tcook052

The pandemic changed everything so understand WS going back to its point-to-point Western roots - our routes - and not trying to be all things to all travelers. It may miss out on a post-pandemic Int. travel surge but it also avoids all the uncertainties with Int. border regulations and/or changing policies and protocols.

The article has Von Hoensbroech saying the strategic goal is to be a very strong narrowbody operator and moving the 787's back to the West but does that mean they'll still be used on Sunspot routes like HNL/OGG/KOA/LIH/CUN/MBJ/BGI or deploying them on longer domestic routes like YVR/YYC-YUL/YYZ/YHZ?

It's a good article and get that WS had to make some difficult choices to navigate the near future.

YYCguy

787s ideally work their best in terms of fuel efficiency and financial gain on long haul flying, and not on shorter routes like to Eastern Canada, Hawaii, Caribbean, and Mexico.

The article was behind a paywall so I couldn’t read it, just read what was summarized above.

aerobod

A couple of key statements he makes indicate the 789s are likely to stay for European routes and the strategy is more a strengthening of the West routes as opposed to retraction from the East (although Sunwing and Swoop will undoubtedly be a key part of that strategy):

‘But WestJet will not simply cede the east to its rivals. In a few years, the company hopes to transport more passengers from the east than it does today.“We will fly them to different destinations. We won’t fly them from Toronto to Montreal but we’ll fly them from Toronto to, for example, Montego Bay.”

Von Hoensbroech notes that the Canadian market has two distinct and complementary travel seasons – east-west during the northern hemisphere’s summer, and north-south during the winter – enabling maximum fleet utilisation and flexibility.

“You can send aircraft to Europe in summer, where there’s always enough capacity to fill them in a decent way, and you still have a really nice season to deploy them in winter to the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii,” he says.’

aerobod

I think WestJet could deploy at least 4 789s just in the YYC long haul market with a model similar to Austrian (their 6x 772 and 3x 763 configurations give almost identical total seat capacity to the 7x WS 789s), perhaps combined with 2 or 3 used on YVR capacity in the future. VIE had 31 million passengers in 2019 compared with 18 million for YYC and 26 million for YVR, so the 7 789s on long haul routes should be absorbable into the market, flying a similar profile to the Austrian Airlines model.

aerobod

I could see new Western winter routes to the south eastern Caribbean such as to Aruba or Barbados. Although YYC to Aruba is just possible in a 737-8, it is likely that it would be load limited or need a tech stop in certain weather conditions, so the 789 is a better choice. YVR to Barbados is beyond the range of a 737-8.

Other possibilities are opening up weekly winter frequencies from western cities to tourist orientated South American cities or perhaps even the South Pacific. This would be similar to the Austrian Airlines model of flying seasonal routes to places such as the Maldives and Mauritius.

YYCfasha

Would be great to see more non-stop long haul options from YVR - transiting US/Europe via YYC is a total disaster.

pastorash

So, no YYZ-ATH in the near future, darn!

Error 601

Would it be reasonable to think that the future of WestJet's 787 fleet is significantly dependent on whether or not Onex (BBAM) believes they're further ahead leasing them to another airline or not?

tcook052

IIRC AC operates 787 service on domestic routes such as YVR-YYZ so why couldn't WS?

YYCguy

Oh I’m not disputing the fact that WS has chosen to operate domestic and sun routes, I’m just pointing out it’s probably not the best use of that particular aircraft from a financial point of view.

Fisch

In my opinion - It's all relative to the network that you have as an airline. The Max operating efficiency of the acft is one thing. The practical reality of where your customers want to fly are another.

Further to that: where AC's customers want to fly are clearly vastly different from where WS' target customers want to fly.

Therefore as an airline; you fly the equipment you have, where your customer base wants to fly. WS could operate YYC-SVO extremely efficiently on B789 equipment type simply based on operating the airframe economics; however with a load likely under 10 of 320 seats it would not be wise to do so.

Hope that makes sense.

aerobod

Looking at the published WS schedules for next summer (June onwards), I can only see about 60% of the available 787 capacity currently assigned. I would expect some significant destination announcements in the next couple of months, with potentially some held back until earlier next year.