tcook052

History I vividly recall in 20+ years selling airline tickets and having seen a few airline start-ups come and go including WJ.

We'll see what routes Swoop flies upon its launch but as I said can't see it being solely an airline that flies out of only a few border area airports. What route would it fly ex-YEG that isn't already served by WJ or Encore?

mxqisit

Like AC did with Rouge, I imagine WJ will replace some existing WJ or Encore routes with Swoop.

kylejaymes

Yes, exactly: "come and go." ULCC are all under that "go" category, and most did not not-so-gracefully.

WestJet will 100% replace mainline with Swoop. There is no reason for them to compete against themselves. These will be on routes where AC has done the same with Rouge, eg Florida routes - and your fares are going to stay the same.

Symmetre

And if that happens I will resume using Delta for all transborder travel.

kylejaymes

+1. Sadly most people will just book whatever is cheapest, even if just by $5.

WR Cage

Agreed Tcook, the super basic economy fare with fees for everything else looks like it will be extra.

I think WS is counting on certain amount of mainline to Swoop cannibalization. Take a market like YXX where Flex and Plus fares are a hard sell. Currently WS has to take a hit when they can't sell a Plus seat and has to upgrade a deep discount FOTSG/Kettle person just to mitigate the lost revenue. With Swoop at 189 seats, the revenue loss can be overcome by selling the cheap fares for less square footage.

the above is a little bit hard to understand, apologies. Lets use the landlord tenant example. Current mainline WS has 2 bedroom apartment but the market can only pay for 1 bedroom apartment. So WS takes a hit and gives away the extra square footage for free. With Swoop, WS can sell 2 studio open concept apartments, each 1/2 the size of the 2 bedroom. The profit is more with the 2 studio apartments.

Thanks for the web addy to fee explanation.

It will be interesting to see how WS will handle the "meaner" aspects of unbundled fares. see my own quote below from earlier in this thread for examples of mean fees. A senior who doesn't have a smart phone with data plan and doesn't have a printer is unable to print their BP at home. Its a well known situation the general public believes they should get free seat selection to sit beside their 10 year old kid. Free nonalcoholic drinks are considered a sudo privilege that all users should enjoy.



The seat pitch will be 30". Swoop seat configuration will be similar to Ryanair. The difference between Swoop and Sunwing seat configuration is the oven in galley. Westjet and Ryanair 737-800s have reduced galley space with no ovens. Swoop, Ryanair, and Sunwing all have 189 seat 737-800s.

Extra legroom seats will be another challenge for Swoop. In the first Plus incarnation, exit row seats were included in Plus. The exit row was removed from Plus at the request of the front line staff. WS taller customers became used to requesting a move to the exit row and WS airport front line staff were accustomed to granting the request for free on space available basis. It remains to be seen how Swoop will handle similar requests.

Lack of financial liquidity is the main cause of airline failures in the Canadian domestic marketplace. Swoop has access to WS $1 billion cash on hand, liquidity problem solved.

I suspect the WS has found a handful of their markets no longer fit the mainline or Encore business plans. Specifically YHM and YXX come to mind. So do suspect that WS will transition these markets to Swoop.

jaysona

Hmmm.......the senior would have presumably booked their flight on a computer at home and would therefore know about the associated costs before making the final purchase. Which hopefully means that purchase was made with the knowledge that additional airport costs would be incurred, or they would have used a travel agent, and I would hope the TA would explain all the costs and restrictions. I guess the real unknown is how on-line travel agent booking will be presented and sold. Although I suspect that in the case of Swoop there will be airport kiosks where one could print their boarding pass without additional cost.

What the public believes they should get is immaterial as long as the airline clearly defines what the cost of the ticket covers. If people don't like the rules of the game, they do not have to play the game. There are many airlines to chose from, and it seems like there will a couple of more in the near future.

radnub

You're giving the average flyer (senior or otherwise) too much credit! :P Most people don't read beyond the price of the ticket. They'll be confused then angry starting at the check-in kiosks (you want me to PAY for my boarding pass? ... my checked luggage? Where is this coming from?) and it will continue throughout the flight then they'll swear never to fly Swoop again ... until next year! At least it would be fun to watch.

Edit: A question to all: Will Swoop be all economy seating? My guess is that some competitive domestic flights (YYC-YHZ) will be switched from mainline to Swoop to compete with Rouge and I'll lost my precious Plus seating if it's all economy.

HangTen

WestJet is sitting on c$1.4b these days.

Flair has less than $3m of unrestricted capital available to it and despite of all the chirping, Jetlines has yet to raise any funds of any consequence and runs on a shoe string. If they currently have more than $1m of unrestricted cash in the bank, I'll eat my hat.

And that's after trying to launch for nearly 4 years. Talk about "pushing water uphill"....

I think it's a pretty safe bet to assume that if it touches YHM or YXX, it'll be Swoop.

The question will be how WJ manages the process of selling mainline network destinations into YXX and YHM.

For example, WJ is not going to eliminate a YQQ-YHM itinerary. They'll have to figure out the best way of selling YQQ-YYC on WJ or WJE, and connect to Swoop, whilst educating consumers that they are very different products and not to expect WJ type service on Swoop flights.

It is doable, but requires consistency and internal commitment.

WJ's strategy as it pertains to anyone contemplating doing to WJ what WJ did to AC/CP/Greyhound/Royal/C3000/CanJet/VistaJet/etc etc, is painfully obvious.

The big difference is that unlike CP and AC, WJ has the cost structure and the balance sheet to deal with this, and do so profitably.

I'm sure there are elements within WJ who don't like the concept. I'll guarantee that they'd dislike the alternative even more.

tracon

The 738 has a max capacity of 189.
Sunwing has 189 seats with several rows on one side with 35" of leg room. No empty middle seat though.

WJter

Yes.. Swoop will be all economy.

tracon

FWIW, JETlines is a trading stock


Useless trivia........
Swoop ICAO code is WSW,

robsaw

Sure - penny stock using a reverse takeover method, providing almost no useful real capital investment.

HangTen

Bingo.

After 3+ years of doors being slammed in their faces by hysterically laughing potential investors after listening to an absurd pitch by, shall we say, a less than credible cast of characters, Jetballs and their get rich quick / fleece the lambs promoters conjured up the goofiest method of raising capital for an airline venture I've seen anywhere in at least the last 25 years.

They still haven't got any paid in, free capital to do anything more than continue dream up ways of convincing news starved / click bait generating hack reporters of rewriting the same lame stories about how they are going to take what ever cash they manage to extract from their penny stock investor base, and use it to underwrite the sale of $29 tickets on flights that require at least $130 per seat to breakeven, that assuming an 80% l/f from day one, on every leg of every flight, with each aircraft operating about 13 hours a day, 7 days a week.

And people wonder why, even after close to 4 years, Jetballs is no closer to generating an asm than they were when they first publicly floated the idea in Oct 2013.

Jetballs are the Canadian version of Baltia / Family Airlines / US Global Airways

http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...lobal-airways/

tcook052

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topst...4rW&ocid=ientp

Flying on WestJet's low-cost carrier Swoop will come with a price: ancillary fees that will cost travellers about twice what they pay on the mainline carrier, the CEO of the Calgary-based airline said Tuesday.

Gregg Saretsky said he expects non-fare fees on Swoop, which is set to launch in June, will be very similar to so-called ultra low-cost carriers in the U.S.

"We're about $19 per guest currently on the mainline operation and I would expect that we should be able to get (double) that on Swoop," he said during a conference call Tuesday about its third-quarter results.