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Calgary International Airport

CalgaryTiger said:
Wait, Pilots are protesting route cuts as a result of there not being enough pilots... This this like the guy working his butt off but not willing to share his work with others because then he'll be less "valuable" to the company.
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This article talks about shortage of Regional pilots causing AC to use mainline fleet on regional routes. Calgary is a downstream effect of this since the routes they cut (LA, Frankfurt, Honolulu, Halifax, Cancun) were never served by a regional airline (Air Canada Express) anyways. What they're really doing is they realized they make more money on smaller regional routes, because of a lack of competition. They'd rather keep flying those even with the mainline fleet and reduce their service from Calgary which has a lot of competition from WestJet, Flair, Lynx. Like Darwink said, they're now being moved to serve different routes than originally planned. But I think when you are a pilot those risks are just part of the job unfortunately.
 
With Westjet having cut/reduced Toronto and east flying it’s been very difficult or near impossible for crew members living in Montreal/Ottawa/etc to commute to Toronto and have to move to/commute to another base, or in some cases, quit. At least Westjet pilots can commute on AC, but the cabin crew can’t.
 
trtcttc said:
This article talks about shortage of Regional pilots causing AC to use mainline fleet on regional routes. Calgary is a downstream effect of this since the routes they cut (LA, Frankfurt, Honolulu, Halifax, Cancun) were never served by a regional airline (Air Canada Express) anyways. What they're really doing is they realized they make more money on smaller regional routes, because of a lack of competition. They'd rather keep flying those even with the mainline fleet and reduce their service from Calgary which has a lot of competition from WestJet, Flair, Lynx. Like Darwink said, they're now being moved to serve different routes than originally planned. But I think when you are a pilot those risks are just part of the job unfortunately.
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It's a sad blow to the airport and for AC crews that happen to live here for sure and it unfortunately reinforces the airport authority's nonsensical concourse free-for-all where everyone can part in any concourse basically.

It started with the layoffs and premature retirement of aircraft, specifically all 767s regardless of what paint due to an ill-advised kneejerk reaction to the pandemic. The fleet and payroll to keep it flying is simply too small to operate the entire network that existed pre 2020 plus whatever additions they have made since. Before they were operating a sizable fleet of 319/320/321 and 767s between mainline and Rouge. Most of the 320s are gone, the 319 fleets are both mere shells of what they were, and there are more 321s, but many of those are replacing the much higher capacity nearly 300 seat Rouge 767. The retired 320s were replaced almost 1:1 with 737s as well as the 220s replacing some of the 319/320 role as well as 190s, many of which have lost their engines. The widebody fleet other than the addition of a couple 787s and some A330s, not much change. Yeah kinda screwed if they want to maintain all this flying, so naturally of the 4 main airports, Calgary is on the chopping block first, at least until they get this nonsense sorted out.

Staffing may be difficult as well, at least for pilots. The contract now doesn't look so hot anymore compared to WestJet, nor does the entry level FO pay look that good compared to just working at somewhere like Jazz instead, even that not being good compared to WestJet. As well, if you don't want to be Toronto based, good luck; that pesky Winnipeg base makes it so that there couldn't be a more sensible Calgary base.

We may see a return of a lot of these routes and frequency when the 78J and A321XLR come online.
 
September Stats

Domestic: 1,195,308 +15.4% - 2019: 1,089,222
Transborder: 342,910 +43.2% - 2019: 295,843
International: 187,925 +56.2% -2019: 145,761

September 2023 Total: 1,726,143 +23.7% - 2019: 1,530,826

YTD: 14,105,411

Need an average of 1.3 million per month to crack 18,000,000 this year, seems obtainable.
 
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Agreed. It looks like we will not only top 18M, but could even shatter the record with something in the range of 18.3M to18.4M

2019 Source2023 Source
Jan1,388,2401,226,098
Feb1,341,6731,190,423
Mar1,484,2231,392,200
Apr1,414,9751,385,673
May1,460,0731,557,941
Jun1,576,6501,739,011
Jul1,778,9911,936,088
Aug1,795,4751,949,890
Sep1,530,8261,726,143
Oct1,453,152
Nov1,292,476
Dec1,441,026
Total17,957,78014,101,377
 
trtcttc said:
Anecdotal for sure, but flew YYC-YYZ in late October, both legs of the flight were completely full. YYZ-YYC had the UofC Dinos basketball team in the back, if you ever thought you had it tough in economy legroom, imagine being almost 7 ft...
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Does Statscan or an air tracker website publish passengers per city pairs? I wouldn't be surprised if Calgary - Toronto is one of the busiest routes in the country.
 
