yyznomad

I'm interested in keeping up-to-date with your FP running!
But you knew that already.

Adam Smith

I'd love to take you up on that, but looks like YXU is an immediate turn in the afternoon, or a couple hours to kill if doing the morning turn, which may not be conducive to drinks

Like I said, I haven't committed to it. I found the 50ish segments I did last October to be pretty tiring. I would need to do 50 segments/month for 3 months just to hit all those unflown routes, not counting all the positioning flights I would need to do. Plus I have more commitments on my time than I did last October. So, yeah... It may be more of an aspiration than a real goal

yyznomad

speaking of YXU, I would be even more interested in hearing about any IRROPs and your contingencies/courses of action

canadiancow

Why do you think you'd be stuck in Y on YCD-YYZ?

talkeryxu

Oh yes, it was lots of fun when YXU-YYZ was down to just to just one a day.

Alright, the finest beverage RELAY has to offer then!

yyznomad

I think Adam is just concerned of this increased possibility given that it's only a Sunday flight between Aug 01 and Sep 05, which means Aug 15, 22, 29, Sep 5 are the remaining flights.
At this moment, it only seems that the Aug 15 and Sep 5 has any J seats available and Aug 22 and 29 are J0.

I don't think Adam has had to ever play eUp lotto at the gate much (or at all?), but as an SE on a high flex fare, it's still an ok chance he could get a J seat when lotto is played.

OR, he books YCDYYZ for Aug 15 as it's R5. That's the only flight with R>0 atm.

UPDATED: but Aug 15 is Y0 so not even bookable!

Adam Smith

@yyznomad nailed it. I have little faith that someone will cancel and open up a J seat for me.

Adam Smith

Smashing start to my UFPing today. A late-arriving Jazz captain caused a big delay to my YXJ turn that put my YZP turn this afternoon at some risk. Given that YZP is only once daily in the 1PM block of regional flights (as are several other BC regionals that I need to hit), while YXJ has 2x daily turns (plus one that's overnight, in which I have no interest), it's easier to make up YXJ later, and strategically more important to get to YZP today.

It's also super smoky over the interior but should be much nicer up the coast to YZP, so flying to YZP should be generally more enjoyable.

It might have all worked out fine, but my BC regional expert (a.k.a. @nomadic.relief ) also advised that YXJ is often bad for delays, and given the factors above, it felt like skipping YXJ for today was the better risk management strategy.

So I guess I'll just go cheapen the heck out of the MLL for 4 hours.

yyznomad

Sounds like a plan. Say hi to Charlie for all of us.
I looked at EF and the AC website and it doesn't mention any Starbucks run delay... so you must be wrong since you don't work at the airport.
How are you finding the M Flex (I'm assuming it's M Flex) availability on your ICFP when booking a few days out?

Adam Smith

Flex M availability is decent, haven't run in to many issues. R and even J space has been a problem at times though, although inconsistently. For instance, YUL-YYC seems to have plenty of R space on the morning flights, but it's scarce to non-existent in the evenings.

A huge change from last fall when I could basically book whatever I wanted.

talkeryxu

How are you making out so far Adam?

Adam Smith

I've made some progress thus far. Here's the FlightMemory map before I started:



IRROPs limited my flying a bit in the first week. I've stuck to AB and BC thus far, but did manage to add a few new routes and destinations to the map.



In total, I've done 14 segments, of which 10 have been routes I haven't flown on AC (the other 4 were YYC<>YVR positioning flights).

I'm pretty sure I'm going to abandon the concept of hitting all of the routes in a bidirectional sense. That YCD-YYZ flight is a nightmare trying to get an upgrade on one of these last few flights, and I've realized what a massive amount of time it will chew up trying to check off a lot of TCON routes. I'd still end up hitting a lot of them both ways (can't really fly YVR-YYD without also flying YYD-YVR, for example).

At some point, I'll probably go camp out at a cheap airport hotel at YYZ and YUL for a couple days so I can do days of stuff like YYZ-YAM-YYZ-YSB-YYZ all in one day. Next week will be slow though, as the wife and I are going away for a few days.

Bohemian1

Adam Smith - You do know that EYW is not on right now, correct?

I just wanted to make sure that some scurrilous individual had not mislead you.

canadiancow

Unlimited FPs don't count for EYW.

Adam Smith

The map really hasn't gotten much better since my last update. I came down with a bit of a stomach thing last week just before I was about to board a flight to YYZ, and then the wife and I spent a few days in Niagara wine tasting; well, she tasted wine, I drove her around.

The only new line is between YCD and YYZ, which you can perhaps just barely make out a bit if you squint, since it mostly overlaps with the YYZ-YVR line.



I have definitively decided that I'm not going to try to fly all routes in both directions. After thinking it over and doing a few days of flying, that just seemed to be too demanding to be fun.

Also impacting fun are (i) ridiculous lineups at MLLs, (ii) IRROPs, especially at YYZ, and (iii) the reduced frequencies and heavily banked schedules. I'll also note that many flights are full, and R and/or M space can be an issue at times. That's easier to plan around, and as long as I'm in J, it doesn't bother me much if the back is 100% occupied, but it certainly doesn't add to the experience.

AC did recently cancel at least 10 city-pairs (20 routes if looking at them both directions), which would cut the workload slightly, but even with those ones off the list, it still just didn't feel like it would be fun.

Lesser objectives that I'm currently contemplating:

• Fly all of the AC domestic routes, but direction-agnostic (i.e. flying YCD-YYZ is enough, don't also need to fly YYZ-YCD). That would reduce the number of routes to be flown from 149 at the outset to 71 , which is in theory much more manageable, although as I mentioned in a previous post, many routes have to be flown both directions if they're going to be flown at all (e.g. YVR-YZP), or given the schedule and banking, might not be practical (e.g. some of the Maritime routes don't lend themselves to doing YYZ-xxx-YUL or vice versa as it would require a very long layover or impossibly tight connection). This reduces the grind of having to go back and forth across the country for random TCON routes that might have inconvenient timing on one end or the other (e.g. YUL-YLW, YYZ-YYJ, YEG-YOW, etc), although those will still suck up a bunch of time
• Just trying to hit all of the domestic stations that I've never visited. That should be much more manageable, as I think it was about 23 of them, although it still comes with a couple of challenges, namely (a) the need to overnight at YYR, and (b) NWT travel restrictions that mean I'm not legally allowed to visit YZF. This would completely eliminate all that time burned on TCONs, unless they were routes I was really interested in flying

Or I might just throw out quantitative goals altogether and focus on putting interesting lines on the map and/or just visiting friends and things like that.