AC681

From Chorus. E175s transfering from Sky Regional to Jazz, Dash 8-300s leaving the Fleet this year. Along with some other tweeks to the capacity purchase agreement.

Source

EdmFlyBoi

Gotta wonder if the 50 seat CRJ's are next to go. As AC tries to increase 6th freedom traffic, having J on all the AC Express jet flights would be appealing.

NonSmokingWindow

I’m hearing that SkyRegional is to be shuttered at the end of March with Jazz taking over their routes. Anyone else have knowledge of this?

AC681

News posted in another thread. With Jazz getting the E175s, not sure what that means for Sky Regional. Also not sure Jazz would be able to get people trained on new aircraft type in only a few weeks (especially with hundreds of crew currently inactive)

fly_yag

Curious to see what this means for smaller stations going forward post-covid. In many cases routes which previously used BEH or DH1 equipment were upgauged to DH3 but not sure the viability of using exclusively DH4 on many of these routes given the small number of passengers. Seems like some sort of <50 seat aircraft is needed similar to the Saab 340 WestJet Link utilizes but I haven't seen any news of this being explored by AC.

Adam Smith

It's interesting to see that Jazz will be the "exclusive Air Canada Express operator of 70+ seat aircraft until the end of 2025".

After this, is there anyone left providing any Express aircraft other than Jazz? Georgian has been gone a while, and if Sky is losing the E75s, isn't that it? Because I think EVAS is gone too, right?

Or does this mean AC may be planning to strike a partnership with someone else to operate some smaller regional aircraft?

AC681

I was wondering the same thing, however AC's press release about it says "Jazz will become the sole operator of Air Canada Express services"

Link

CZBB

The bigger problem is no one makes a modern turboprop aircraft in the 20-40 seat range. They've all been out of production for 20 years (DHC8-100, Saab 340, EMB 121 etc)

AC681

The closest option would be an ATR42

codfather

EVAS is gone yes. They operated almost all smaller routes in Atlantic Canada, so post-COVID are these routes just cut permanently? That is TBD I guess.

PAL has been operating a DH4 on the YYT-YDF-YYR-YWK routing as of late, so I mean it would stand to reason that Jazz could do the same when this pandemic is over. Though I am not optimistic that they will.

CZBB

and at 48 seats, somewhat larger than a DHC8-100

A modern Saab 340 or EMB120 is what a lot of smaller routes need.

ATR42-500 48 seats, 18.2t MTOW
DHC8-100 40 seats, 16.4t MTOW
Saab 340 34 seats, 13.2t MTOW
EMB120 30 seats, 11.5t MTOW
Beech 1900 19 seats, 7.9t MTOW

robsaw

https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/n...5s-to-jazz-air

" Sky Regional has since confirmed that as a result, it will cease all operations at the end fo the month."

"Sky Regional Airlines confirmed to ch-aviation that it will continue operating through the end of March 2021 and will subsequently cease operations. The airline does not operate any aircraft other than the E175s. It is a subsidiary of business charter specialist Skyservice Business Aviation, which operates a fleet of business jets and turboprops, including a single B737-500, and is the Canadian sales agent for Honda Aircraft."

RangerNS

Granting Sky was a tad more reliable then Georgian, I'm happy enough to see both the dudebro-run airlines gone.

As for Jazz being able to find staff? I'd imagine they could retrain ex-Skyers on their timecard system and literally nothing else and have a trained and already uniformed group of unemployed to tap into.

Adam Smith

That's true, but the wording in the Chorus press release was chosen for a reason. I wonder whether the revised agreement gives them an exclusive right to operate 70+ seat aircraft, but gives AC the option to have other carriers operate smaller aircraft, even if they may not currently be using anyone but Jazz.

I'm not sure how big a problem that is. AC had decided to phase out the DH1s long before COVID became a problem, so presumably they didn't see a big need in that space - this announcement changes nothing on that front.

What's new here is that the DH4 will now be the smallest turboprop in the AC fleet. That worked okay for WS for a while, but they did eventually decide to partner with Pacific Coastal to get Saab 340s for some of the smaller, thinner routes. Meanwhile AC is going the opposite direction.

Hard to say. Would something like YYT-YQX, which they used to do a couple times a day with a BEH, really justify a DH4?

StuMcIlwain

Isn't the government requiring that airlines restart all regional routes that were cut due to the pandemic as a condition for receiving a bailout? I can't see how AC is going to restart some of the regional routes if their smallest turboprop seats 78. Have they given up on a government bailout? Unless they already have another partner in mind ready to receive the Dash 8-300s.

Who owns the Dash 8-300s? Is it AC or Jazz?