Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport

[casper]

Originally Posted by drew

^ Jet fuel is similar to diesel. If your truck were a diesel, you may have had a better chance!

Jet-A is a Kerosene type liquid while Jet-B is closer to Naphtha. While Avgas (what some of the older props use) is similar to auto gasoline.

[mattpa]

wonder if my turbo engine will hold jet fuel for .67 a litre instead of 125

[The Jabroni]

Originally Posted by RepomanYWG

A 787 dropped by today. Not a great pic but nice to see a wide body at a gate.

Any particular reason why stopped here? An emergency of some sort?

Still, that's pretty cool to see.

[RepomanYWG]

Originally Posted by The Jabroni

Any particular reason why stopped here? An emergency of some sort?

Still, that's pretty cool to see.

The flight was on it's way to LAX but stopped due to a medical emergency. Not sure if they ended up taking the passenger off the plane but fire/ambulance was waiting for the flight at the gate. They were on the ground for about 60-90 minutes.

[CoryB]

WestJet just announced their Winter schedule changes. Absolutely nothing new for Winnipeg in the long list.

Brandon picked up a second daily flight to Calgary.

There is also confirmation at the end that the 767 will fly to Gatwick (London) starting next spring.

Source

[jmt18325]

All part of hub and spoke I'm afraid.

[RepomanYWG]

I think the best chance of new routes from YWG is that New Leaf start up. However I haven't heard anything since the initial announcement.

[CoryB]

My gut feel is YWG is going to see service reductions unless a new carrier comes in. With WestJet flying both larger (767) and smaller (Q400) there will be incentives for them to look both at cutting seats (Q400) or cutting flights (767) as they grow their fleet.

New Leaf sounded like they have lots of promise but it is concerning they did this big pop announcement and were planning to start flights soon, say before Thanksgiving, but there is nothing solid on where they are flying to or how to book any tickets. Air travel is not a same day, walk-up kind of business.

[jmt18325]

Originally Posted by CoryB

My gut feel is YWG is going to see service reductions unless a new carrier comes in.

With growing numbers, that won't be possible. The seats will do nothing but go up. The destinations on the other hand...there may be a day where a flight leaves every few minutes to Toronto and Calgary, and you can't really fly much of anywhere else.

[RepomanYWG]

I agree. I don't really trust those numbers that the WAA puts out in terms of passengers but I'm sure they are somewhat accurate.

I do know that fuel wise, there has been an 8% decrease in JETA1 usage from the first half of 2014 to the first half of 2015. Now a good percentage of that is due to non-passenger flights (Cargo flights) but a significant is from passenger flights. Over 1000 fewer flights fueled during this time. And as CoryB said, it's probably going to continue to decline.

Jazz is replacing all of it's 50 passenger CRJ 200's with 74 passenger Q400's. This will probably result into fewer flights as they will now have an additional 24 seats to fill on the larger, slower aircraft. Currently the CRJ 200's are mainly used for YQT, YXE, YQR, and YEG.

Good luck ever seeing one of the WS 767's here. It just won't happen.

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by RepomanYWG

Jazz is replacing all of it's 50 passenger CRJ 200's with 74 passenger Q400's. This will probably result into fewer flights as they will now have an additional 24 seats to fill on the larger, slower aircraft. Currently the CRJ 200's are mainly used for YQT, YXE, YQR, and YEG.

Good luck ever seeing one of the WS 767's here. It just won't happen.

It's easy to see that flying two 74 passenger Q400 (148 seats) makes more sense than say 3 CRJ 200s (150 seats).

In terms of the WS 767, I could be wrong but I think long term if there are enough planes in service they would make more economical sense. For example fly a 767 to PHX twice a week with about 520 seats over four flights to PHX on a 737 with 600 seats. You end up saving in crew hours and might end up a little ahead in fuel costs. Also doing a slight reduction in seat count likely means that everything else staying even you can charge more per seat. Granted the lease costs of the relative planes also factor in but my understanding is WestJet is picking up older 767 which are seeing declining demand among airlines as they move to newer, even more efficient planes.

