Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

More important to get some competition on the YWG-MSP route. The cheapest return ticket for travel in the next week is just under $1,000 for a 400 mile flight. As much as many European or even East Asian destinations!

It is peculiar, isn't it... you can get a DL ticket to MSP for $518 which appears to be their every day price on that route, or you can spend $360 and fly to Miami on DL, with a stop in MSP!

Not surprisingly, the only times I've flown to MSP have been when I've been connecting on other Northwest and now Delta flights.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Jammon

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't YWG submit requests for service to LAX and Manilla? There is a website that I can't remember the name of for the life of me where airport authorities submit requests to airlines for service routes. But, I seem to remember rumours 10 years ago that YWG was getting a direct flight to LAX and it has never materialized..

Manila will never happen except possibly for a once a week discount charter type of flight. Even that would be unlikely.

[Jammon]

Originally Posted by esquire

Manila will never happen except possibly for a once a week discount charter type of flight. Even that would be unlikely.

Whether or not it will happen, is not really the issue. I just remember seeing this website a few years ago and WAA was requesting weekly service to Manilla and a direct route to LAX as a possible alternative for flights to Asia. And it makes sense. I could see YWG supporting a direct flight to LAX 2-3x a week.

[esquire]

^ WAA is just the organization that runs the airport... it could ask for anything it wants to but it's ultimately the airlines that decide where their planes are going to fly. The only thing that WAA can do is offer subsidies to sweeten the pot, but WAA has rightly decided that it won't pursue that as subsidized routes tend to stop running once the subsidies run out.

[Curmudgeon]

There is no year-round market for a non-stop YWG-LAX.

Air Canada offers one daily non-stop from Calgary to L.A., as does WestJet, but those flights handle a large number of the passengers originating in the entire prairie region, including Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina and smaller centres.

Edmonton does have one non-stop to LAX provided by WestJet.

Number of passengers by airport (2016):

YYC 15.7 million
YEG 7.6 million
YWG 4.0 million

[Jammon]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

There is no year-round market for a non-stop YWG-LAX.

Air Canada offers one daily non-stop from Calgary to L.A., as does WestJet, but those flights handle a large number of the passengers originating in the entire prairie region, including Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina and smaller centres.

Edmonton does have one non-stop to LAX provided by WestJet.

Number of passengers by airport (2016):

YYC 15.7 million
YEG 7.6 million
YWG 4.0 million

The other difference is that both of those cities also offer flights to SFO. So, you really can't make that comparison to YWG. A lot of people use LAX and SFO as stepping stones to the Asian market and I think a really good analysis of the SK-MB-NWO-Northern MN-ND market would help determine whether a YWG-LAX flight could be supported.

[Authentic_City]

The WAA identified it's top 10 unserviced destinations in this 2015 report.

https://www.waa.ca/uploads/ck/files/...20to%20CTA.pdf

In the above report, on page 15, WAA argues there are several unserviced destinations that would be viable from YWG. They claim that 30,000 passengers per year is enough to sustain direct service. This would make Halifax, Victoria, New York and Manila technically viable, but LAX only has about 23000 passengers per year. Perhaps not enough to make it work?

[esquire]

The numbers are old and the flight info slightly outdated, but here's a snapshot of where travellers are headed from YWG as it was in 2014. LA is not one of the cities with high levels of traffic, but it is not that far from cities with regular scheduled service from YWG:


Richardson International Airport’s top 35 markets (destinations without direct flights in bold):

1. Toronto
2. Calgary
3. Vancouver
4. Edmonton
5. Ottawa
6. Montreal
7. Saskatoon
8. Cancun
9. Las Vegas
10. Thompson, Man.
11. Regina
12. Orlando
13. Thunder Bay
14. Halifax
15. London, Ont.
16. Victoria, B.C.
17. Phoenix
18. Puerto Vallarta
19. New York City
20. St. Theresa Point, Man.
21. Manila
22. Kelowna, B.C.
23. Miami/Fort Lauderdale
24. Flin Flon, Man.
25. Chicago
26. Varadero, Cuba
27. Hamilton, Ont.
28. Los Angeles
29. The Pas, Man.
30. Island Lake/Garden Hill, Man.
31. Honolulu/Kahului
32. Abbotsford, B.C.
33. London, U.K.
34. Minneapolis-St. Paul
35. Montego Bay

— source: Winnipeg Airports Authority

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Authentic_City

The WAA identified it's top 10 unserviced destinations in this 2015 report.

https://www.waa.ca/uploads/ck/files/...20to%20CTA.pdf

In the above report, on page 15, WAA argues there are several unserviced destinations that would be viable from YWG. They claim that 30,000 passengers per year is enough to sustain direct service. This would make Halifax, Victoria, New York and Manila technically viable, but LAX only has about 23000 passengers per year. Perhaps not enough to make it work?

Thanks for posting that. You can bet the 23,000 pax a year to LAX would increase if there was direct service. And recall that there would likely be more people on that flight whose destination is somewhere else but would simply be connecting at LAX. So it's not as though 23,000 is somehow the ceiling.

[Jammon]

Originally Posted by esquire

Thanks for posting that. You can bet the 23,000 pax a year to LAX would increase if there was direct service. And recall that there would likely be more people on that flight whose destination is somewhere else but would simply be connecting at LAX. So it's not as though 23,000 is somehow the ceiling.

I agree. You look at some of those destinations and it would be easy to see why LAX might be your first stop on your way to Manilla or Honolulu. It's a gateway city and would only increase access to the Asian market.

