Edmonton International Airport (EIA/YEG)

[MacLac]

Wasn't the AC YEG-SFO flight a revenue guarantee flight using government money to keep it going? That is what I was told anyway.

You were "told" this by whom? Are you a travel/airport/airline insider? Good for you for having that secret "insider" knowledge. My take, is that ZERO.ZERO tourists are going to San Fran cause it is such a shit hole now. NO big loss at all, in fact - we missed out when it was a good looking town back in the day with a lack of flights, remember travelling there in the 80's as a kid and the 90's when I was in my 20'. Now, it is the poster child for "post-apocalyptic" zombie lands.

I'm sure if it such a popular route - WS will up it to Daily.

 

[Mackwin]

You were "told" this by whom? Are you a travel/airport/airline insider? Good for you for having that secret "insider" knowledge. My take, is that ZERO.ZERO tourists are going to San Fran cause it is such a shit hole now. NO big loss at all, in fact - we missed out when it was a good looking town back in the day with a lack of flights, remember travelling there in the 80's as a kid and the 90's when I was in my 20'. Now, it is the poster child for "post-apocalyptic" zombie lands.

Calm down Karen. I was just asking.

 

[BASE]

Quite the unfortunate news at a time when transborder has seen a lot of good momentum at YEG.

 

[Oilers99]

Basically AC fully retreating on Edmonton, that SFO flight was great for Star Alliance connections.

 

[Gronk!]

If you ask me, AC is shooting themselves in the foot. There are YEG-SFO non-stop flights with other airlines. Tech/IT/ML/AI is their bread and butter.

 

[Coprolite]

Looks like Air Canada's last flight to SFO is October 13th

Edit: scheduled to resume in May, so it's going seasonal

Weird one to cut. Any time I've flown it, it's been pretty full, and I'm usually going down there February-March.

 

[Coprolite]

You were "told" this by whom? Are you a travel/airport/airline insider? Good for you for having that secret "insider" knowledge. My take, is that ZERO.ZERO tourists are going to San Fran cause it is such a shit hole now. NO big loss at all, in fact - we missed out when it was a good looking town back in the day with a lack of flights, remember travelling there in the 80's as a kid and the 90's when I was in my 20'. Now, it is the poster child for "post-apocalyptic" zombie lands.

I'm sure if it such a popular route - WS will up it to Daily.

It's actually fine. I don't go down there for tourism, but the city is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be (and 1980s San Fran had some serious sketch to it, including rather more by way of gang shootings in Chinatown and the Mission, with violence in general peaking back in 1993). If I miss anything about the place, it's that it's gotten overly yuppy, but it's still a lovely city. And if tourism were required to fill flights, no one would run flights to Edmonton more than weekly. Business travel is what keeps flights going.

 

[MacLac]

Anything to do with the retiring of their CRJ-200 fleet?

 

[Coprolite]

Anything to do with the retiring of their CRJ-200 fleet?

It was run by CRJ-900s. Given the sorts of load factors I was seeing on it consistently, even when the US still had vaccine restrictions, it's one of those routes that's kind of screaming for an A220. I would be booking six to eight weeks out and already that flight would be heavily sold. Granted it was usually selling out in coach and I was often grabbing business class tickets for only slightly more than what a coach airfare would be, so maybe they were losing on that end of the market. Still, weird move given Air Canada's recent focus on SFO on account of its Star Alliance connections.

 

[EdmTrekker]

I wonder if AC was getting a subsidy from EIA and the time has expired and was not offered again and perhaps why AC responded with seasonal only? Is there enough traffic for WS or Flair to warrant daily 737?

 

[Oilers99]

I wonder if AC was getting a subsidy from EIA and the time has expired and was not offered again and perhaps why AC responded with seasonal only? Is there enough traffic for WS or Flair to warrant daily 737?

the problem with Flair and WJ is that I don't believe SFO was a final destination, it was a hub for star alliance and i don't believe Delta does a ton out of SFO.

 

[Westendyeg]

Flair already flew the route before and dropped it.

 

[David A]

If you ask me, AC is shooting themselves in the foot. There are YEG-SFO non-stop flights with other airlines. Tech/IT/ML/AI is their bread and butter.

Perhaps AC can handle anything but competition.

 

[Coprolite]

the problem with Flair and WJ is that I don't believe SFO was a final destination, it was a hub for star alliance and i don't believe Delta does a ton out of SFO.

Flair already flew the route before and dropped it.

Perhaps AC can handle anything but competition.

In the past, whenever WestJet ran the flight, it was seasonal. Delta makes its hubs at SEA and LAX, so they're not going to have the connection feeder dynamic. SFO is one of the more expensive airports for an airline to operate out of, to boot. If Air Canada or United can't make year round daily service work, I don't see any other airline out there that'll be able to pull it off, especially with WestJet undergoing rapid enshittification of its customer service experiences ever since Dingus von Dumkopf took the reigns. Like maybe if they had this reputation for reliability and customer service along with the slight price advantage and the coherent strategic vision towards Edmonton that they used to, they could make it work, but nowadays they don't really have any advantages over Air Canada except different chains of connections.