Quote:
Originally Posted by Swarez
That is part of there plan, find under served markets and build up a good following. It is one of the reasons they went after Halifax instead of Montreal years ago, they felt they couldn't compete with Transat for the traffic. The last time I looked at the numbers Icelandair had about 75% transit passengers, most others just stayed in Iceland for under 3 days. It is interesting the Canadian government is giving them wide access to our country (up to 4 cities) while the gulf carriers have gone no where in years. I know Emirates and GTAA have had talks with Government in August to get answers; if one transit carrier is fine, why isn't the other.
Aeromexico had talks with YYC at the start of the year, now I doubt anything will happen as I don't think the demand was there, plus they would have to shift slots in Mexico city because they are slot constrained. But in a year or two it is something that definitely has potential.
The Mexican government also wants its citizens to be able to transit in Canada with no transit visa (similar to which many Asian countries can do if they end up in the US), in Mexico's case they want Mexicans to be able to transfer in Canada visa free if there end destination is select Europe and Asian countries.
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In response to the bolded part, did Icelandair ever throw public hissy fits and cancel military base contracts over their perceived lack of rights into Canada (when their 3x weekly service was their own fault for not taking all 6x weekly frequencies offered initially)?
Other Gulf carriers have watched that, and are playing ball in a much better way (Qatar, Etihad, etc). Look to see them get results before the whiners.
I too have heard rumblings about Aeromexico coming back to YYC and YEG, for a brief period a few years ago (before the Visa spat) we had both Aeromexico and Mexicana coming here. When Mexicana went belly up one of their Airbus' was actually stuck here, parked over at the AC hangar for quite some time. It would be nice to have regular service to Mexico City, but right now I'd guess the majority of folks heading to Mexico are going to holiday spots, and WS, Sunwing, Transat, and AC have those routes very well covered.