[Authentic_City]

^Right. They talk about induced demand. I bet demand would immediately go up if LAX was offered direct from YWG. Certainly enough to hit that magical 30K level.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Jammon

The other difference is that both of those cities also offer flights to SFO. So, you really can't make that comparison to YWG. A lot of people use LAX and SFO as stepping stones to the Asian market and I think a really good analysis of the SK-MB-NWO-Northern MN-ND market would help determine whether a YWG-LAX flight could be supported.

Saskatoon is closer to both Calgary and Edmonton than it is to Winnipeg. Regina is about 100 miles closer to Winnipeg buy why would you fly roughly an hour east to YWG to connect to a destination on the west coast or Asia? The number of passengers from North Dakota and Minnesota using YWG is negligible at best, unless perhaps their destination is another Canadian city, and again, those numbers would be very few as the Americans I have spoken with in recent years all complain that Canada is too expensive, even with the current exchange rates.

I would be interested in seeing how many people from here are using Allegiant Airlines from Grand Forks and Fargo to travel to Las Vegas, L.A., Phoenix and Orlando, or similarly, how many from Vancouver are using Bellingham?

Canada needs more competition. It is extortionately expensive to travel from here and even within the country. It cost more for a family member to fly from YVR to YWG during the holiday season than it would have cost to fly return to most South American destinations and MORE than to Hawaii and not that much less than to some destinations in Asia.

The two domestic carriers offer lousy service anyways. Let's allow Southwest and Allegiant to service Canadian markets.

[Rookie00]

Surely there's a market for a LAX flight. Fargo has a summer seasonal flight on Allegiant, not sure how full the flights are but its 2x weekly.

[Biff]

Originally Posted by esquire

It is peculiar, isn't it... you can get a DL ticket to MSP for $518 which appears to be their every day price on that route, or you can spend $360 and fly to Miami on DL, with a stop in MSP!

Not surprisingly, the only times I've flown to MSP have been when I've been connecting on other Northwest and now Delta flights.

We thought that exact same thing when we connected in Chicago to Miami. If you were traveling to Chicago and bought the Miami ticket could you not just stay in Chi and pick up your return on the way back or are there rules against that sort of thing?

[Jammon]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Saskatoon is closer to both Calgary and Edmonton than it is to Winnipeg. Regina is about 100 miles closer to Winnipeg buy why would you fly roughly an hour east to YWG to connect to a destination on the west coast or Asia? The number of passengers from North Dakota and Minnesota using YWG is negligible at best, unless perhaps their destination is another Canadian city, and again, those numbers would be very few as the Americans I have spoken with in recent years all complain that Canada is too expensive, even with the current exchange rates.

I would be interested in seeing how many people from here are using Allegiant Airlines from Grand Forks and Fargo to travel to Las Vegas, L.A., Phoenix and Orlando, or similarly, how many from Vancouver are using Bellingham?

Canada needs more competition. It is extortionately expensive to travel from here and even within the country. It cost more for a family member to fly from YVR to YWG during the holiday season than it would have cost to fly return to most South American destinations and MORE than to Hawaii and not that much less than to some destinations in Asia.

The two domestic carriers offer lousy service anyways. Let's allow Southwest and Allegiant to service Canadian markets.

I agree. But you have to lobby the federal government to make that happen. It does surprise me that it has never made it's way on to a political platform as a major issue. I think it's ridiculous what we pay for flights.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Biff

We thought that exact same thing when we connected in Chicago to Miami. If you were traveling to Chicago and bought the Miami ticket could you not just stay in Chi and pick up your return on the way back or are there rules against that sort of thing?

The technique you describe is called hidden city ticketing. If you miss a segment the rest of your ticket is cancelled, so you couldn't do it on the outbound leg of a return ticket. But that said, there are expert practitioners of this dark art and you can find their advice in certain corners of the internet (I have never tried it myself).

It's probably not that risky to do once or twice but airlines are known to, shall we say, aggressively pursue people who do it regularly.

[drew]

Originally Posted by Biff

We thought that exact same thing when we connected in Chicago to Miami. If you were traveling to Chicago and bought the Miami ticket could you not just stay in Chi and pick up your return on the way back or are there rules against that sort of thing?

Sneaky idea.

You would need to make sure you only had carry-on baggage. Anything you check would continue on to Miami with or without you.

[Authentic_City]

Originally Posted by Rookie00

Surely there's a market for a LAX flight. Fargo has a summer seasonal flight on Allegiant, not sure how full the flights are but its 2x weekly.

Interesting. Do you know what kind/size of aircraft they're using? Goes back to our earlier discussion about the potential for a smaller jet on this route.

Wonder if the new C series jets could open up new possibilities for routes? The CS100 - purchased by Delta -- seats 108 and has a range of 3500 miles. Perhaps this could be game changer?

[esquire]

^ Sounds like it has the potential, although those numbers aren't far off from the 319 or 736.

[casper]

Originally Posted by esquire

The technique you describe is called hidden city ticketing. If you miss a segment the rest of your ticket is cancelled, so you couldn't do it on the outbound leg of a return ticket. But that said, there are expert practitioners of this dark art and you can find their advice in certain corners of the internet (I have never tried it myself).

It's probably not that risky to do once or twice but airlines are known to, shall we say, aggressively pursue people who do it regularly.

Some tricks to doing this. (Not that I would encourage anyone to do it.).

Book two one-way tickets. Unless your going overseas, two one way tickets are the same price as a return most of the time.

Airlines despise this practice and they view it as cheating the system. Most of the time it is not worth their time to look for and discourage people from doing it.