CBBarnett said:
Does Statscan or an air tracker website publish passengers per city pairs? I wouldn't be surprised if Calgary - Toronto is one of the busiest routes in the country.
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No, proprietary unless something has changed. They used to do O&D international but that is 10 years stale now iirc.
 
Chinook Arch said:
Look, I feel bad for cities like Edmonton, Winnipeg, or Ottawa. Clearly, the Canadian market is trending towards a system of 4 major hubs, and why wouldn’t they? It’s what works best for the airlines, and is the same setup in other countries around the world.
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Canada has been a system of 4 major hubs for about 30 years, and shouldn’t be a surprised anybody.
The gap has been widening, but the trend started in the late 70s.
 
Surrealplaces said:
Agreed. It looks like we will not only top 18M, but could even shatter the record with something in the range of 18.3M to18.4M

2019 Source2023 Source
Jan1,388,2401,226,098
Feb1,341,6731,190,423
Mar1,484,2231,392,200
Apr1,414,9751,385,673
May1,460,0731,557,941
Jun1,576,6501,739,011
Jul1,778,9911,936,088
Aug1,795,4751,949,890
Sep1,530,8261,726,143
Oct1,453,152
Nov1,292,476
Dec1,441,026
Total17,957,78014,101,377
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For the last four months YYC has averaged a little over 150,000 passengers more than the corresponding month from 2019. If they keep up that pace, they’ll come in somewhere around 18.6 to 18.7M passengers.
 
Alex_YYC said:
Canada has been a system of 4 major hubs for about 30 years, and shouldn’t be a surprised anybody.
The gap has been widening, but the trend started in the late 70s.
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Calgary started to separate itself from pack decades ago, but in recent years, Calgary and Montreal have really moved away from the pack. But yes, Canada has been a four hub system for a while, it’s more pronounced now.
 
CBBarnett said:
Does Statscan or an air tracker website publish passengers per city pairs? I wouldn't be surprised if Calgary - Toronto is one of the busiest routes in the country.
Click to expand...

The busiest in the country is YYC-YVR, I think YYC-YYZ is fourth busiest.

There’s a list somewhere by OAG group but I can’t find it anymore.
 
Beltline_B said:
For the last four months YYC has averaged a little over 150,000 passengers more than the corresponding month from 2019. If they keep up that pace, they’ll come in somewhere around 18.6 to 18.7M passengers.
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To be higher than 2019 is great, topping it by something like 300k-600k is a major gain.

To put things into perspective YEG’s 2019 numbers were less than their 2018 numbers, and their 2023 numbers are looking like they’ll be less than their 2019 numbers. One can see why they’ve been grouchy about YYC.
 
According to YEG stats YTD, and extrapolating them over the next three months, they would end up just over 7M...A million below the 2019 numbers. It's hard to tell what the next three months will be like, as the months earlier in the year might have been lower than average like it was for YYC.
September at YEG, was 590K which is exactly the average for the first 9 months, so who knows. YEG has had some dips over the past decade making hard to tell where the trend is going. My guess is it will probably stay in around where it's at for the next 5 years or so.

1699394372071.png
 
Surrealplaces said:
According to YEG stats YTD, and extrapolating them over the next three months, they would end up just over 7M...A million below the 2019 numbers. It's hard to tell what the next three months will be like, as the months earlier in the year might have been lower than average like it was for YYC.
September at YEG, was 590K which is exactly the average for the first 9 months, so who knows. YEG has had some dips over the past decade making hard to tell where the trend is going. My guess is it will probably stay in around where it's at for the next 5 years or so.

View attachment 518700
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It would be interesting to see this chart with the corresponding Edmonton to Calgary passenger numbers for these years. Gives some indication of how Edmonton's total traveler numbers are changing in relations to how much Calgary as a hub is impacting things.
 
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