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I don't think slots really matter here. They're the smaller dash-8 and even if they don't fly to to those destinations, they are still going to deploy them on other routes, keeping the same utilization at YYC.I saw news of the cuts earlier. Disappointing, but not too surprising if the times were lousy. I think there's likely a chicken/egg thing at play, but sounds like YYC and WS are too busy to worry about route development like this, and likely don't have many landing slots to spare at peak times.
That said, I think these are important links if the province is serious about encouraging business and population growth in the smaller cities.
Ultimately the regional rail initiative should take care of this, but I think a better stopgap service than coach buses is needed. While they can be a reasonably comfortable journey, they are still bound to road limits with weather and traffic, making the trip a not very compelling 3 hours, minimum.
As a better stop gap, I wonder if the market would support a helicopter based airline if the ticket prices and frequencies were reasonable?
By my web search estimates, it would cost around 10-15 million a year to run a pair of chinooks (~30pax) between Calgary and a smaller city within 300km three times a day. That seems like a reasonable subsidy for the province to cover until regional rail can take over.
There's potential to open up a number of new locations in BC that weren't easily air accessible too, golden, revelstoke, invermere, where tourist demand may not even require a subsidy.
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Using a 300km range for the map as that's roughly the hourly speed and non refuel range for the Chinook, allowing for low/no cost destination facilities. They also have good reuse / resale value once they are functionally replaced by rail service.
As it seems like runway pressure is part of what is making direct flight hard to justify, a Calgary heliport likely couldn't be located at YYC directly, but I think the platform parkade downtown might be a good candidate? Expand it upwards with a flat deck and has nearly a direct link to the planned transport hub.
Ok, now who wants to fund my kickstarter!?
We are not close to our maximum capacity. We've closed Terminal B for well over a year and there's been zero capacity restrictions, on the contrary, we've grown quite a bit. Now that International/Domestic are connected, they can use the E gates if A/C is full. The schedules for the service was bad not because of gate demand, but plane demand. WJ can deploy the Dash-8 on more profitable routes during the "better" times.
calgaryherald.com
and pilots. the proliferation of airlines has hollowed out the regional carriers. Porter, Flair -- they draw from the same pool of talent.
www.twz.com
Westjet doesn't have a shortage of Q400 dash 8 aircraft (particularly since ending Encore operations in Ontario and the Maritimes), so metal isn't the issue. They run flights from these smaller cities in the morning and return in the early afternoon to sit the rest of the day and overnight if I'm not mistaken. YYC doesn't have a capacity issue either. We still broke passenger records last year while we were down a runway and had to accommodate VIP movements like Air Force 1 and all of the other charter flights from the G7 nations. Heathrow's parallel runways move something like 80-90 aircraft per hour at peak meanwhile a quick look reveals we have just shy of 200 scheduled departures for the entirety of tomorrow during this slower season (presumed 400 movements from that plus some cargo and private). With our staggered runways enabling less separation than at least YVR, I'd be surprised if capacity is ever an issue for us.
These towns are really quite small. Is there really much demand? Lethbridge is the largest by far, but it's still just over 100,000 people and it's also closest to Calgary at about 2 hours driving time. Strikes me as a tough market for flights to have limited demand and a reasonably short drive given airport + flying time may equal 2 hours anyways.
It depends.
