whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

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hst
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whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by hst »

Should Canadians feel guilty about crossing the border to fly out of U.S. airports? http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/tra ... le2233479/.

Is it any different when comparison shopping other items? (electronics, groceries etc). One look at the border wait times on a typical late Friday afternoon tells me there is no guilt when it comes to not buying at home. These stats from the above article are from 2010, before the loonie went on a run. I'd bet the number will be close to 25% for 2011.

Are AC, WJ or the charters helpless to defend against this? Are they handcuffed by a more expensive transportation system (ie. taxes, fees etc...)
With our dollar projected to stay at or near the USD for the foreseeable future (sic), it will be interesting to watch.

In the meantime, Canadians will find the best deal via the internet whether it be tires, tv's or tropical getaways!!!

Food for thought!
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by Joe Blow Schmo »

The majority of those are probably people traveling to US destinations. Domestic flights will be cheaper than international ones. No immigration charges, only one country's taxes and security fees...etc.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by robertsailor1 »

I think most flights are US destinations. We often drive to Bellingham, closer than YVR, flights are about 1/2 and parking is $6.00 a day compared to YVR's $16.00 per day. Makes no sense to fly out of YVR if your heading to anywhere in the USA.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by oldtimer »

I remember reading an article in a magazine that did a study on air travel and one thing that was amazing was how far people would drive to save a few bucks.
Just look at the buying habits of most people. You can go to a good Canadian store and pay a fair price for a heavily taxed Canadian or USA made product or you can go to a discount store and buy cheap Chinese junk.
Now, this brings up the question. Are Canadian airlines safer than the US counterparts and does it make any difference?
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by Colonel Sanders »

one thing that was amazing was how far people would drive to save a few bucks
I frequently can save a thousand dollars by driving
to Syracuse instead of Ottawa for a flight to the USA.

Is a thousand bucks a "few bucks" to you?
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by Nark »

oldtimer wrote: Are Canadian airlines safer than the US counterparts and does it make any difference?
No.

A large percentage of Canadian pilots come to the US to train (Flight Safety, Simcom etc...)
FAA 121 v. TC 705 are pretty much identical in the broad sense.

I wonder how many people drove to Abbotsford from Vancouver to save a few dollars on Westjet when they started service. Same principle.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by robertsailor1 »

As the other poster mentioned 1/2 price is quite a few bucks.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by photofly »

Last week:
Air Canada KRDU -> CYYZ: $1170
Continental KRDU -> KBUF: $232
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by KAG »

The US government supports its airlines, while ours view our airlines as nothing more then a cash cow. It's impossible to compete when your taxed to death
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by jpilot77 »

The US government supports its airlines, while ours view our airlines as nothing more then a cash cow. It's impossible to compete when your taxed to death
I agree, but I would go farther in saying that aviation in general is supported a lot more south of the border.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by bmc »

photofly wrote:Last week:
Air Canada KRDU -> CYYZ: $1170
Continental KRDU -> KBUF: $232
Not a fair comparison. All airlines want higher yield traffic. The closer to departure, the price goes up, if you know the demand activity for those flights (which all airlines monitor). Continental is charging that because they cannot charge more money, either because of competition, their flight times are unattractive, they operate with props, etc.

Your comparison is as meaningful as saying a Rolls Royce charge $400,000 for a four door car with AC, which Hyundia charges $18,000. Not all seats on either AV or CO are sold at the prices above. Too many factors to consider: itme of day, frequency, market position, seasonality, aircraft type and most importantly, demand.

AC is charging that because they know they will get it.

From an airline cost perspective, it is not a level playing field. Taxes are substantially lower in the USA. Salaries are substantially lower in the USA.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by cgartly »

