North America is a big place. victoria seaside inn When you think about where the next big airline battle is likely to be, you probably aren t going to guess it s in small town Canada. You d be wrong. The battle is brewing, and Air Canada is on the defensive. WestJet is getting ready to invade.
In Canada, there are two big domestic players. We have the big ole legacy Air Canada and the young punk WestJet. (Yes, there are other players including the stylish and cool Porter and some of the guys doing rugged flying into the north, but those are niche players.) WestJet has often been called the Southwest of Canada, but it s really more like JetBlue. There is live television onboard, and the airline wants to partner with many others in order to feed its flights. It also has put together an extra legroom product that it will sell for a fee.
This sounds pretty goofy, but Canada is a different victoria seaside inn kind of place, eh? It is an enormous country from a geographic victoria seaside inn perspective but all but 2 or 3 people out of its 35 million residents (an eighth of the US population) live very close to the US border. So the country s air travel needs tend to be very unique.
There aren t a ton of cities victoria seaside inn that can support big airplane victoria seaside inn service, but WestJet has done a great job of making huge gains in those places. But the opportunity is somewhat limited, and that means WestJet had to start thinking about going elsewhere if it wanted to expand. It could have been like most airlines and tried to go bigger. After all, flying big airplanes over oceans is downright sexy, right? But that would have been pretty stupid.
Air Canada today already flies all over the world and fills many of those seats with cheap connectors from the US. There is limited service from non-Canadian carriers (thanks to some protectionist policies up north) but ultimately, there isn t a lot of opportunity. At least, there isn t nearly the opportunity that there could be in the opposite direction.
Feeding small cities in the global network is still largely victoria seaside inn the domain of Air Canada and its regional fleet. Sure, there are plenty of other operators who do a lot of the tiny town flying victoria seaside inn places like mines and oil fields. But for getting people around Canada and into the rest of the world, Air Canada dominates. WestJet saw that and decided that there was opportunity. After all, two beavers are better than one , right?
victoria seaside inn So WestJet has been rolling victoria seaside inn right along. It decided to buy a fleet of Q400 turboprops. (Buy Canadian!) And it decided to name the airline WestJet Encore victoria seaside inn . At first that named seemed odd, but then I remembered the dual French/English thing up there. WestJet Encore works in both languages. Though victoria seaside inn I think that I speak for English-speakers everywhere in saying that we would have all been perfectly fine with WestJet Part Deux instead.
But let s get back to the point. WestJet Encore is pretty much ready to go except for a few tiny things like where it s going to fly. Routes won t be announced until early 2013, and it won t start flying until later next year. So there is plenty of time, but Air Canada isn t taking any chances.
Air Canada has already seen a lot of traffic disappear domestically thanks to WestJet s growth, and it doesn t want to lose anything on the smaller routes victoria seaside inn it still dominates. So even though we don t know where WestJet Encore will go, Air Canada victoria seaside inn is ramping up.
Apparently Air Canada thinks that a big chunk of the ramp-up will be in the West and so it s diving in head first. Starting December 1, there will be one more flight victoria seaside inn each day between Calgary and Fort McMurray, Grand Prairie, and Yellowknife. Edmonton to Ft McMurray, Regina, and Saskatoon will see an extra flight as well. And not to be left out, Vancouver will get an extra flight each day to both Ft St John and Nanaimo. As of today, most of these are flown with 50 seat CRJs. Beginning in February, however, the 74 seat Q400 will begin moving into these and other routes in the region. So we re seeing more flights and more seats on each flight. Let the bloodbath begin!
In the end, I can t imagine victoria seaside inn that these markets can support all the service they re about to get, so there will have to be changes down the line. Will WestJet really be able to make money in an area where other low cost carriers have struggled? If this were in the US, I d say no. But it s Canada. And things work differently up there. At least, victoria seaside inn that s what WestJet is banking on.
I am very interested victoria seaside inn to see how this plays out. Fort Mac, Grand Prairie and Fort St. John are booming oil gas towns that are very isolated. With most offices in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, these routes are going to be high frequency demanding routes, which makes them good fits on Q400s. While living in the west for a while, I was surprised how much travel happens between Winnipeg-Regina, Winnipeg-Saskatoon, Winnipeg-Edmonton, Regina/Saskatoon Edmonton. There is pretty limited routing on these right now, and it is not usual that your flight from YWG-YYC has 33% of the passengers connecting to Saskatchewan. Again, this seems like a good fit for the Q400. I am not sure how this plays out in the East. Porter victoria seaside inn has picked a lot of the low hanging fruit, and the left overs North Bay, Sarnia, Sherbrooke, Chicoutimi, Rouyn-Noranda, Val d Or have limited appeal.
