National Post: Flying in Canada is silly expensive — time to open to competition
 

Sabrina Maddeaux: Flying in Canada is silly expensive — time to open Air Canada and WestJet to competition

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-flying-in-canada-is-silly-expensive-time-to-open-air-canada-and-westjet-to-competition
Quite a interesting article...

This journalist is writing about how domestic flights in Canada start at mid $300s... then talks about her travelling from YYZ to YSJ/YQM being more expensive than travelling internationally. Well, assuming her prices are one-way prices, 21 days out on many dates have tickets starting at $93 to YSJ and $160 to YQM with AC.

Then we have a "consumer expert" claiming that British Airways should have rights to transport passengers wholly in Canada YVR-YYZ...

Article does not mention a peep on the high taxes and AIF in Canada.

Which country allows this???

EasyJet and Wizz have plenty of domestic routes in Italy and France, among other countries. Wizz is headquartered in another EU country, so you could say it's in effect a domestic company, but EasyJet is UK-based, so I don't know. Alitalia is now gone, so there's that....

EasyJet established EasyJet Europe after the Brexit referendum result, which is majority owned by nationals of the EU to meet the requirements. The EU is, in essence, considered a single entity when it comes to companies operating across borders.


Allowing British Airways, as an example, to fly within two cities in Canada without travelling from the UK or another foreign country would be the Ninth Freedom. I've been trying to Google to see if there is any examples outside of the EU (which is a special case as a supranational organisation), but have come up empty. I think the answer is that no one outside of the EU.

:D
https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/news/2021/the-truth-about-flight-prices---responding-to-the-national-post

The truth about flight prices – responding to the National Post

Along the lines of the Westjet response: While I agree that more competition would keep prices in check for popular routes to major cities, it wouldn't be worth it for additional competitors to fight over less popular routes. Limited density outside of major cities is issue in Canada for a variety of things such as infrastructure like telecom and services like healthcare.

Fees are kind of ridiculous. I applied my WS companion voucher to check prices for the cheapest economy itinerary and the savings were relatively negligible because the airfare itself was relatively low while the fees made up such a large portion of the overall price.

This practically happens in every Commonwealth country (including former). Don't see why Canada can be left out from this.

Beside - comparing to the U.S. is no way to go. The U.S. market is so different from Canada. Even previously CBC Marketplace conceded that Canadian were kind of sucker in price negotiation compared to the Americans.

What a lovely spin WestJet! lol WS epitomizes hypocrisy. Perhaps WS should have said basic economy fares are cheaper because we unbundled. What happened to complimentary seat selection & checked baggage? Those two items are more than 50% of your $100 base fare.

Smaller communities are being gouged. Lets look at YLW. A one-way YLW-YVR fare in basic economy on a 35 minute in-air Q400 Dash 8 flight is $304 in the first week of November. YLW-YYC, that will set you back $338. Yet YVR-YYC is $144 & YVR-YYZ is $177. Both YVR & YLW have similar Airport Improvement Fees so how does flying less than half the distance cost more than twice as much on the base fare?

WS & AC, conveniently, charge the same fare. No competition and the customer suffers.

WestJet is everything they weren't founded on. They became what they loathed when they took flight on February 29th, 1996. Technically 5 years old? I was a big supporter back then, now I despise them.

James

Everytime I see this being brought up, I wonder which foreign competition will actually have a desire to use their resources to serve the domestic market? Do they think that Emirates will buy a few narrowbodies do serve the YYZ-YUL/YVR markets providing the same amenities they do to DXB? Or use their 777/380s to do it? Is DL, UA etc. interested in coming to serve intra-Canada pax?

look, even the carriers that did shorter hops on the way to their international bases (like CXs JFK-YVR, back in the day BA did YYZ-JFK, etc.), and got approval to sell those segments didn’t do it for those short-hauls - they did it because it served an audience that took those longer flights, and they could sell those otherwise empty seats to make up a bit of what otherwise would be nothing.

Foreign competition also isn’t going to be flying the routes that need the most help, which isn’t the YVR-YYZ-type routes that already have some competition and are the only ones that foreign carriers might be interested in, but to mid-size and smaller places that would never get that kind of competition. Ideally, sure, allowing foreign competition would help those kind of things, but realistically, not a chance that would happen.

Until the gubmint permanently changes with a solid majority this will never happen.

Canada is geographically challenging to provide low cost air service. Outside of the 8 main cities - which are already very very far apart by European standards - you just don't have the traffic to support such a model. Think of Europe with 300-400m people within a space which is less than half of Canada. You have 100's of routes that can be done in 90 minutes - and 100's millions of people. You can pack them in and run that model. In Canada - it just will never work outside of cherry picking some of the most popular routes. You don't see Easyjet operating London - Amman or Paris - or anywhere to Cairo. Take Cairo - there is not even one flight on Easyjet - - and you think it could support one flight somehow.

Canada just does not have the density to make the model extremely profitable - - that being said - the prices are outrageous in many ways - - and what I pay for my pro-rate on domestic flights (international tickets) is often a quarter of the cheapest you could otherwise pay on a domestic ticket. But - that is more a sign of how profitable long-haul international can be when the planes are full!!!!

Westjet started that way and is now an international carrier.

Flair is still around.

Lynx is coming.

I disagree.

Westjet is not a low cost carrier. Westjet started with 3 planes flying the high traffic western triangle. They pursued a slow and steady expansion but are not really the Southwest model (and certainly not the Ryanair or Easyjet model). They are a middle-service carrier with a simple model - but they are slowly becoming a full-service carrier with prices that are very high. You would not normally find Westjet to be significantly less than AC and in many cases will actually be more. They are running normal GDS for seat distribution and have extensive IATA/Interline agreements now. This is not a low-cost carrier . . .

It is the foreign ownership and voting cap in the CTA that has been a block to foreign investment.

The 3 main airline groups (AC, Westjet, Porter) are about the same price and don't realistically compete against each other. The real low-cost spinoffs like Flair and Swoop don't offer a meaningful alternative anyway.

If they want to open thin routes to foreign competition, it probably means those passengers will transit in an American hub in order to get that economies of scale. Then maybe the price can come down and the big 3 will be wrestled to lower their prices. But would an American carrier be willing to take on this risk and run it like a small city pairing they do south of the border?

especially not now. The big 3 in the US have been doing many adjustments domestically, and are already pulling out of small markets within the US. What makes one think they would do that, then allocate resources to fly to, say, Sydney, NS, Kitchener/Waterloo or Kamloops.

also, US carriers have flirted with small Canadian cities in the past, and have mostly pulled out even pre-pandemic. UA used to fly to Regina, Saskatoon, Victoria and Ft. McMurray, for example, and AA used to fly to Waterloo. Why would they work now if they didn’t work anymore in 2019?