Quote:
Originally Posted by speedog
The YEG and YOW peeps need to get together and start to compare notes, YEG is pretty much experiencing the same thing to YYC and YVR. There is most likely no easy fix and I suspect YYC could be in the same boat in the future as well.
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Re: YOW - I don't think there is a quick fix, unfortunately. No airline makes their hub at YOW, so there's no reason to concentrate flights there. It's very close (and likely more profitable) for Air Canada, Westjet and Air Transat to fly people to their hubs at YYZ and YUL.
The second knock is that YUL is so close by road that driving is a reasonably feasible option. The best YOW can hope for is that congestion at YYZ will nudge Air Canada and Westjet to move some routes back there (making routes a little more point-to-point), the US regional airlines make a business case for increased service to their parent's US hubs and that a smaller long-range aircraft like the Airbus A321neoLR can make something like an Ottawa-Frankfurt or Ottawa-Paris flight work year round.
Re: YEG - it has 2 major strikes against it:
1. Geography: Calgary is more naturally suited to hub status as it lies closer to the east-west optimal flight routing and has the Rocky Mountains tourist draw to help. I don't think YVR really competes with YYC, it kind of does its own thing on the west coast. Vancouver is a good transit point for transpacific flights.
2. Calgary is the main base for Westjet.
Neither of these is the city of Edmonton's fault, nor is it some sort of secret anti-Edmonton conspiracy by the airlines. I maintain that supporting a third domestic airline (e.g. NewLeaf), encouraging American carriers to reconsider services from Edmonton to US airports and enticing European/Asian airlines that aren't affiliated with Star Alliance to locate there would be the optimal solution to help build traffic.
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