One would think that there are a number of routes where having the XLR on all of the frequencies would be ideal. I guess that'll ultimately depend on the composition of the fleet when all 30 are delivered. Will be interesting to see if there is ultimately a top up order and whether AC is one of the launch customers for the A225 (further speculation for the fleet thread).

First of all, connecting in YYZ or YUL from the U.S. to Europe is not backtracking in the same way that connecting in Canada to fly to Latin America would be. Canada is directly on the flight path for many U.S. services to Europe anyway, whereas flights to Latin America are in the complete other direction. It's as illogical to fly from the U.S. to Latin America via Canada as it would be to fly from Kuwait to Dubai via Istanbul. And no, AC's fares to Latin America are not competitive with UA's or many of the U.S. carriers.

You also completely misunderstand the point about connections. No one is saying that "many Northeast/Midwest cities in the US" are well connected to South America. However, there ARE hub airports in the United States which ARE well connected to South America and which can be easily reached by a DOMESTIC flight from the U.S. Midwest or Northeast. A domestic connecting flight will always win out for a U.S. traveler over one in a third country unless the third country airline (in this case AC) can offer a rock-bottom fare. Which, as we know from Canada's high airport taxes, fuel taxes and other levies, just ain't happening.

Not sure I agree with your reasoning here.

AC does considerable traffic from US cities to Europe and Aisa so there are a good number of people in the US who do indeed chose to connect via Canada instead of the domestic US connection. And AC does in fact sometimes offer rock bottom fares. Not to mention that anyone with experience travelling with checked luggage will know that connecting via YUL/YYZ is a lot easier than EWR/ORD.

A while ago, I was looking at YUL-FCO. I always check BOS for flights as BOS is only +2 hour drive for me over YUL. The best price out of BOS was AC BOS-YUL-FCO and it was several hundred dollars less that YUL-FCO. It was also several hundred dollars less than nonstop BOS-FCO.

I am (and have been for a while) of the opinion that any significant growth AC can hope for must come from increased 6th freedom traffic and I suspect any new route takes that into consideration (along with Cargo) a lot more than people here think. We tend to analyse an airline's decision based on our own personal motivations, but doing so is quite short-cited. Plus the airline has a poop ton of data to use when deciding flights.

Do you expect AC to be filling its planes with just ex-Canada and ex-South America passengers? It is likely there is a portion of ex-US passengers to help with that capacity. While connecting in a US domestic hub may be more preferable to some, there's nothing illogical about backtracking when the fare and schedule are competitive. This happens across all carriers around the world when they compete for business. There are passengers flying ICN-SFO-YYC instead of ICN-YVR-YYC, or DEN-MUC-MAD instead of DEN-YUL-MAD.

And US-Canada-South America is not that much backtracking. And fares are competitive as pointed out in this post. So I'll repeat:
BOS-ATL-GIG 5,681mi; BOS-YYZ-GIG 5,570mi
ORD-IAH-EZE 5,987mi; ORD-YYZ-EZE 5,999mi

And if not for backtracking, why are CM and AV also in the market? With IAD-MIA-GRU being the shortest, yet much more expensive. And IAD-GRU non-stop being the most expensive.

Most passengers don’t plot routes on a map or reason in terms of geographic “direction.” They choose based on total elapsed travel time, number of stops, and what booking tools surface as the best option.

“Backtracking” is a geography concept, not a booking one. If AC can offer comparable or only modestly longer elapsed times by running tight banks at YYZ/YUL and relatively streamlined connections, those itineraries remain competitive in practice. Connection quality matters as much as distance: hub congestion, terminal changes, and long minimum connect times at some U.S. hubs can easily erase any theoretical advantage from a shorter great-circle route.

That’s why this shows up in real searches. If routings via Canada weren’t time-competitive, they simply wouldn’t ranked at the top. As I have shown earlier, AC also do offer competitive pricing vs US carriers. Airline pricing is not correlated with costs of delivering the service, they will offer discounts for connections to attract passengers, hence as the previous poster mentioned, flying BOS-YUL-FCO was cheaper than YUL-FCO.

Air Canada Suspending Cuba Service in Response to Aviation Fuel Shortage

Airline will operate empty flights to Cuba to pick up and return customers

https://www.aircanada.com/media/air-canada-suspending-cuba-service-in-response-to-aviation-fuel-shortage

Ouch. Flying dozens of empty flights. I assume reimbursing/reaccomodating to different locations thousands of people. How much do you estimate is all thing going to cost AC?

Remind me never to start an airline

Dozens of flights? What aircraft do you think they will be using to operate the rescue flights, 319's?

