OZFLYER86

Perhaps Air Transat should consider flying to Australia post covid, for a number of reasons:-

1) No Virgin Australia 773 flights to LAX (up to approx. 18 flights a week from Australia, so approx 6,000 seats per week in each direction, no longer there.

Many Australians get to Canada via USA as much much cheaper, in at least peak season.

2) Peak season Australia to Vancouver & BC at start of January can be as high AUD$3300 to AUD$3800/adult return on Air Canada nonstop.

3) Canada 3000 used to fly IIRC, their 340 seat one class A332 twice a week & think routing was

YYZ/YVR/HNL/BNE/SYD/AKL/RAR/HNL/YVR/YYZ & reverse every week.

What does everyone think ?

YZF_Elite

This makes no sense to me at all. What aircraft does TS have that could fly Canada-Australia? What network does TS have transpacific? (none). There is no chance at all that TS flies this route anytime in the foreseeable future.

OZFLYER86

any of their A330s could fly west coast USA to Australia with 1 stop, just like Canada 3000 did. If stop was in Hawaii, would be no different to fly HA from SEA, SFO region, LAX region, LAS or SAN, ie. with customs/immigration.

Or they could fly YYZ or YUL via TIJ with 1 tech stop in Pacific somewhere to get to Australia.

There is demand to get from Australia to Canada in peak season, so yields could be ok, as long as cheaper than the big boys.

Another possible route could be Canada/Vegas/Pacific Island such as APW/Australia.

YZF_Elite

Why would TS fly a transpacific route with a stop when they could use the same aircraft to fly two YUL-Europe routes for probably the same fares and a portion of the fuel and aircraft cost? It's not like TS has problems finding destinations for their aircraft. Sure others did it 20+ years ago, AC also used to fly via HNL, but those days are now long in the past. Long thin routes don't make sense unless you have additional revenue generators like cargo or business class cabins, neither of which TS would have.

On Time Reports

If there is going to be another Canadian airlines flying to Australia, it'll be WestJet

OZFLYER86

Why ? Yield. In any normal year, There are almost no fares between Australia & LAX, SFO under AUD$2000 & much more nonstop to YVR (as mentioned above AUD$3300 to AUD$3800 - think the $3800 included a flight onward to YLW, YKA, YYC etc.)

Was told Canada 3000 were about to reconfigure their 340 seats A332s (2-4-2 seating) to include a small premium economy or basic business class, before SEP11 happened.

Qantas only flies to YVR seasonally or at least they did & being a very high cost airline, they don't give away seats cheap.

OZFLYER86

Westjet are "in bed" with Qantas - codesharing etc. They are going to compete against each other. Am suggesting is Air Transat came out with a fare in the vicinity of AUD$1400 & maybe say

ADULTS AT KIDS PRICES (where everyone paid the same price)


& paid travel agents some commission, they could grab a chunk of the market that was going to Japan, as perceived cheaper (it isn't) or to those who thought Canada was too expensive to get to.

garykung

If the Australian market was that attractive, there would be more U.S.- Australia flights. So the chance of Air Transat for Australia is pretty much nil.

OZFLYER86

before virus lots of capacity Australia/USA

nonstops, Qantas, Virgin, American, Delta, United, Hawaiian
1 stops Air NZ, Fiji air, Air Canada only few hours extra + all the other long ways via Asia & middle east

Qantas was going to fly BNE/ORD nonstop before virus killed or delayed that new route.

Now without Virgin B773s big gap in market.

Canada 3000 used to sell USA west coast via YVR. Minimum 2 stops (HNL & YVR)

YZF_Elite

I don't do airline finance so I could be completely wrong, but I don't understand how TS makes money on a one-off flight to a far out destination where they have no network of hotels to sell packages and really have no aircraft to fly the route. It's not like they have 787s that are sitting idle. I would take a UA connection for example before I would take a once or twice a week seasonal TS flight. Fares on AC might be high, but that's just because they can charge a premium for the non-stops and also likely have to given the aircraft they need to tie up and the huge amount of fuel required for these ULH flights. Let's pick up this chat in five years and see if it happens. I am not a betting person, but I would actually put money on this one not happening in at least the medium term.

garykung

Here is your answer why not.

