligus, Alitalia, EL AL, Ethad, Finnair, LOT, Pakistani, Qatar, Ukraine, Air Marac among others. I think they have better connection opportunities in Heathrow. They are also the home town favourite in Calgary and are likely going after corporate accounts in Calgary. If you want to connect Calgary with the world oil centres through Europe I think Heathrow and Paris are the two places to do it.

The leisure market and family visit market are their break and butter. However if they want to build out an international business travel business they are going to make zero progress in Toronto with 10 wide-body aircraft. They need to start somewhere and I think it has to be trying to display the corporate accounts AC has in Calgary. That means London, Paris and Narita.

Clipper801

I wonder if WS knows how to run a "premium" service and adjusting the mentality of its staff. PLUS is a total flop. Other than the ancient 767, none of WS current North American fleet has a premium cabin. There is no priority check-in and priority baggage handling. So you bring a J passengers from overseas to one of the hubs, unless that J passenger terminates there, you feed that passenger to PLUS? Will YYZ T3 where WS operates change the international transfer process similar to T1 where AC is located?
Very ambitious plan but not sure how WS is going to execute it. Their brand new 7M8 does not have real North American standard J seats.

agjil

This is great - it's always nice to have options.
Hopefully WestJet's Dreamliners will serve them well and open the era for WestJet to evolve into a proper FSC with many international routes and wide-body aircraft.
Also hopefully Westjet will join an alliance (I wish for OneWorld but probably SkyTeam) and launch a proper lounge network.

YYZFlyboy

Remember when WS swore they would NEVER fly out of YYZ. They did hold out for a long time while AC made a killing as basically the sole scheduled domestic carrier out of Toronto after Canadi<ns demise...............uh hem, sorry take-over............

now look at them go. Good luck to them, this can only improve the AC product.

CZAMFlyer

London is huge O&D market. Codeshares, interlines and connections matter less when flying to the UK than they would elsewhere. Consequently, flying into Gatwick is not much different than to Heathrow, and the train or car into the city for business travellers is virtually the same effort. For the leisure crowd, if flying into Gatwick means less cost, they wouldn't care two whits about skipping Heathrow. Gatwick has arguably better train connections from the airport anyway, especially if staying in the SE.

London, Paris, Narita, yes. Also Frankfurt.

pprrff

Video mentions “on demand dining”. I wonder if that’s ordering via the IFE. That would be be an improvement over AC if one can order drinks and snacks form your seat. (Wasn’t AC supposedly to implement that at some point?)

Adam Smith

What is with some of the over-the-top excitement in here? WS announced lay-flats ages ago, when they first announced the 787s. So is it really that shocking that the lay-flats are similar to those that are being used by AC and many other airlines these days?

On the 787, yes. But there's still no J on narrowbodies. Plus is nowhere close.

I will agree with you that options are good.

An advantage how? Lower CASM, sure, but also fewer premium seats = fewer opportunities to sell more expensive fares.

I agree that AC's branded fares have made booking fare more complicated, but having tried WS on a half-dozen trips recently, I've not been impressed at some of how things work over at WS: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/29662666-post20.html. @Clipper801 also made some good points about the generally underwhelming experience of Plus.

Like there were no hiccups introducing LGW service a couple years back? They seem to have figured it out, but the delays, cancellations and many millions of EU261 compensation they paid out sure constituted some hiccups on that. The 787s should have a lot fewer mechanical issues given they'll be new, but if WS is truly going to send these things to Asia, that's going to be another level of difficulty above sending 763s to LGW.

Ken, I don't remember whether I ever replied to that thread of yours, but the pricing is not always such a bargain as it was when you bought it. I've looked at many trips where WS Plus was pretty similar to the cost of AC J. Maybe a small discount to AC J, but a massive premium to WS (or AC) Y. If you can get it for a few more bucks than Y, and some of that extra spend offsets fees you would have paid for bags or whatever, sure, the value proposition can be decent. But I would only buy it at a meaningful discount to AC.

As WS's crews are aging, the universally perky and friendly service is thinning out somewhat. For sure, 15 years ago, there was a vast difference in attitude between AC and WS, but of late, they've been moving closer to each other.

Limited economies of scale and growing pains will initially offset some of those advantages. It will also be interesting to see whether WS does try to introduce some more premium services. AC didn't build the SSL just to piss away millions of dollars, they did it because they thought it would help attract more premium traffic and generate a revenue benefit.

