I doubt anyone living in Buffalo drives the 90-120 minutes to Toronto to go fly back to the US, and then has to drive back another 90-120 minutes upon arrival. For the purpose of what? Going through customs 4 times instead of 2 times and paying more for the flight?

It works the other way around. Torontonians go to Buffalo to fly to American cities since it's a lot less expensive given the lower taxes in Buffalo vs Toronto.

Once we're fantasizing, why not just have Canada dissolving and the provinces all applying for statehood? It's about equally like.

:D

What would stop a U.S. airline from buying up an operator in Canada, renaming it Delta Airlines Canada LLC dba Delta Airlines and then just offer flights like YYZ-MSP-YEG on that license.

That kind of airline would probably have to be majority owned by Canadians, not Delta. Passengers would also have to go through customs twice (4 times for a round trip). There might (?) be regulations preventing it if ticketed on the same ticket.....Maybe look up schedules to see if there are flights which could connect, like YYZ-ORD-YVR.

EDIT: Looked up DL schedules. They say no flight but, looking at the schedule, you can piece together such a flight.

Example: Winnepeg - MSP - Toronto
YWG arrives in MSP at 1025 am, next flight to YYZ is 1:42 pm.
YWG arrives in MSP at 613 pm, next flight to YYZ is 735 pm.

This would only work if there was no passport control between the two countries. In such a case there would be no difference flying from JFK to SFO via ORD or YYZ. In fact it would probably work fairly well for us passengers as it would increase competition and open new routing options.

I can't see it happening from a political point of view though. At least not in the close future.

EDIT: Anyone knows what would happen if AC and UA were allowed to compete on domestic routes in the US/Canada? I mean for Star Alliance.

Canadian costs are higher so I would suspect that an open US-Canada market would hurt Air Canada. Delta's hubs at MSP and DTW could siphon traffic from YYZ. If there were an open border, BUF would siphon more traffic from YYZ.

Very briefly, after Ansett failed, UA was allowed cabotage on SYD<->MEL. If you dig far enough back in the Trip reports forum, you can probably find some posts related to it.

Passengers were able to buy tickets for MEL<->SYD stand alone without connecting to a UA trans-pacific flight.

IIRC, the cabotage rights lasted only a month or two.

EDIT: Found some old threads about it:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ights-yet.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...-december.html

Well, for one thing, Canadian law. Foreign companies can not own more than a certain percent of a Canadian carrier (I forget what it is exactly now, maybe 25%). So it would never go through in the first place.

In fact, IIRC, when there was a fight for CP before AC bought it, one of the issues with the competing bid was it was going to have too much of an ownership stake by AMR, the parent of AA at the time.