Jagboi

Depends on where they are flying. The evening transatlantic tracks are very busy, and all the planes fly at the same speed with fairly minimal separation. Think of a busy highway with the lanes full and everyone moving at the same speed. If you want to drive 30 km/h faster than everyone else it's not practical to do so.

5mm

Jebby_ca

What was with YVR security this morning? Concierge had me rush through security even though I had Nexus and 1h30 before my flight. Seems like every bag was sent for secondary in the Nexus lane... my bag was sent there because of a folded hotel receipt.

tracon

Speed costs money. Sometimes speed is increased to save time. But you don't save much time.
YVR-YYZ the fastest speed would save about 10 minutes over the ideal speed.

I call bull sh!t
Look at flightaware. The flight plan is generally a straight line. Normally you'll depart runway 01, quickly end up on a 350ish heading. A few minutes later, a direct track to Paine, then the arrival procedure into YVR is flown. I've flown SFO-YVR about a dozen times. Air time is usually 1:50. 50% faster would be in the air about 1:10? Considering the flight is normally flown at M.76-M.78, cruise speed, factoring acceleration and deceleration, would be M1.3?
Even with the strongest of tailwinds, I can't see that flight ever being in the air much less than 1:40.

As for the direct route, the pilot might have gotten direct Bellingham instead of direct Paine. It would take a short cut of 7.5 miles to save one minute. 30 miles north of SFO-BLI, vs 30 miles north of SFO-PAE is what, less than a mile shorter?

There's a lot of other factors I would consider before I chose a different merchant because a third party said "typically 30 min+ delayed."
I've only once chosen a different carrier because I was concerned about OTP. It was YVR-YWG 19:00 departure. I chose WS because their OTP on that flight was great. AC, regardless of day of week was often late. The night I flew, AC didn't disappoint, They were 45 minutes late.

24left

Well, can't blame AC for this, at least not yet

Jebby_ca

Why not? seems like AC gets blamed, regardless of what the weather conditions are. Look at all the posts comparing WS/DL/AA/UA and AC when there was a GDP at YYZ due to cold...

Symmetre

Perhaps because WS flights were running on average about an hour behind, while AC flights were on average closer to three.

KenHamer

As usual, the problem is not the actual weather delays. No one wants the pilot to fly if they think it unsafe.

The problem, a perennial one, is Air Canada's response. It's been problematic since forever and it never seems to get better.

Meanwhile airlines such as DL (which I use only because I had some passing familiarity with them) seems to be for forever inventing new soon-to-become-much-less-unorthodox ways of solving problems.

Air Canada's response is typically one or all of the following:

.it's not our fault
.Transport Canada says....
.we've always done it this way
.changing is toooooo haaaarrrrdddd.

KenHamer

Apparently not quite.

My sister flew home from her annual trek to Mexico on the 11th (Monday.) She was on a direct Sunwing flight SJD-YYJ (Cabo San Lucas to Victoria.)

They got as far as YVR, circled for a while and then landed at YVR. The pilot made a joke that as he was from Whitehorse he knew how to land in the snow, so they would in fact be continuing on to Victoria that evening. He then explained they were making arrangements to have the runway at YYJ plowed so they could land, and would be departing YVR for YYJ as soon as that was arranged. In the meantime they remained on the plane during the YVR layover.

Sure enough a few hours later they departed YVR and then shortly thereafter landed at YYJ.

She got a ride to Vic West by a friend with a seriously tricked out off-road 4x4, and arrived home at about 1am.


This is all second hand of course, but it's a definite fact that they landed at YYJ late Monday evening, when apparently everyone else had cancelled all of their flights.

Which raises the question, did Sunwing pay to have the runway cleared and the airport (and I presume Customs and Immigration) operating so their flight could land?

Jebby_ca

jasdou

Mikey Mike Mike

i think that the winter snow and ice as well as the winter son trips impact here. Currently, AC has two A320s at Ottawa doing Florida and Mexico, with a couple more Airbuses doing the same at YUL and YYZ (plus the west coast).
It seems they stretch the fleet utilisation at the same time as bad weather - never a good mix for reliability!

If your scheduling is robust, has contingency for recovery including spare aircraft (one would do) and spare crews - then you can build in recovery

add an ageing fleet of airbus and E190s, plus the winter schedule, plus pearson, plus winter weather - and it's never gonna turn out well

The thing about Sunwing - is no inter airline agreement and charter flights - they have to run. I'm not sure if it's giving them credit or not - but they will not cancel, but run 8 hours late and sort it out the next day. Cancelling can strand 160+ customers on a 7 day vacation with another flight in a week (already full).
AC seem to be a bit trigger happy at the moment on cancelling flights - though it helps them recover

Plumber

I understand its winter and the delays that can cause. I have been monitoring the abysmal OTP of AC 063 (YVR-ICN) and it seems to be delayed an hour or more pretty much every single day (5 hours yesterday).

Then I look at the inbound and notice that for today anyway, the inbound is to arrive in YVR at 10:40 and AC 63 is scheduled to depart 12:05.

Assuming the inbound actually lands on time, in what universe will it happen for AC to : i) disembark a fully-loaded 789 (298 PAX plus crew) ii) get the bird cleaned, iii) fix any maintenance issues, including 15 minutes per deflated seat iv) get it fully catered v) Get the crew on board and ready vi) fully board the plane and vii) push back..... all in 1 hour and 25 minutes???? The departure time of 12:05 doesn't stand a chance.

Boarding time is listed at 11:20 am. The inbound arrives at 10:40 am.... So 40 minutes to complete steps i to v above just seems unrealistic. If the plane arrive 15 minutes 'late' (ie still 'On Time" by AC standards), that leaves only 25 minutes to complete steps i to v above.

Is seems to me it was not always like this...

Is AC's dismal OTP simply a result of their hyper-active schedule??

StuMcIlwain

AC made a decision several years ago to increase fleet utilization. I remember reading that they were hoping to average 14 to 16 hours of utilization per day for the 787 fleet rather than the typical 11 to 12 hours, which was considered good for a fleet at the time. So now instead of having one plane cycle back and forth between Toronto and Europe with several hours between flights, the plane lands in Toronto and leaves again almost immediately for Asia (or wherever). The consequences are obvious.

Plumber

Very interesting. So its not just my imagination lol.

I hope that, over time, they realize that their poor OTP has gotten worse, and that they realize their folly.

But if it is not affecting the bottom line, I am not sure we will see any changes.