Wednesday, March 30, 2011

V Australia applies to code-share on Delta's YYC-SLC route

Recently Australia's V Australia was approved to code-share directly on flights between Canada and Australia however they are not partnered with Air Canada (the only airline offering direct flights) so it is unknown whether V will act upon this approval anytime soon. That being said, they were also approved to code-share on Delta flights between Canada and the U.S. and this is where V Australia is taking action. The airline applied to the U.S. DOT to code-share directly on DL's flights between Calgary (and Vancouver) and Salt Lake City. If approved it could mean that us flyers here in Calgary could book a single V Australia ticket from YYC to the land down under although it would mean 2 stops (SLC and LAX). For some further analysis (and predictions) on this news please see the source for our post:  FlightGlobal.com

Friday, March 25, 2011

January 2011 Passenger Stats

The growth in passengers at YYC continued in January 2011 although like the previous month it was minuscule.

Compared to January 2010, the first month of 2011 saw passenger numbers increase by an overall amount of 0.6%. All three sectors carved out small increases with domestic travel increasing 0.6%, Transborder 0.9% and International 0.5%. Overall, 964,189 passengers used the airport in January.

January 2011
Domestic: 637,036
Transborder: 205,947
International: 121,206

Source: YYC.com

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Air Canada cuts Calgary to Chicago, London, ON and San Francisco flights

According to a news release from Air Canada, the airline will be cutting three Calgary routes as of May 1. The routes being cut are Calgary to London Ontario, Chicago and San Francisco. Air Canada says it can no longer operate the routes profitably due to high fuel costs.

Source: Air Canada

Thursday, March 3, 2011

December + Full Year Passenger stats

Despite being one of the slowest months in 2010, the December passenger numbers for YYC were still positive a helped contribute to a record year of 12,630,695 passengers! If you have been cooped up then this will be news to you otherwise you will have seen it on or in the news for the past couple of days. I, unfortunately left this in my in-box for a couple days and now it is relatively old news but here it goes anyways:

With only April 2010 showing smaller growth then December, the month just barely carved out a positive growth number of 0.4% over December 2009. Domestic traffic saw a 0.7% growth while Transborder numbers saw the biggest gain of 1.2%. For International numbers, December was the first month to see a negative amount with a 2.5% drop in passengers from 2009. Overall the month saw 1,035,474 passengers go through YYC.

December 2010
Domestic: 720,808
Transborder: 210,594
International: 104,072

2010 Totals (% Change)
Domestic: 8,844,080  (2.3%)
Transborder: 2,462,295 (4.4%)
International: 1,324,320 (12.9%)


Source: YYC.com

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Westjet, American Airlines expand relationship with code share agreement

Cross-post from my RewardsCanada.ca blog

Following an earlier interlining announcement in October 2010, WestJet and American Airlines have announced a new code share agreement between the two airlines. The agreement will allow each airline to place their codes on the other airlines flights. At this point this means American customers will be able to connect to up to 20 cities in Canada that AA or American Eagle does not serve while WestJet customers will be able to fly on WestJet coded American Airlines flights from Canada to Boston and Chicago. Future arrangements should see the WestJet place their codes on American flights to more cities.

For our readers, the biggest perk here is the reciprocal frequent flyer benefits in the agreement. This means members of either airlines frequent flyer programs will be able to earn AAdvantage miles or WestJet dollars on the code share flights. What is unknown at this time is whether you have to fly a connecting flight on your actual airline to earn miles/dollars or if you will be able to earn those miles for the code share flight only. In most other agreements as long as the flight has your main airline's code then you get the miles/dollars but on some occasions some programs have made it more restrictive that you have to connect to/from a flight flown with your airlines own metal. Hopefully  that will not be the case here as they may attract a few more business customers to the WestJet frequent guest program primarily out east with the numerous flights that AA has from Eastern Canada to Boston and Chicago.

Source: WestJet