Tuesday, March 31, 2009

TAP Portugal begins codesharing on Air Canada's YYC-LHR route

According to Airline Route Updates, TAP Portugal is now codesharing on Air Canada's Calgary-London route (as well as others from Canada). While not a new flight it does avail another avenue of booking for the Calgary-London flight. Since TAP will sell their own tickets for the flight their is a possibility of finding lower fares then what Air Canada may be offering. We see this already as bmi codeshares on the same flight and does occassionally price out less then Air Canada.

TAP Flight numbers are as follows:
TP8269 (AC850) Calgary - London
TP8268 (AC851) London - Calgary

Friday, March 27, 2009

Saskatchewan's boom may further hurt YYC's 2009 Passenger Numbers

As I wrote on the Rewards Canada blog, Saskatchewan is Canada's booming province right now and because of the prosperity being seen it means more direct flights. Last week both Delta and United announced new direct flights out of Saskatoon and Regina to their respective hubs in Salt Lake City, Chicago and Denver. In the past year other direct flights were also started by United out of Saskatoon.

What does this mean to Calgary and YYC? It means the chance of lower numbers of passengers from Saskatchewan connecting through YYC to get to the States, primarily those who fly on the Star Alliance connection of Air Canada and United. Air Canada tends to funnel passengers out of Saskatchewan through Calgary to their own and United's Calgary-U.S. flights. Now residents of Saskatchewan can bypass Calgary with the new direct flights.

Will it be a dramatic drop in numbers? It should not be too significant of drop as the majority of the new Saskatchewan flights are on 50 seat CRJ-200's and some may choose cheaper flight that connect through Calgary (many times flights with connections price out cheaper then direct flights). Nonetheless it could produce as much as a five figure drop in YYC's already declining passenger numbers.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Earn Elite Qualifying Bonuses on major U.S. carriers serving YYC

Following close on the heels of American Airlines Elite Qualifying Bonus offer launched last week, the rest of the major U.S. airlines have now launched their own Elite Qualifying Bonus offers for Spring 2009. Most of the flights offered out of Calgary on these U.S. airlines do qualify for the bonus offers.

I have compiled all of them to date on one page on Rewards Canada and will continue to update it should more offers come up. You can visit the page here

To date these are the airlines serving Calgary that are featuring an Elite Qualifying Offer
American
Continental
Delta
Northwest
United

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Earn Double Aeroplan Miles on Air Canada's new routes out of YYC

To celebrate and help promote the launch of Air Canada's new routes out of Calgary, Aeroplan is offering double miles for the non-stop flights to London, ON, Portland and San Diego. To earn the bonus miles you must register (free) prior to travelling. The only new route missing a bonus mile offering is the new seasonal service to Whitehorse.

Promotion run dates :
Calgary - London, ON Jun 1 - Jun 30, 09
Calgary - Portland Jun 15 - Jul 31, 09
Calgary - San Diego May 15 - Jun 30, 09

For full details and registration links please vist the Aeroplan Bonus Offer page on Rewards Canada.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Earn up to 50,000 Bonus Executive Club Miles for YYC-LHR and beyond


British Airways has launched their North American Spring Executive Club promotion and it is quite a bountiful one! It available on all of BA's mainline flights from Canada, the U.S. and Caribbean. So of course it means that the British Airways Calgary-London flight is included.

If you fly in the World Traveller or World Traveller Plus you will earn 25,000 bonus miles per round trip (Eligible classes Y,B,H,W,E or T)

If you fly in Club World or First Class you will earn 50,000 bonus miles per round trip. (Eligible classes (F,A,J, C, D, R or I). That 50,000 is all you need to redeem for a economy class round trip ticket between North America and Western Europe.

The promo requires registration (free) and runs until June 30. By the way there is no limit to number of times you can earn the bonus miles, so if you have a lot of BA flights coming up be sure to register for this one.

For all details and registration click here to go to the offer on BA's website

Friday, March 13, 2009

YYC's Passenger Traffic Drops 3.8% in January

Despite 2008 being a record year for the number of passengers going through Calgary International, the general trend of a passenger decline since September continued in the first month of 2009.

941,798 passengers were recorded at YYC for January 2009 which represents a 3.8% drop from the same month in 2008. As the global economic downturn continues and with a slow down in the oil patch, YYC will more then likely continue to see a decline in the number of passengers over the coming months.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Lufthansa changes YYC-FRA flight to A340 from A330



Perhaps a sign of the time, but as of Mar 30, 09 Lufthansa will use a A340-300 on the Calgary-Frankfurt route instead of the A330 that has been used since the service restarted.

