Leyland1989

What's up with this frame?

The type was supposed to be retired during Covid, and being brought back due to surge in summer demand (I presume).

For a while it had been doing a few flights a day between YVR and YYC but it's getting pretty interesting lately.
I was looking up my flight from Miami (AC1203, which is normally a A220 route + A320/A321 ), and thought that flight got Rouged. Turns out the one and only A319 is flying it on the 28th and it seems like a one off.

Is it playing the "substitute" role to plug any hole on fleet scheduling? Looking at flight radar, it seems to be all over the place and doesn't have a fixed schedule/pattern.

Not sure if they will bring C-FYJI back to life, but catching the A319 has turned into a game of lottery.

Adam Smith

Actually, the announcement AC made during COVID was very cagey, and just said they were going to be retired and booked the associated writedown. It didn't say exactly when. The whole 319 fleet was actually pretty active once travel started to pick up again over a year ago. They had also said they were retiring the rouge 319s, but those show no sign of going anywhere.

The most recent fleet plan (2022 Q2 MD&A) showed 3 aircraft remaining in the fleet through the end of 2023. Most likely these were anticipated to be Jetz rather than regular mainline.

Speaking of Jetz, C-FYKC is not the only active AC 319, with C-GBIA currently in the air, taking the Leafs from LAS to SJC. C-GBHN and C-GBIK have been parked at MZJ for a while, and the other Jetz duties seem to be handled at the moment by C-FKOJ (currently on Oilers duty) and C-FNVV, which flew the Jets from Denver to Vegas last week, and beyond that I'm not sure what it's doing, probably bouncing around ferrying a couple of different teams, but I ran out of interest in comparing its schedule to the various NHL teams'.

A couple other 320s seem to have been pressed in for one-offs on Jetz-type service, e.g. C-FGKH flying the Canucks to Seattle today and C-GKOE popping over to YHU to run the Habs down to BUF. With most of their schedules being conventional mainline, I highly doubt they're in Jetz configuration.

But if C-GBIA gets replaced by a 320 at Jetz, then it would seem the 319 is not long for mainline, because it can't make much sense to keep only three of them around. So they'll probably either disappear altogether, or if AC wants to add capacity at rouge (and is able to under collective agreements), they could go there.

Probably. For pretty much all of September, it was just back and forth between YYC and YVR on a very predictable pattern. Might be that the lease is running out soon and they're just throwing it out as a backup until they turn it back over.

kerry786

You mentioned C-FYJI so maybe you saw this but it was flown to YQG a few weeks ago where AC has a contracted MRO so I wouldn't be surprised to see it in service at some point soon

Adam Smith

C-FYKC is sitting on the deicing pad at YYC right now. Back to doing the YYC-YVR shuttle, with a dash of YEG, it seems.

krayZpaving

I've been on one of the 319s pretty regularly on the YVR-YYC-YVR legs recently. Hope they go away on that route because the 73M is much more comfortable!

WesternCDN

Looks like it’s on one of the overnight YVR-YYZ today (AC126). When was the last time an A319 did a transcon route like that?

mamau

YYZ-YQM is Rouge A319 all day, every day.

ChrisA330

Nov 24, 16, Oct 29…

Transcons have never been that uncommon for the A319…they have pretty long legs.

Leyland1989

C-FYJI has been brought back online since 14 December. It has been doing YYZ-YVR + a few short rapidair (is it still a thing?) hops in the past few days.

C-FYKC is still pretty unpredictable again after spending a week or two back in the west coast flying YYC-YVR hops in November.

Altaflyer

I too prefer to see these old A319s gone but we are now also seeing CR9 on YEG-YVR and while also old school at least they are 2x2.

DrunkCargo

C-GBIA just operated AC184 YVR-YYZ today. I guess these fin assignments are difficult to predict in advance?