Ongoing Crisis in Canadian air travel

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Azure

Its not cheap in Canada because of lack of competition.

Just like the telecom sector, we product our oligopolies.

It's also not cheap due to all the various fees, surcharges, and taxes. Airfares themselves are (or were) pretty reasonable.

[Scornfire]

Cheaper to fly out of country than to go from Kelowna to Calgary most of the year /eyeroll

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Scornfire

Cheaper to fly out of country than to go from Kelowna to Calgary most of the year /eyeroll

Flying my son home a few times a year from Kelowna...can confirm.

Air Travel within Canada is preposterously expensive.

We do love us our taxes and fees.

[Johnny199r]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Air travel wasn’t cheap even with the low wages

It might return to pricing that was similar several decades ago where it was a big deal to fly. I’d be ok with that if it meant better reliability. Bonus points to weed out some trashy people.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

It might return to pricing that was similar several decades ago where it was a big deal to fly. I’d be ok with that if it meant better reliability. Bonus points to weed out some trashy people.

No way, outside of paying for direct or better flight times I will always take the cheapest flight available in a race to the bottom. Quality of service is not improving because price is more important than comfort.

People love to complain about lost luggage, delays, cancelled flights, bad customer service, but in the end cheapest appears to win.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

It might return to pricing that was similar several decades ago where it was a big deal to fly. I’d be ok with that if it meant better reliability. Bonus points to weed out some trashy people.

Really, pricing out working class and lower middle class people from air travel is a positive thing for you?

[sa226]

I think one of the things the airlines are desperately trying to figure out is how to balance the unprecedented accessibility of air travel these days with the lucrative business travel market.

There are people who think that 250$ is expensive for a round trip to Vancouver, and those people are now flooding terminals ready to travel again. So now you see airlines like Flair, Swoop, Lynx, Canada Jetlines and who knows who else saturating the market.

Westjet spent 5 years trying to establish a hub and spoke model to feed international wide body expansion, but when people stop flying, and business travellers start meeting on Zoom those 787s just flush dolla bills down the toilet. Now they are retreating to the west to regroup in the face of staffing issues. Westjet was a low cost model and has been trying to dip their toe in the business market. Air Canada is a traditional legacy carrier and dipped their toe in the low cost market with Rouge. The pandemic caused Westjet to retreat and pause 787 expansion, and it caused Air Canada to park their low cost arm.

It's all crazy when you think about it, all of these hotshot CEOs and upstart airlines come in guns a blazing with their busines plans, yet they are all just trying to capture a fickle market of traveller's. Millions of Canadians would sit on a milk crate for 8 hours to Rome is it meant they saved 5 bucks on their fare. Yet the Canadian government uses airports like their personal ATMs and NAV CANADA continues to charge crazy fees.

That was all pretty rambly, all that being said, everyone is looking singularity for someone to blame for the current state of the Air Travel industry, when you can pretty much blame everyone, top to bottom. Government to Airlines to contractors. The next 10 years are going to be very interesting

[Azure]

Everytime I have to fly I am amazed at how inefficient the entire ordeal is.

Basically a bunch of time is spent sitting around waiting.

Instead of fixing the inefficiencies, they find a way to give you lounge access so you can wait in comfort and style with free food and drinks.

[Johnny199r]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Really, pricing out working class and lower middle class people from air travel is a positive thing for you?

If it means less people that don’t know how to behave in public then sign me up.

[Johnny199r]

Originally Posted by sa226

I think one of the things the airlines are desperately trying to figure out is how to balance the unprecedented accessibility of air travel these days with the lucrative business travel market.

There are people who think that 250$ is expensive for a round trip to Vancouver, and those people are now flooding terminals ready to travel again. So now you see airlines like Flair, Swoop, Lynx, Canada Jetlines and who knows who else saturating the market.

Westjet spent 5 years trying to establish a hub and spoke model to feed international wide body expansion, but when people stop flying, and business travellers start meeting on Zoom those 787s just flush dolla bills down the toilet. Now they are retreating to the west to regroup in the face of staffing issues. Westjet was a low cost model and has been trying to dip their toe in the business market. Air Canada is a traditional legacy carrier and dipped their toe in the low cost market with Rouge. The pandemic caused Westjet to retreat and pause 787 expansion, and it caused Air Canada to park their low cost arm.