I think it should also be concerning to YWG that YBR picked up a second daily flight to YYC as that will be fewer people looking at flying through YWG further decreasing the passenger traffic.

[MalcolmTucker]

Replacing an infrequent flight with an even less infrequent larger flight isn't likely. Now, consolidating very close together flights between Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto I can see.

[jmt18325]

Originally Posted by CoryB

It's easy to see that flying two 74 passenger Q400 (148 seats) makes more sense than say 3 CRJ 200s (150 seats).

In terms of the WS 767, I could be wrong but I think long term if there are enough planes in service they would make more economical sense. For example fly a 767 to PHX twice a week with about 520 seats over four flights to PHX on a 737 with 600 seats. You end up saving in crew hours and might end up a little ahead in fuel costs. Also doing a slight reduction in seat count likely means that everything else staying even you can charge more per seat. Granted the lease costs of the relative planes also factor in but my understanding is WestJet is picking up older 767 which are seeing declining demand among airlines as they move to newer, even more efficient planes.

I think it should also be concerning to YWG that YBR picked up a second daily flight to YYC as that will be fewer people looking at flying through YWG further decreasing the passenger traffic.

Passenger numbers are at an all time high for YWG though.

[esquire]

^ Yeah, I don't see why the negativity. We may not be getting major service expansion like YYC, but it isn't as though the sky is falling.

As for YBR, I wouldn't put too much stock in that. 2 74 seaters a day gives you 108000 possible in/outbound seats a year. At 90% full that's 97000 a year assuming 2 flights a day, 365 days a year. I highly doubt that means a 1:1 loss for YWG, though... I think it's quite likely the case that WS has expanded the market with their flights and enticed people who otherwise would have driven or simply not gone. Even if it meant that it reduced the numbers in and out of YWG by 1,000 a week, that's still on the order of about 1% change a year. Not a huge difference. If you assume the worst, it might add up to one less flight a day to Calgary.

[RepomanYWG]

Originally Posted by jmt18325

Passenger numbers are at an all time high for YWG though.

Perhaps the airlines are doing better at filling all the seats? I had a bit of time this afternoon so between AC, Jazz, WS, WS Encore, Delta, United, Air Transat, and Sunwing flights and there were still over 400 fewer flights from Jan - Jun in 2015 than there were in 2014. Those are hard numbers

[jmt18325]

Originally Posted by RepomanYWG

Perhaps the airlines are doing better at filling all the seats? I had a bit of time this afternoon so between AC, Jazz, WS, WS Encore, Delta, United, Air Transat, and Sunwing flights and there were still over 400 fewer flights from Jan - Jun in 2015 than there were in 2014. Those are hard numbers

And so are the passenger stats. West jet is running fewer 600s to Winnipeg - that could be part of it. Similarly, Air Canada is running larger metal, and has dropped 1 flight. The same goes for Delta.

[CoryB]

Some of those infrequent service destinations have prime travel days and not so prime ones currently. A larger plane focusing on the prime dates could mean higher revenue per customer and still fill the plane while also reducing expenses (cut flights in half, cut pilot hours in half).

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by CoryB

Some of those infrequent service destinations have prime travel days and not so prime ones currently. A larger plane focusing on the prime dates could mean higher revenue per customer and still fill the plane while also reducing expenses (cut flights in half, cut pilot hours in half).

A plane in the Sky making $1 is worth more than a plane on the ground.

[ILYR]

New passenger number are in from WAA. Increases across the whole year so far. See a little bump in June during the World Cup.

Month 2015 2014 %change
Jan 308165 295020 +4.5
Feb 307261 291862 +5.3
Mar 317167 309170 +2.6
Apr 293369 284681 +3.1
May 303590 291593 +4.1
Jun 326395 309144 +5.6
Tot 1855947 1781470 +4.2

If it stays like this WAA will reach 3823928 for the year.

[esquire]

I'm a bit surprised that the numbers are not only holding steady, but growing... between the sluggish economy and the sinking dollar, I would have expected it to put the brakes somewhat on travel plans for both business and leisure. Nice to see that it hasn't... at least, not yet.