The cost will be to operate the empty flights down, I think that's it. What would they need to reimburse/reaccommodate people for? They are simply picking them up early and returning them to what would have been their final destination, a cost they would have borne anyways under normal ops.

https://en.cibercuba.com/noticias/20...ercial-despega


Last Sunday, the Jos� Mart� International Airport in Havana issued the international NOTAM A0356/26, confirming that nine international airports in Cuba will not have Jet A-1 fuel for a full month, from February 10, 2026, at 05:00 UTC until March 11, 2026.

I did not read a mention that they were cutting everyone's vacations short. Perhaps they are repatriating everyone ASAP or simply flying most of the schedule organically through the regular schedule, and just leaving empty. Either way...

AC owns AC Vaca... so directly or indirectly this will cost them a lot. From the ACVaca website: "All customers travelling to Cuba who experience flight cancellations from February 9 to May 1, 2026, will automatically receive a full refund in their original form of payment; therefore, there is no need to call our Contact Centre." On the flip side, how much money have they given to hotels or tour operators and transfers? Not sure what the charter contract says, and how much recourse does AC has over the properties and the operators as in Cuba, you are basically dealing with government owned companies.

For AC directly: Assumeing they can maximize loads onto 777s over 4 or 5 cities across Cuba at +/-10 flights. If a medium sized business jet costs $6000-$7000 per hour to operate so I'm thinking an airliner is probably at the very least $15,000 per hour. That's $60k per flight so we're at $600k. And at what cost does pulling 10 777s to repatriate people over 3-4 days out of the schedule cost in terms of moving people to other flights... Plus until they can re-integrate the fins scheduled from today to May 1st elsewhere, those fins will be sitting there not making money.

This is an excrement spectacle at its finest and one of a million different things that can happen to an airline that costs millions in unplanned expenses.

I also feel bad for all the people who are missing their vacations. Cuba is on the lower cost options for sun destinations, so the chance many of these people can just turn around and change destinations last minute is slim. Several thousands of people have lost out on their vacations.

Interesting that they didn't choose to just do a refueling stop in Nassau on the way back. Maybe the crews were at risk of timing out.

I never suggested that AC doesn't do a significant amount of business providing connections between the U.S. and Europe via its YYZ and YUL hubs. Indeed, in my post I mentioned that connecting in Canada can make sense for those routes because it is generally on the flight path from the U.S. to Europe anyway.

The point about connections I made was to another member who was claiming that AC does a lot of business providing connections between the U.S. and Latin America. I pointed out that this is not supportable given that it constitutes significant backtracking to connect in Eastern Canada instead of a U.S. hub airport (like, say, MIA, IAH or ATL). The size of the market between the U.S. and Latin America means that there are more direct flights from U.S. hubs (such as those three) to more Latin American destinations than AC offers from Canada, there are more competitors (carriers like Volaris, LATAM, GOL and others don't even serve Canada), and prices are better. There is no compelling reason for a U.S. traveler to fly in the wrong direction, pay a higher fare, and connect in a third country (Canada) when they can fly domestically to a U.S. hub like MIA, IAH or ATL and connect to their Latin American destination there.

I did not say that flights between the USA and Europe via AC's hubs were backtracking. I'm not sure why multiple people keep referencing fares on flights to Rome. I never used Europe as an example of where connecting in Canada makes no sense. I stated that it makes no sense on USA-Latin American routes and, for various reasons (local taxes, fuel and labour costs, airport fees, lack of direct competition) AC cannot or does not offer sufficiently low fares to overcome the inconvenience factor on U.S.-Latin American routes.

No one can seriously believe that a passenger from the U.S. Midwest or Northeast, wanting to fly to (for example) Guatemala City, is going to choose to connect on AC via YUL when there are plenty of flights available via Houston, Miami and Atlanta at lower fares and with more choice. Plus, connecting in YUL means a longer flight on the YUL-GUA portion in comparison with a shorter flight, say, IAH-GUA. The flight from Montreal is timed at 5h55 when the IAH-GUA flight is only three and a half.

Eastern Mass, Pensyvania and Ohio is nearly 30 million people. BOS-YYZ-GRU is currently offered by AC at similar prices and as good or better times to DL via ATL or UA via IAH. I'm not sure why you don't think people would not fly AC for that route. Or to BOG, or to SCL etc. etc. etc. And even Carribean Sun destinations.

Yeah, WestJet and Air Transat are continuing with possible tech stops if necessary, although I believe their traffic to Cuba is a lot higher % of their capacity than AC. Maybe with the travel advisory AC expects a lot of cancellations and it's not worth continuing.