msat

Can any of you resident experts/FFers shed some light on AC's methodology with regards to cancelling single flights due to low load factors? Obviously, airlines will still operate a flight as it may be needed at the destination for positioning purposes or perhaps there is a full belly of cargo waiting to be transported despite there being little to no passengers. Nonetheless, this does occur from time to time so would like to get a better sense of how AC concludes its not worth operating the flight. I have a flight scheduled for early Aug (AC347 - a flight I specifically chose so that I could still have a full work day), and I am wondering at the likelihood of AC cancelling this flight (EF showing barely any occupants for the flight, and yes I realize were several weeks out and things could definitely change) and bumping me onto a connection through YYZ or YUL or anywhere else for that matter?

canadiancow

It's hard to say. I would expect load-based cancellations to have happened for early August already, but that's just based on watching my own bookings for July/August/September/October over the past few months.

But who knows. These are special times.

RangerNS

I'd agree with 🐄, any schedule will be set by now. We are deep enough into the nowtimes there shouldn't be surprises.

Absent something going mechanic, their being weather, ATC or other outside forces indicating triage that day, I'd bet you are ok.

Sopwith

My experience during normal times is that it really depends on where they need the aircraft to be next. Doesn’t matter as much where the passengers need to be.

tracon

I had an international flight booked in early August.
It was just a few days ago I received notification the fight has been cancelled.

As long as there's lots of freight to move around the country, your flight might be safe.

Adam Smith

In addition to what the cow said, keep in mind that other than one FTer's ability to check actual loads, we have little ability to access any of the underlying information that would truly help us understand the parameters that might make AC cancel a flight. EF and AC seatmaps are unreliable guides, as many people don't choose seats at booking. Inventory for sale is also imperfect; since AC is willing to oversell many flights by wide margins, even flights that are K9 may have a lot of passengers booked. It's true that a huge number of seats showing up as taken on the seat map, or very little inventory for sale, often indicate flights that are heavily booked, meaning that the data isn't worthless, but even in that case, there are many people leaving travel plans intact until relatively close to the time of the flight before changing/cancelling, so even if you see a flight that's J2 Y5 or something 3-4 weeks out, a rash of individuals cancelling their bookings could still lead AC to cancel what currently looks like a fairly full flight.

From an aircraft utilization perspective, many flights are out-and-back from a hub, meaning that the issue of where the aircraft is needed next may not be a big issue (it's going to end up back at the hub anyway, so if both flights have low loads, easy to cancel), but YOW-YVR is less likely one of those. And we have zero insight on cargo or on crew movement needs (which is not always the same as where the aircraft needs to be).

I had some huge changes/cancellations on bookings a couple of days ago just over 2 weeks out, and I've experienced a bunch of similarly late changes on my June/July bookings, so I wouldn't feel confident that they're done with August yet. Maybe once you hit two weeks, the risk might be low?

But who knows. Just brace yourself for a high likelihood of a change, then if your direct stays intact, it's a win

msat

Would it make a difference at all that this is the first week AC is offering this particular departure daily i.e. new flight, keep it scheduled and operating as its the first week?

canadiancow

No.

YYZ-VIE was starting August 1, until it was starting September 1.

msat

Update:

Received an email earlier this evening indicating that the flight I was scheduled to fly on (AC347) was cancelled (due to "government travel advisory"), and that I had been rebooked onto an itinerary connecting via YYZ. Furthermore, instead of having 4 departures/day originally scheduled for that day (Aug 6th) between YOW-YVR, there is now only a single morning departure.

Now I get to decide on whether I want to do the a220 out of YUL or 788 from YYZ. Tempted to try the former!

Adam Smith

Yes, AC pushed through a huge number of schedule changes today.

That's their excuse for everything now, including simple changes of a few minutes in flight time. It's just automatic.

JTXC

Sigh. Had my flight Tuesday cancelled. Their suggested alternative misconnects, so now have to go a day early. YWG-YYZ was supposed to be 3x per day by now, but some days it is only once.

jazzsax

Outbound from YWG to YYZ has always been worse schedule wise... at one point last flight out left YWG at 8pm even in the busy schedule, while 3 more flights arrived from YYZ to YWG after.

It's going to be a long time before we are anywhere near back to normal, especially for YWG.

JTXC

Yes, the YWG-YYZ service was always geared towards feeding into YYZ connections in the AM, flying people back to YWG in the late evening. We used to have 530, 630, and then 730 AM (or thereabouts) departures. Meant that YWG was not well served if you wanted a mid-day flight out.

Right now with no late evening flight back I have to take a WS flight to connect from in inbound. Unless they too are cancelling things on short notice.

Hopefully August and September will see at least three flights per day.

quantumofforce

I noticed my flight in late August to London has been changed as well, it was the day flight, and now the first one leaves September 1st.

I guess I'll take one of the red-eyes