darwink
Senior Member
IIRC the seat count between YYC and YEG max'd out at around 600,000 a year post Air Canada-Canadian merger. No idea before.
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Calgary International Airport
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
JesseLikesCities
Active Member
Calgary (4th most populated region) to Vancouver (3rd most populated region) is the busiest route in the country? I would of thought Toronto (Most populated region) and Montreal (2nd most populated region) would be busiest. Or even YYZ-YVR.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
If this is true, I would suspect there's something to do with cost, time and competition here too.
Montreal to Toronto is about 5 hour drive, or 1 to 1.5 hour flight. Given their urban sizes, it's no easy commute in either city to the airport for much of the region - easily 30 minutes+ or more just to get there before you start security, boarding etc. The benefit over driving is much less.
Calgary - Vancouver is about 10 - 12 hour drive, but 1 to 1.5 hour flight. Driving also comes with a great deal of unpredictability and seasonality issues with mountain driving. Market demand on either end is smaller but airports are highly convenient for a larger proportion of the cities relative to the metropolises of Montreal and Toronto.
badc0ffee
Active Member
Also you can take VIA Rail between Toronto and Montreal, and it's a bit faster than driving if you're going downtown to downtown (which can push 6 hours sometimes).
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
Exactly what I was going to say. Despite Via being considerably slower than flying, it’s the convenience aspect. No security check-in, no waiting around, very few delays, and downtown-to-downtown. The convenience factor is clear.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
My god what a concept! It has been said but a decent rail connection from Edmonton to Calgary would sink YEG.
darwink
Senior Member
I don’t think it would. Things might change but there is a good base there. Not like we’ve seen a surge of feeder traffic from YEG.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
You're right, it wouldn't take it out of business but for connections it might hurt it.
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Tothewest
Active Member
It's one thing for YYC to have all the additional flights, where the harm really impact YEG imo is all the regional travellers from AB now deciding YYC is their best option. GP, Ft Mac, RD region....would all fly into YYC or drive for better options.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Another factor is that a competitive rail journey downtown-to-downtown featuring stops at the airports of either city would like induce many new trips that don't currently occur.
I can't quite imagine what that would mean for the amount of airport trips and relative strengths of each hubs, but the overall trip market would certainly grow if an under 3 hour downtown-to-downtown trip was available. The faster it is, the more likely it competes to city-to-city air trips that start in one city and end in another - but many air trips aren't those, rather transfers to other cities which would still make sense to go to the nearest airport. You could easily slow vehicle travel growth on the corridor if a faster rail service was provided but also substantially grow the pie.
Getting into the really high speed scenarios of under 1.5 hours travel time by rail and the metro-regions will begin to actually integrate labour and consumer markets. That's the real game changing speed that current does not exist for either highway or air trips.
AtlanticAvenue
Active Member
Air Canada is restarting Ottawa Service effective May 1
YYC-YOW 1x Daily
YYC-YOW 1x Daily
I guess they realized they were probably just giving business away to WS?
AtlanticAvenue
Active Member
I think they anticipating that the overall pilot pool with be growing in the spring. They announced routes out of YVR as well.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Where do they typically announce new services? Is it just press releases or do they maintain a route list?
Beltline_B
Senior Member
It’s hard to say as adding an Edmonton connection flight through Calgary doesn’t change the ticket price very much.
We booked our flights to Rome in the spring, and some friends from Edmonton who are going to be on the same flight, paid exactly the same amount, even though they have the Edmonton leg of the flight added on.
I could see if you are taking a flight that originates from Calgary doesn’t have a transfer to Edmonton, like Edelweiss, it would make a difference but if it’s on WestJet chances are it’s going to be a similar price flying from Edmonton to Calgary first.