YEG USER

I’d be more interested in how much time they allow for planes to be on the ground between flights. AC seems to be overly optimistic in the time it takes to turn a plane around. It’s happened to me a few times this year that I get a notice in the morning that my evening flight will be delayed (the proactive notice is something AC has actually improved greatly on IMHO). Through the app I’ve followed the inbound aircraft through the day, and the planned vs actual flight time seems to be accurate, but the time to turn the plane around gets blown out of the water. Sure, the airline always hopes to make up time on the ground during IRROPS, but they never seem to. I wonder if a bit more slack in time on the ground during regular operations would help too.

Sopwith

The problem is that not enough people do this. If they did AC would clean up its OTP.

As Walt Kelly’s Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

tshirt

I doubt and AC could be much worse! If they had not cancelled so many flights, would they have even lower numbers? Perhaps win worst in the world again?

yulred

Not really. That would only hold true in a free markets. It doesn’t hold true in relatively low competition markets like the Canadian aviation market. There only so many seats the competition are willing to - or are allowed to - sell. Allow cabotage and open skies and then you can blame consumers. Right now, even carriers of last resort will find desperate passengers to fill planes up.

skybluesea

delete

Symmetre

I believe there's an enormous amount of truth in this. A couple of months ago I got stuck in traffic and arrived at the gate for a flight barely 15 minutes before scheduled departure time - close enough I was worried I had missed the cut-off. But there was a huge crowd of people lined up, and no aircraft. When I asked the GA when she thought we would be underway, she said the flight was still showing as operating on time. I laughed and said there was no way they would be able to park the inbound plane (A321), disembark the passengers, get the new crew settled in, board the new pax and still depart in 15 minutes. To my amazement she says "Oh you'd be surprised, we turn around 787s in 20 minutes." She was absolutely serious.

We departed an hour and a half later.

Point being, the GA seemed to sincerely believe they can turn around a 787 in 20 minutes. I mean, come on ... they can't even turn a Dash 8 in under half an hour.

D582

She meant physically turn around, as in, the time to push back the 787 from the gate and turn it around so it can proceed forward.

Sopwith

Maybe not so amazing:

Why do AC agents insist on posting/announcing information that they know is untrue?

tomvancouver

I've flown a few QF and NZ flights recently and was very impressed as to how quickly they could turn round and board the flight. Stuff like scanning your own boarding pass helps. An entire international 789 was fully boarded in about 20 minutes. When I was leaving an aircraft in CHC the cleaning crew were already at at work (and I was in row 22 - about half way down).
So what's the issue with AC?

yulred

Money.

I’m going to guess NZ decided not to squeeze checked baggage fees out of anyone on that international flight, with pax consequently being more economical with carry-on baggage. And I’m willing to bet they pay more for cleaning than AC does, or ever will.

On some airlines, customer experience matters. On others, passengers are a birthright who can be taken for granted.

RangerNS

If I want to be somewhere at a particular time, I take AC sxhedule, add 90 minutes and still come out ahead of WS by hours to doesn't fly there.

Symmetre

I guess it depends where you fly. There are some small markets served by AC and AC alone, I suppose, but I can get to most places in the world - and certainly most places I need to go - on either WS or one of the US carriers - DL in particular.

acysb87

I will say, respectfully, that I have been on a Dash 100 flight ex YSB that was turned in less than 30 minutes,AC flight was late arriving, we were also trying to beat weather system approaching.
A rare event, indeed. Inbound was full, outbound we were 12 +/- pax on an 8pm scheduled departure

rankourabu

So its been a while. But OAG started publishing OTP stats again.

Looks like thinning the schedule is really working out for AC! Have their OTP stats ever been this good? (May 2021)
It will be interesting to see the decline when more flights are added to the schedule.

EdmFlyBoi

I guess that's not surprising when there are many many hours between flights. Once things pick up, it will likely drop.