OZFLYER86

All TS A330s can fly the route with 1 stop to Australia, just like Canada 3000 did.

All nonstop flights Canada to Australia end up carry more fuel, so they have more fuel for the route. Very inefficient fuel wise.

Who needs a network of hotels, when hotels are so desperate for business they'll give you whatever price points you want.

Business travel around the world did not stop with covid, but international leisure travel almost did completely, so in the short term, TS will probably have aircraft parked, when they could eg. fly to Australia on a low frequency basis. It worked for Canada 3000, twice a week.

YVR/HNL/BNE was flown by Canada 3000, in their 340 seat A332s. If TS wanted to avoid HNL they could fly by a number of other pacific nations & make it more of a tech stop, although there is still some demand for Canada/Hawaii flights & Australia/Hawaii flights. APW western Samoa would welcome any nonstop flights from North America & Australia & in fact the yield would probably be higher Australia & Canada to APW than Australia to Canada direct & vice versa (with tech stop) . There just wouldn't be huge numbers of O & D traffic into APW, but that's ok, it would all help the bottom line. NOTE: Air NZ & Fiji Air both carry large numbers of Australians to USA & Canada & large numbers of Canadians & Americans to Australia. Some of these flights are direct (same aircraft) but all have 1 stop. TS aircraft have more seats, so their cost per seat is obviously lower than any airline operating between Australia & North America, with the possible exception of Jetstar who fly SYD/HNL/SYD.

Adam Smith

Canada 3000 went bankrupt nearly 20 years ago.

Should we also try to revive the Blockbuster business model while we're at it?

OZFLYER86

Check your history.

Canada 3000 were going really well prior to SEP11. 10SEP 2001 was there biggest day of sales ever & then of course, sales died completely as leisure travel took ages to come back. Canada 3000 got no govt handouts unlike many other airlines did.

Adam Smith

Canada 3000 was growing fast before 9/11 by racking up debt and burning through cash at a quick pace, which is why they became insolvent less than 60 days after 9/11, despite government assistance being made available (they didn't get any government assistance because they couldn't demonstrate a viable business plan even with the government's money).

But you seem to have missed the point, which is that the business model of a company that went bankrupt 20 years ago is irrelevant to whether this type of approach would work today.

Today, there are many aircraft that can economically make the Canada/USA-Australia trip non-stop. TS doesn't have any of these aircraft. TS has made its money by flexing capacity between Europe in the summer and sun destinations in the winter, and flies primarily from eastern Canada. The 787s, 777s, and A350s that make AUS/NZ routes work are overkill in terms of range and/or size for what TS needs.

A stopping service with the current 332 fleet makes very little sense. A tech stop reduces fuel requirements, but incurs other costs for greater crew wages, landing fees, need to maintain another base, etc... And passengers prefer to fly direct, which is why the big twins have been such smashing successes, and there are fewer and fewer routes like that.

From a market perspective, it's also highly questionable that there is anywhere near the opportunity you seem to think there is. VA is out of the market. So what? They had a tiny fleet and even if demand bounces back quickly to pre-COVID levels, it's easy to absorb that small amount of capacity within the networks of carriers that have survived. Transat also has very little presence in western Canada and the US. AC had grown Australia a ton before COVID, but was drawing feed from all across Canada and picking up US traffic as well (AC's YVR<>EWR was on a 787 partly because they got a lot of NYC<>Australia traffic on that route). Transat has essentially no domestic or US network. How much traffic exists O/D YVR?

Altogether, that means TS has to either offer an unattractive stopping service with the current fleet or commit big dollars to acquiring a new aircraft type that can handle the routes non-stop. Regardless of which way they go, their market is going to be pretty much limited to YVR, unless they also radically transform themselves to have a big domestic network.

So where is the business logic in that? There's none.