Thursday, October 21, 2010

August & September 2010 Passenger Stats

The month by month growth that YYC has seen for the majority of this year continued in August and September based on the latest numbers released by the Calgary Airport Authority.

August 2010 saw only small growth with an overall increase in passengers of 0.4% over the same month last year.  Broken down, 2 out of 3 sectors saw numbers that were actually lower then 2009 but not by much. Domestic travel was down 0.8% compared to 2009 and transborder traffic was also down a marginal 1.4%. International traffic was the only sector to see a gain, and it continued the double digit numbers growth with a 13.0% increase over 2009. Overall, 1,206,223 passengers used the airport in August.

August 2010
Domestic: 866,188
Transborder: 214,313
International: 125,722

September boded much better for YYC in comparison to August with all three sectors seeing increased numbers over 2009. The overall increase in passengers for September was 2.7% over 2009. Domestic numbers were nearly the same as the year before with only a 0.6% growth while transborder saw a good rebound over August with an increase of 4.1%. International traffic continues to be the hot spot with September 2010 coming in 16.1% higher then 2009.

September 2010
Domestic: 743,955
Transborder: 189,362
International: 112,960

From what I can tell,  the total numbers for the third quarter were the best ever. (Q3 2007 held the top honours before). It'll be interesting to see what the 4th quarter numbers will be as Lufthansa and KLM reduce their flights for the winter season and the Air Canada route to Tokyo goes on hiatus until next spring. Will the increase in sun routes make up for those losses? We'll just have to wait and see!

Source: YYC.com

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

WestJet and American Airlines announce commercial agreement

Agreement is WestJet's First Interline Agreement With a U.S. Airline - Opens Up Travel to More Cities in Canada for American's Customers

FORT WORTH, TX, Oct. 19 /CNW/ - American Airlines and WestJet Airlines announced today they have entered into an interline agreement. The interline agreement means American Airlines customers travelling to Canada and transferring to a WestJet flight can purchase a single ticket and check bags through to their final destination.

The agreement provides American's customers seamless connecting service to 25 new Canadian cities not currently served by American or American Eagle. WestJet serves a total of 31 Canadian cities and 71 destinations in 13 countries.

The connections will first be available through the six gateways in Canada currently served by American or American Eagle - Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver, Halifax and Ottawa. American and WestJet expect to implement a second phase of their interline relationship in December that will add additional connecting opportunities through WestJet's non-stop U.S. flights to Canadian cities.

"American's interline agreement with WestJet complements our North American network and greatly benefits our customers by offering additional connections to and from new Canadian markets," said Virasb Vahidi, American's Chief Commercial Officer. "WestJet offers a high-quality on-board product that our customers will enjoy."

"This agreement represents WestJet's first interline with a U.S. carrier and we are excited to be working with such a well-established and recognized global airline like American Airlines," said Hugh Dunleavy, WestJet's Executive Vice-President, Strategy and Planning. "We look forward to welcoming the many American customers on board our aircraft as guests who will experience WestJet's world-class guest experience."

The interline connecting itineraries will be available for booking on American's award-winning AA.com website, as well as through travel agencies and American Airlines Reservations, effective Nov. 9, 2010.

The companies also said they are exploring other ways to enhance customer benefits through other commercial co-operation agreements.

Source: WestJet Press Release

Monday, October 11, 2010

Cathay Pacific & WestJet launch Canadian code share service

This past week saw the official announcement of a code sharing agreement between Cathay Pacific and WestJet which will further solidifies the relationship that these carriers have had with each other.  As of October 20th, Cathay Pacific will out their code (ie own flight number) on numerous WestJet flights that connect to the two cities that Cathay flies to: Vancouver and Toronto. The cities that Cathay will 'serve' now with this agreement include Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa and Winnipeg. They will also codeshare on some of WestJet's flights between Toronto and Vancouver.

To see the complete list of code share flights please see Airline Route Updates

Thursday, October 7, 2010

KLM to increase YYC flights in Summer 2011 + equipment change

UPDATE: Per the comments below this increase is not happening,  KLM will remain at 5 flights per week for the summer season

Original post:
Thanks to IflyCalgary reader Aaron for alerting me to this airliners.net thread about the changes to KLM's scheduele for 2011. Airline Route Updates has also posted about this and hopefully these planned changes stay true as next summer is still a ways off. Anyways on to the actual news! According to preliminary schedules loaded into the global distribution systems KLM will increase their Calgary-Amsterdam flights in Summer to 6 times weekly from the 5x we saw the past two summers. On top of this the scheduled equipment on the route is now going to be the MD-11 replacing the A330-200 that is currently on the route. Both planes carry almost the same amount of passengers with the MD-11 carrying less in business class and slightly more in economy then the A330. This change is not unique to Calgary as you will see in the thread linked to above it shows that the vast majority of KLM's Canadian routes will be flown with the MD-11.

Overall this is great news for Calgary, it shows that at least in summer this route is working for KLM and they see the demand to increase the number of flights. The traffic in both directions must be quite good particularly with Dutch tourists coming here as the number of Dutch people I see and hear at tourist sites in Calgary and Banff has definitely increased from a few years ago (unscientifically non-statistically speaking of course!)