nave888

I just made a booking on YEG-YYZ later this month and noticed I'm on a 788, while later that same day, both a 763 and 77L fly the route. Checking random dates this month, it looks like there are all sorts of random widebodies on the route. Anyone know why, and even more importantly, will this continue?

CZAMFlyer

I'm not certain why, but come summertime, I am confident this will not continue.

asovse1

What dates are these? This sounds awesome!

5mm

Jagboi

Break in run after major maintenance?

pitz

Any 320s been retired? I predicted a few years back that if there's an economic downturn, the 320 fleet could disappear quite rapidly and be filled in by the widebodies until the 737 deliveries catch up. Esp. on leisure-heavy routes like YYZ-YEG/YVR/YYC.

Adam Smith

YYZ-YEG/YVR/YYC are not at all leisure-heavy routes. Florida, Caribbean, places like LAS, those are leisure-heavy routes.

If there's anywhere that your theory of subbing widebodies for narrowbodies would make sense, it's business-heavy routes where people may be willing to pay for the higher proportion of premium seats (J+PY), not leisure-heavy routes.

cooleddie

There was a day a few days ago where there were 3 767 flights YYZ-YYC in a day .

pitz

LAS may actually be one of the least leisure heavy routes in the system as you have a lot of business travellers to conventions, meetings, etc. YYZ-YEG/YVR/YYC is heavily leisure even though the leisure travelers aren't exactly what you might think they are -- they aren't wearing Hawaiian t-shirts and ordering lots of drinks.

The point being, on leisure heavy routes, widebodies can be substituted and frequency reduced because leisure really doesn't care about frequency, they just want the lowest price.

Very few "business class" seats are actually filled with people travelling on, or being paid for by 'business' these days. The front cabin probably does better to the Carribean and Florida yield-wise, where you have retirees with money and rich people paying up, than it does on YEG/YVR/YYC where almost nobody is actually paying for it.

marke190

The 763s are a bit of a different story from the 777s and 787s flying domestic as they are being pulled from long haul routes and relegated to live out their sunset years flying transcons just as the 762s did.

5mm

No 320 retirements yet.

YVR72

yyz_atc_qq

320s? I thought rouge was getting 319s. And the 321s for rouge were from other sources not mainline. Are you certain 320s are going to rouge?

Adam Smith

LAS has convention traffic, and YYZ-YEG/YVR/YYC has leisure traffic, but take a look at what people are wearing and baggage they're travelling with or talk to them about why they're flying. There are lots of people in Y travelling for leisure on most flights, but you're absolutely nuts if you think that flights between the country's economic capital (YYZ) and the city with the 2nd most head offices (YYC) and the city with the 3rd most head offices (YVR), plus YEG, which has a fair amount of business activity and a provincial capital that generates plenty of "business" type flying, are "leisure-heavy".

Leisure-heavy is going to be most places that rouge flies - as AC tells it. You want to haggle about LAS, whatever. Replace it in my previous comment with PHX, Hawaii or almost anywhere in Mexico that AC flies other than maybe MEX. There may be a businessperson or two on some of those flights, but they're predominantly driven by leisure traffic. Of course, you'll also find leisure travellers on routes that I'm sure we can both agree are business-heavy like YYZ-LGA.

The frequency on YYZ-Western Triangle is still quite high even if you sub in the occasional widebody, so I don't see this theory being all that applicable here.

As someone who spends a lot of time in AC business class, including the routes you're singling out, I can tell you that this is nonsense. Fewer companies may be paying for domestic/TB J these days, and people may be using eUps, LMUs, etc to sit up front after their companies purchased tickets in Y, but you will still find that most of the people flying in J are travelling on business.

Unlikelly, given that AC generally sells the front cabin on those routes for a lot lower prices. The domestic routes may have a lot of upgraders, but the people who bought JCDZP generally paid a lot to be there and a lot of the upgraders will be on expensive Flex/Comfort/Latitude fares, often purchased relatively close in to the flight, rather than rock-bottom Tango K fares bought months beforehand.

codfather

I agree with what @marke190 is saying! Sunset years have arrived for the last of the 763, and it will be a sad day when the last one leaves the mainline fleet! I have flown many TATLs on the 763 over the years. It was always a very reliable bird!