Calgary International Airport III
 

This thread is a continuation of the previous thread. Please proceed.

WS has extended a bunch of winter routes into the summer. None were extended into July/August.

HNL - Until June 29
OGG - Until June 30
FLL - Until June 15
VRA - Until June 29
MBJ - Until May 25
PUJ - Until June 29

BZE was also extended to May 5.

I’m assuming down gauging to 737 on the Hawaii flights?

Yeah everything's on the 737 it seems. Also LIR extended into the end of May. I wonder if any of these routes go into July/August?

The Euro flights will also get an extension for sure. I was reading an article where AC was saying that the Europe travel season was starting earlier and ending later. Maybe it's the same for sun flights?

Also looking at the last NRT flight tomorrow on the WS seat map, it looks almost completely sold out. A shame that NRT can't be increased but it'll probably go year round eventually at least.

Westjet officially approved to fly to Iceland.
Would be interesting choice for Westjet next summer if it goes forwrd.

https://aviationweek.com/air-transpo...celand-service

Lynx launched flights to MCO today, its 4th overall transborder route. Runs 2x weekly on Tue / Sat until April.

This brings our current offering to Florida to 12x weekly. (9x MCO / 3x FLL). It will further expand to 15x weekly in December with 10x MCO / 4x FLL and 1x TPA.

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Also today is the day WS changes ramp contractors. Here's hoping things get better.

It is early but from what I observe, the gongshow for WS ground handling will mostly continue but what will change is that WS will start to hold them to a higher standard. It's pretty much the same people crossing over with very little new personnel.

I still think it's nuts to not have brought TAC back, but to befair even if they had, really all you can expect with such a large change over in 1 day is for the new provider to barely tread water for weeks I'd guess. Really just focus on the bare minimum, then build up from there.

If this time next year it's not better than ATS, I'd hope they would seriously consider bringing it back in house. Onex has no consideration for the long term though, so if they still own wj, I wouldn't count on them doing the right thing.

Looks like WS is cutting LGW for S24. It was completely removed in this weeks update in the OAG. Haven't found any other changes yet.

New TA destination in the works? :lurk:

Or TP?

Based on no inside-information at all, I would suggest the next European destination will be Copenhagen. It is after all a cruise ship port that will help fill the aircraft with connecting Americans. SAS is likely leaving Star to join SkyTeam.

The only problem with my theory is the SAS transition is unlikely to be complete before next summer and it would be pre-mature for WestJet to try to negotiate a deal with them.

I imagine existing routes will see increases too, like NRT could be upped to 5x weekly (or daily if they're feeling bold enough). Maybe BCN/EDI/FCO pick up some additional frequencies as well.

As for new destinations, it'll probably be somewhere in Europe like ATH/LIS, etc. Only TP possibility I could see is ICN.

Does anyone know if the loads were ok on LGW? Or I guess they think they can do better than LGW with new routes? Seems a bit odd to have cut LGW.

Having daily LGW and LHR on WS was kind of overkill, I know BA left and theoretically WS should be able to absorb their seats, but I don't think it works exactly like that, losing BA could possibly affect the inbound pax from Europe, who would have familiarity with BA and not WS. But who knows, this is all just possibilities, I am in no way in the industry or privy to any of that info, it's just a suggestion. I feel like WS providing the two flights to two airports in the same city maybe didn't produce the best results. It is a lot of seats, their Dreamliners have capacity for 320 pax. For comparison, BA operated the 787-8 with a 204 seat capacity. And much more premium. Two planes of 320 pax each is a huge increase. If they are cutting it, it's for a reason. They would look at their entire network and make these decisions strategically, not emotionally. I was skeptical about AC's commitment to the route before, but it survived the latest routes of cuts that got rid of LAX, FRA, etc. So it had to be relatively strong for them to bother sticking around with a single long haul route (LHR is AC's premier route, undoubtedly the most popular European route across the whole country, and will likely be the first destination to return to airports like YYT, YEG, and YOW). They must be over the moon to see WS pull one of it's daily flights, I bet they weren't expecting to be handed a win in YYC lol, it's been cuts galore and yet LHR stayed. And with this news of WS pulling back their capacity, Air Canada is probably not going anywhere.

Of course this could all be false, and maybe Air Canada will smell weakness in WS's international business and re-establish some presence in YYC. Who knows, but with only 7 Dreamliners in the fleet, axing an entire daily route is not insignificant, I too am curious what the aircraft will do. For some reason it would be so anti-climactic if it got deployed on more YYZ pairings or something lol. I feel like it calls for use in Europe or Asia on a route with more demand, not on a domestic or sun route. Would Copenhagen really be the next logical destination? I'm just asking,it very well could be. But I feel like Athens or
Madrid, or even bringing AMS back would come before, but that's not based on anything other than my first gut instrict personally.

I wonder if they are even considering reestablishing YYZ, who knows, it's very hard to predict what they are doing now. I could even see them flip flopping on the all Dreamliners based in YYC thing, not for any reason in particular, just that I could see anything being a possibility with WS nowadays

I'm sorta assuming that if LGW is being removed now that some sort of public update is coming next week.

LGW loads were great, pretty much on par with LHR if not better.

LGW doesn't necessarily have to be unprofitable to be cut. When you're limited by frames as WS is, they might be prioritizing expansion over continued profitability at LGW which they already know works.

I’m gonna go out on a limb, and take a guess that WS is not going to be returning to AMS any time soon, given the AMS airport restrictions. WS is an insignificant carrier there and likely won’t be allowed a slot there.

I could also see that happening unfortunately, JetBlue also lost their AMS slots and AMS seems to be slicing the newer entrants first.

Side-note, does anyone know if WS still has DXB slots?