That was likely a one-off (or extremely rare event) due to cascading maintenance issues, not something AC plans to do regularly.

The PR shots of both look pretty similar to me. Are you comparing the PR shots of the WS PY cabin to your real-world experiences? Because nothing is ever as good as it looks in the PR shots.

The plane will undoubtedly fly domestically at times. The question is whether it will just be a bit of re-positioning and killing dead time between long-haul flights or whether they'll have enough demand to start running widebodies on routes like YVR-YYZ on a more regular basis.

London, sure, they're already going there and there's lots of business traffic O&D between the two. NRT, maybe, but AC has been cutting back the NRT flight of late and there has been way less Asian interest in the Canadian oil and gas sector in the past few years, so I wouldn't count on that one. As for CDG and FRA, those make no sense. Over 3/4 of the traffic at FRA is on *A - so not much chance for WS to offer connections to partners - and there's little to no O&D YYC<>FRA. As for CDG, a couple flights a week in summer to capture leisure traffic, maybe, but attracting business traffic? There's not a ton of O&D business traffic and even if WS joins SkyTeam, CDG is a terrible connecting airport. AF/KLM also already serves YYC from AMS, which offers about as much connectivity to other destinations as one could want. Competing with AC on Asian business makes far more sense than offering flights from YYC to CDG or FRA.

Fiordland

Yes, the PR on their new Premium Economy looks great relative to the reality on Lufthansa and AC. Given the inconsistency of how WS has deployed "Plus" I think it is a given WS is going to take some time to get it consistent.

I would agree FRA is pointless for them out of Calgary. I also don't think there is a lot of traffic between Calgary and FRA; it is mostly a transfer point to other parts. That is going to be AC.

WS is already looking at some joint venture with Delta. If they manage to get a similar deal with Air France/KLM I would expect CDG makes a lot of sense. That is all depending on Air France wanting to come to table. Starting on June 1st, WS is also flying a 737 from Calgary with a Halifax stop then on to CDG.

Symmetre

I dunno Adam, I fly on WS a couple of times every month and that's not been my experience at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they ditched the corny jokes long ago ("Let's get this Boeing going!") and I'm happy I'm no longer expected to wave at Amanda in the mid-cabin doing the safety demo. But gate and flight crews have remained almost universally pleasant and helpful IMO, the friendly attitude still seems to be a hiring criteria. This is in sharp contrast to my remaining AC flights which more often than not have indifferent crews, or rouge flights where I have overheard the FAs complaining about work issues on multiple occasions.

global happy traveller

Same with AC/SQ.... only some CX/BR does it......... You would think they figure this out, especially if they are operating as a distinct class (as opposed to UA's Y+).

I would love a WestJet - Alaska Airlines partnershiP!

ridefar

On one hand, the YYC-FRA flight is usually full, J is almost always sold out (and from what I can measure, has a very low percentage of upgraders and rewards seats) and sells at very high prices ($8k + return to various points in Europe, often more like $9k). While I am sure that looks very attractive to WS, I am also sure that you are right and that 98% of that traffic is onward at the FRA side. Somewhere way upthread the speculation the service was going to be TPAC mostly. That makes a lot more sense to me unless there is an alliance offering soon. While I don't think AC should be concerned in the short run, I think in the long term they should be. And I think that is a very good thing for us pax. Competition and choice is needed and good. Not because AC sucks in in one or two or more obvious ways, but because it will drive them to improve and keep costs reasonable. Unlike those $9k J fares to FRA.

YXUFlyboy

I think you will see these flights as repositioning ones. It's the same reason AC runs so many widebodies YYZ-YVR. Right now, WS runs the 767s between YYC-YYZ in winter, presumably shifting capacity between Hawaii routes it is running and planes for LGW at YYZ which runs daily. Whether or not you will see YVR-YYZ all depends where the routes are launched and in particular how much capacity goes to YYC vs YVR. YVR is the natural hub for Asian flights and has way more O&D, but is also highly competitive with a lot of service already from AC and lots of other Asian carriers and is WS's smallest hub. I think eventually YVR will eclipse YYC in Asian flights but initially I can see WS launching Asian destinations that are in a 3/4x split between YYC and YVR. There is a reason why WS went to hourly YYC-YVR flights as they want to route more YVR pax via YYC.