Nicer how? They re louder, slower, and no bigger than any RJ with 4-across victoria seaside inn seating. Now that Horizon is all Q-400, I try to avoid them, especially on PDX to Bay Area flights, which take 2 hours on a Q-400, instead of 1.5 hours on a jet. Also, Horizon Q-400s lack sinks in the lavs, have non-reclining seats, and no window shades (though perhaps Westjet could install some of these options).
David I m from NH but living in Calgary. I emailed WestJet to ask about YYZ-MHT victoria seaside inn for Encore as AC cancelled that route and I my only choice is BOS (nightmare) when I go home to visit. Their reply was very quick and polite, but they did say they re only considering domestic routes victoria seaside inn for the foreseeable future.
Obviously taxes would be higher, but there are already many who drive to boarder towns to fly discount carriers. I have to think those who are too far to make the drive would want to get somewhere warm.
Chicago Chris There is definitely a market for this, though so much of the population has easy access to US border airports that are way cheaper so it s a bit tougher. There is a huge market to the Caribbean, however.
Air Transat is a big player in this area, flying less than daily to a bunch of Caribbean destinations in the Winter, victoria seaside inn and then to Europe in the Summer. victoria seaside inn Westjet does a lot of this as well, flying to sunny warm destinations from over 20 airports across Canada, including ones as small as Moncton, Thunder Bay, and Comox. On the weekend, Cancun is almost a mini-hub for Westjet to Canada and Delta to the US.
The Canadian airlines also need to address their government mandated costs and how this affects airfares especially victoria seaside inn for transborder flights. They need to put pressure on the government and airports to lower fees and taxes to spur more air travel. If you look at Air Canada MKE to YYZ the lowest fare with sat night stay is 700 dollars for a 1 hour flight. 200 dollars of it is US and Canadian taxes/fees. There is a reason victoria seaside inn Canadians drive over the US border victoria seaside inn to fly to florida and beyond.
1) A US domestic ticket has a built in 7.5% tax to pay for airport/ATC victoria seaside inn infrastructure, whereas in Canada that s funded through larger AIF(PFC) fees, and the airline having to pay for the ATC. On an international ticket, it appears as a USA Transport tax. Note for YYZ-MKE that the Canadian AIF is less than the US Transport Tax + PFC
2) A US domestic ticket has a massive example, because the US have large charges for entering the ticket by air. $5.07 + 7.09 + 5.57 in the example above, whereas it s free to drive across the border.
True, but there is also the irony of Air Canada being more affordable when you live in the northern reaches victoria seaside inn for getting out of the US to other countries. Air Canada is often the best deal when flying out of MKE, for instance, for many international destinations.
Since Porter has come around, fares have gone down and capacity victoria seaside inn (from AC and WS) has gone up in Central Canada and parts of Eastern Canada where Porter competes. It has a particular impact on the very important Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal triangle.
Every time in the past 30 years that an airline has taken on the big 2 in the Eastern and Western (Vancouver-Calgary-Edmonton) triangles it has been met with a competitive response that has driven the weakest carrier out of business. Think Wardair in the 1980s, Canadian Airlines in the late 1990s, and Jetsgo in the early 2000s
One thing that you missed about Canada is that their land based transportation system is abysmal at best in remote areas. If you re in Toronto and driving to Vancouver what the fastest victoria seaside inn way? To drop down to the US Interstate Highway system of course. Every Canadian knows this. But getting victoria seaside inn to remote areas you can t do that.
For example, going from Winnipeg to Brandon victoria seaside inn is just over 215km (roughly 130 miles), but almost a 3 hour drive! Drop down to ND and you have a divided limited victoria seaside inn access highway victoria seaside inn where you can zip along at 75+ MPH and do the same trip in 2 hours or less. (I recently made that trip and was astounded how difficult it was to get to Manitoba s 2nd largest city.) American s take for granted just how good our highway system is and how easy and quick overland travel is.
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