The A340 is a two class plane (no First Class) and has more Economy class seats then the A330. This probably signals that LH was not selling enough First Class seats and that the A330 would be more profitable elsewhere.

The increase in economy seats with the A340 should help out for the Spring/Summer European tourist season as most of them tend not to fly in Business or First Class.

Monday, March 9, 2009

WestJet extends some sun destinations into the summer season


Although typically known as winter destinations, WestJet will be flying once weekly between Calgary and Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Orlando for the summer season.

The non-stop services to these cities will all fly on Saturdays from May 9 - Oct 31, 09 with the following schedule:

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Flight Route Departure Arrival
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WS 770 Calgary - Cabo San Lucas 9:30 a.m. 1:47 p.m.
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WS 771 Cabo San Lucas - Calgary 2:40 p.m. 7:02 p.m.
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WS 774 Calgary - Puerto Vallarta 10:30 a.m. 4:15 p.m.
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WS 775 Puerto Vallarta - Calgary 5:05 p.m. 8:53 p.m.
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WS 776 Calgary - Mazatlan 11:00 a.m. 3:26 p.m.
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WS 777 Mazatlan - Calgary 4:15 p.m. 8:43 p.m.
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WS 906 Calgary - Orlando 10:15 a.m. 5:11 p.m.
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WS 907 Orlando - Calgary 5:00 p.m. 8:22 p.m.
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Air Canada's YYC-JFK flight moves to EWR (Newark)


Some news from early February, but as of April 1 Air Canada is moving the Calgary-New York JFK flight to Newark. There appears to be some consolidation here as AC's Vancouver-JFK flight is also moving to EWR.

While there is no official news on why the change is happening one can assume it is in anticipation of Continental Airlines joining the Star Alliance and that Newark is one of Continental's largest hubs.

Air Canada has also applied to the US DOT to offer code sharing service on TAP Air Portugal flights between Newark and Lisbon and Porto and for TAP to code share on AC flights out of Newark. Although initially the TAP code would only go on AC's flights to Toronto and Montreal it is planned to be expanded to other cities in Canada that are served from Newark, ie Calgary and Vancouver.

Friday, March 6, 2009

KLM Reduces new Calgary-Amsterdam flight to 4x weekly for May

According to KLM's latest schedule, it appears the first month of this route is being dropped down to 4x weekly with 5x weekly service (as originally announced) not commencing until Jun 4.

For May the flight will not operate on Monday, Wednesdays and Saturdays. While in June a Wednesday flight will be added.

US Airways to discontinue Las Vegas route from Calgary

Catching up on some older news, effective Jun 2, 09, US Airways will discontinue its Calgary-Las Vegas route. This is part of a larger operation cut of routes out of Las Vegas.

US Airways' will continue to serve Phoenix from Calgary

Source:
Airline Route Updates

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Earn up to 15,000 bonus WorldPerks miles on KLM's new Calgary-Amsterdam route


Earn up to 15,000 Bonus WorldPerks Miles on nonstop flights between Calgary and Amsterdam
Bonuses as follows:
World Business ClassSM (J/C) 15,000 miles
Economy Class (Z/Y/S/B/M) 10,000 miles
Other Economy Class (H/Q/V/L/T/K) 5,000 miles
Registration is required for the promotion (Free)
Register by Jun 30 for travel until Jul 15, 2009

Full Details (via Rewards Canada)

YYC recaptures 3rd spot for Busiest Airports in Canada

The 12.5 million passengers that went through YYC in 2008 has helped place Calgary ahead of Montreal (YUL) for the 2008 busiest airports in Canada. Ranking third behind Toronto and Vancouver, Calgary held this position once before when Montreal still had two airports that kept passenger numbers lower per airport.

The final numbers
Calgary 12,506,893
Montreal 12,379,843

Sources
yyc.com
admtl.com

Welcome to I Fly Calgary

I would like to welcome you to IFlyCalgary.ca, a place where travellers from Calgary can find information on flying out of there home town airport.

Why start this page? Well there really isn't a place to find all the available information on flying from YYC. True you can find out about new routes in the news or other places, but how many places tell you when a route is cancelled or downgraded? How many let you know specific bonus offers or travel deals for flying from YYC and so forth. Hence, IFlyCalgary was born.