It's all crazy when you think about it, all of these hotshot CEOs and upstart airlines come in guns a blazing with their busines plans, yet they are all just trying to capture a fickle market of traveller's. Millions of Canadians would sit on a milk crate for 8 hours to Rome is it meant they saved 5 bucks on their fare. Yet the Canadian government uses airports like their personal ATMs and NAV CANADA continues to charge crazy fees.

That was all pretty rambly, all that being said, everyone is looking singularity for someone to blame for the current state of the Air Travel industry, when you can pretty much blame everyone, top to bottom. Government to Airlines to contractors. The next 10 years are going to be very interesting

International overseas travel is really lucrative for airlines. That’s why Air Canada tries to really market international flights to Americans with stopovers to Toronto or Montreal on their way to Europe. Thats what makes them a lot money, not flying someone from Calgary to Vancouver or Toronto. Business class is the other way airlines make a ton of money, that can apply to any flight, but especially overseas flights.

I agree with your post, lots of people these days think it should cost a few hundred bucks to fly. I personally think airlines will be changing their model - increasing prices to account for fuel and the inevitable pay raises for staff in order to bring more stability to their airline. Right now, they can’t attract and keep front line staff. Hard to change that with cheap tickets.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

If it means less people that don’t know how to behave in public then sign me up.

I'll take an 8 hour flight beside the average lower middle class person than an entitled rich loser any day of the week.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Really, pricing out working class and lower middle class people from air travel is a positive thing for you?

It would certainly be a step to cut down on carbon emissions. You'd eliminate 2-3% worldwide emissions right there.

[Johnny199r]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I'll take an 8 hour flight beside the average lower middle class person than an entitled rich loser any day of the week.

I just want someone who’s going to keep reasonably quiet and have manners. I could care less how much money they make.

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I'll take an 8 hour flight beside the average lower middle class person than an entitled rich loser any day of the week.

Back behind the curtain PepsiFree!

[Johnny199r]

Toronto’s airport is now worst in the world for delays. The reason may not be what you think

http://https://www.thestar.com/busin...bly-wrong.html

This is the best, most comprehensive explanation of the problems with Air Travel out of Pearson airport in Toronto.

The main culprit is that Air Canada ramped their schedule of flights at the last second really quickly this year (after Omicron settled down, far later than how flight schedules are usually made), adding tons of flights that staffing and infastructure simply wasn't in place for (including airlines, airport and 3rd party staff/infastructure). It's easy to lay off the whole industry on quick notice, but it's hard to hire back an entire industry on short notice.

Air Canada also pursued a policy called "sixth freedom" whereby they added lots of flights to the U.S, including 2nd tier cities, in the hopes of attracting Americans to fly through Toronto to overseas destinations (that's where the money is at). This bunched together arrivals at Pearson creating congestion at certain times.

Additionally, airlines, airports and government have all been doing their own thing and blaming each other. There was no one in charge of this system. They just put their heads down, did whatever they wanted and then came up with a PR strategy instead of being honest - "it's entirely the federal government's fault due to their Covid testing!!!".

There is a level of blame to go around for every player in the aviation system for poor decision making (government, airports, 3rd party vendors, airlines) but the biggest problem by a country mile has been airlines ramping up their flight offerings overnight knowing that the staff and infastructure is not remotely close to being there to be able to provide the service and refusing to be honest about it because they see $$$$$.

[CliffFletcher]

Business and first class subsidizes the rest of us. Fewer rich people flying means higher prices for everyone else.

But really, there’s never been a cheaper time to fly or more people flying. In 1983, only 22 per cent of people flew even once in a calendar year. Today around half of people do.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

And 100 years ago no one flew at all! It’s also totally irrelevant to the current crisis at Canadian airports and in the airline industry.

30 years ago most people didn’t have internet or cell phones. Is that somehow relevant to high telecom prices in Canada? Who could say? But it’s important!

[Johnny199r]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

And 100 years ago no one flew at all! It’s also totally irrelevant to the current crisis at Canadian airports and in the airline industry.

30 years ago most people didn’t have internet or cell phones. Is that somehow relevant to high telecom prices in Canada? Who could say? But it’s important!

That didn't come off the way you think it did.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

That didn't come off the way you think it did.

That doesn’t even make sense. I wrote exactly what I meant to write.

[Torture]

Travelled through Pearson twice this week. Nothing exciting happened. Breezed through security and my flights all left and arrived on time.