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Edmonton International Airport (EIA/YEG)

Lethbridge could come in time as it's getting to a good size but it's still difficult with it being a reasonable drive to catch a flight out of yyc and I don't think westjet even through link would overfly Calgary to send people our way anytime soon. Did central mountain air serve it once upon a time?
 
I took a look into regional, northern and Canadian flying.

YEG will be very well served this summer season but a few gaps remain.

In Northern Alberta, Peace River and Bonnyville have not resumed after covid. Both places have populations of about 6,000 and are not well-served by other airports. For comparison YEG already serves High Level pop. 3,922.

In other areas of Alberta, we need regional service to Lethbridge (pop. 123,847), and Medicine Hat (pop. 67,376), and possibly Lloydminster (pop. 31, 582).

In British Columbia, YEG has surprisingly good reach but a few gaps, and some of the existing service is only seasonal. YEG should push for regional service to Ft. St. John (pop. 28,729 and within YEG's traditional NW catchment), possibly Cranbrook (pop. 27,040), Williams Lake (pop. 23,608), and Prince Rupert (pop. 13,442, but strategically important).

For northern routes, YEG has good reach with nonstop or same plane service to almost all population centres. YEG could benefit from same plane service to Fort Simpson, NWT (pop. 1,100), or upgrade existing same plane service to nonstop to Hay River, NWT (pop. 3,169), Inuvik, NWT (pop. 3,137), Fort Smith, NWT (pop. 2,248), Rankin Inlet, Nunavut (pop. 2,975), or Cambridge Bay, Nunavut (pop. 1,760), although this would sidestep Canadian North's Yellowknife hub so probably not a practical option. YEG is missing nonstop service to Iqaluit (pop. 7,429), this would be a relatively long flight, but be the feather in YEG's cap for northern service. Other areas of focus: YEG needs some carrier to resume Anchorage, and it would be great if the Whitehorse flight went nonstop both ways.

Ontario is very well served from the major and medium sized cities, with the notable exception of Windsor (pop. 422,630).

In Nova Scotia, longstanding Halifax service would be complemented with service to the tourist-friendly Cape Breton (Sydney) (pop. 98,318) on a seasonal 1x or 2x weekly basis, although the runway might not be long enough for a 737.

In New Brunswick, the new service to Moncton (pop. 157,717) would be complemented with service to Saint John (pop. 130,613) and/or Fredericton (pop. 108,610).

Service to Quebec is reasonably strong with Quebec City (pop. 839,311) starting this summer and longstanding Montreal service from a few different carriers. The other population centres in Quebec would be difficult to viably serve nonstop.

In summary, there remain opportunities for regional growth (north, Alberta, BC), and of course strengthening all existing routes to major centres through more frequency or larger aircraft.

We had service to Fort St. John until October when CMA ended that route.

I think the next Canadian route we get will be Terrace.
 
Federal budget - $100m to EIA for 2000 acre cargo hub. From the national trade corridors fund.
This is a reannouncement but nice to see:

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Previous stats posted here showed the Flair flight to SFO being more than half empty vs. Air Canada doing very well - don't think that was Summer though.

I flew Flair to SFO last year for so cheap and it was a little over half full. If people aren't going to use Flair for that flight I'm not surprised they would reallocate that resource for another route.

I don't know how many people actually travel to SFO to stay there. ACs SFO flight is always full as it is a great connector airport but for Flair it was a final destination. It makes sense that it wasn't very full.
 
I don't know how many people actually travel to SFO to stay there. ACs SFO flight is always full as it is a great connector airport but for Flair it was a final destination. It makes sense that it wasn't very full.

That must be the reason then as the numbers for the 2/wk route speak for themselves - the flight didn't perform well.

Flair is keeping their 4/wk SFO route from Vancouver though so apparently more people there are making SFO their final destination.
 
Lethbridge could come in time as it's getting to a good size but it's still difficult with it being a reasonable drive to catch a flight out of yyc and I don't think westjet even through link would overfly Calgary to send people our way anytime soon. Did central mountain air serve it once upon a time?
Hey, its ok to fly over Edmonton, but apparently not precious Calgary.
 
Great news - I know this is for cargo capacity but I imagine this should help us get more flights?
Cargo carried in passenger aircraft can definitely make a potential flight more attractive to an airline. But with the scale of the proposed cargo hub I would imagine YEG would see many more dedicated cargo aircraft.
 
 
^ The OEG/One Properties tried the exact same back on April 1 of 2017. 500 feet, downtown in the ICe District somewhere. YEG's third tallest structure behind Stantec and the JW. I remember the video with Bob Black (??) from the OEG. Was a good one.
 
I know. That was OEG's April Fools joke back in 2017. Was very well done. Interviews with Bob Black and a few others. They had a few renderings of the massive statue with Roger's, Stantec and and the JW in the background. It was right up there with a previous April 1 announcement of how they were going to cut up the ice surface at the old coliseum, set all the ice blocks on pallets, transport them to Roger's and then reset and freeze them all together to form the new ice surface at Roger's. Ahhh good times....
 

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