occidentalcapital
Senior Member
Wow! Nice! Frankfurt is an important market for business travellers and leisure, lots of onward connections also possible through Condor and partners.
I've connected in Houston four times, to Mexico, Honduras, Panama and Peru. I've used both the red-eye and the morning flight, and I can say neither are timed for great connections to Central or South America. I've had a 4 hour layover, an 8 hour layover and an overnight layover. I would love for an afternoon flight out of Edmonton to better connect to the evening departure bank to Latin America.Looking to make a booking for next summer, the Houston flight is returning as an evening flight IAH-YEG, then a red-eye YEG-IAH. The red-eye isn't great, but I like the evening flight back to YEG. I wonder if there are plans to add a morning flight YEG-IAH?
Partly a YEG post, partly an ETS post of my experience taking transit to and from the airport around the long weekend:
Took the bus in from the airport Friday. There were 44 people on board the 1545 departure with a few people getting on and off at the outlet mall. Returned to the airport Tuesday at 1105 and there were 26 people on board, with some standing. I don't know the mix of passengers and staff, but fair to say there were both. There was even one person going on to Leduc.
A few of observations:
- The stops at either end really need some love. In both cases, I had the choice of waiting in the hot sun and waiting several metres away and risking not getting a seat. Not pleasant either way.
- Signage is ok, not great at both ends and could really use more prominence at the airport. A lot of passengers walked around looking a bit lost before finding their way
- Access is still slightly out of the way at both ends
- Because of those factors, the service still feels like a temporary add-on as opposed to a viable transportation option to the city centre
- The service was fast, but got stuck in traffic at the 23rd Ave interchange due to an accident
- The ARC machine at the airport is nowhere near the stop, which really should be fixed
- I don't know ridership on the route, but from what I saw, ETS should be looking at a 30-minute frequency through the daytime. In my case, I had the choice of arriving 2.5 hours early for my flight or a little more than 1 hour before because of a quirk in the midday scheduling. Considering the bus was essentially full, I got the impression additional frequencies would be justified
- Most people I saw board paid the $5 fare, which is a nice, simple and easy cash fare. Though for a visitor like me, the lack of a non-cash option is a challenge