KAG wrote:The US government supports its airlines, while ours view our airlines as nothing more then a cash cow. It's impossible to compete when your taxed to death
I don't know about that. It seems Air Canada has had quite a few government bailouts over the years. Tax's I agree, they are ridiculous here. Our gov't also prevented Emirates & Etihad from giving Air Canada any more competition. Maybe its that our gov't only supports AC......
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by bmc »

cgartly wrote: Our gov't also prevented Emirates & Etihad from giving Air Canada any more competition.
That is misleading. Air service agreements between countries are negotiated to provide benefit to the carriers of the countries negotiating. Emirates and Etihad have substantial hubs with service to dozens of international destinations. Giving them access to to YYC and YVR is not about Dubai and Abu Dhabi to thos cities. It gives them unparalleled access to beyond points, which is fine. AC gets access to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The fact of the matter is there is no substantiated traffic base to either of those places from Vancouver or Calgary to fill daily wide body flights. So, on the basis of a balanced package, AC gets dick all. On top of that, the Gulf carriers are masters of bottom feeding pricing in the market place. While that may be good for consumers, it eventually forces airlines to cut salaries. As a consumer, I regularly fly low cost in Europe, but we have a population base here to make low cost profitable.

As a Canadian, I want to see Canadian airlines continue to grow, be healthy and offer more opportunities to Canadian pilots.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by yycflyguy »

cgartly wrote:
KAG wrote:The US government supports its airlines, while ours view our airlines as nothing more then a cash cow. It's impossible to compete when your taxed to death
I don't know about that. It seems Air Canada has had quite a few government bailouts over the years. Tax's I agree, they are ridiculous here. Our gov't also prevented Emirates & Etihad from giving Air Canada any more competition. Maybe its that our gov't only supports AC......
Please provide specific examples of when the federal government has provided a bailout to Air Canada.

Do you really think that allowing Emirates to enter Canada is a good thing for the Canadian consumer? Ask the Aussies what happened when they allowed an oil subsidized, 3rd world labour wages that represents their ~3 million residents (note how I said "residents" and not "citizens" as ex-pats make up a significant percentage of their population) with an un-sustainable fleet expansion program. Your YYZ-LHR would end up being YYZ-DXB-LHR for the same price as AC YYZ-LHR.

Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by bmc »

cgartly wrote: Maybe its that our gov't only supports AC......
And we should support Canadian carriers. Or should we support foreign flag carriers so that they grow and offer their people more employment opportunities at the expense of Canada.

I have watched Americans adopt this same approach of letting the market dictate who wins. As a musician, I have watched the US guitar manufacturing business dwindle away. They have and continue to hand the assignment of building quality gear to China, Indonesia and Korea in the pursuit for cheaper market prices. They fired the starting gun for the race to the bottom.

Is this what you want in Canada? Would you really prefer to relegate AC to the history books in favor of Emirates and Etihad?
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by akoch »

For the last 5 years I am flying only out of the US, and it is typically 5-8 times a year. Yes, I'd much rather prefer to fly by a Canadian airline and out of the closer airport. But I can't afford and don't want to encourage the x3 price difference. Between my spouse and me the savings pretty much pay for the rest of the vacation, or trip accommodation etc.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by bmc »

It is not unusual for carriers to attract passengers in another country to top up their loads. For example, you can probably find air fares in Seattle for Seattle to London, via Vancouver, that are sold at the same or lower price than the Vancouver-London ticket. It's a practice that has long been in effect and occasionally hits the papers and pisses people off. Airlines, knowing that their fall flights have soft loads, look to behind markets to grab whatever revenue they can at the last minute. To attract a Seattle passenger, who already has lots of options with BA, KLM, or whoever, you need to drop the price as you are adding to the flying time.

Still, and despite everything I have said on this thread, it continues to be costly to fly in Canada. Here in Europe, our family have taken advantage of the Ryanair's and Easyjet's for far less money. My daughter flew from Oslo to Dublin for St.Patricks day for CAD40 return, tax in, on Ryanair. We took the family from Lyon, France to London for Christmas one year, on Ryanair, for CAD400 return, taxes included, for the entire family of four.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by photofly »

Not a fair comparison.
On the contrary, it was an entirely fair (fare) comparison. As the customer I'm not in the least bit bothered about yields and all that other blather. Merely that I was at RDU and I needed to get to Toronto. Both quotes were for economy seats leaving at the same time, from the same airport. Entirely unsurprisingly I chose to fly to Buffalo and even with the $250 taxi fare to Toronto I was still several hundred dollars better off. Air Canada can go f*ck themselves at that sort of fare differential.
AC is charging that because they know they will get it.
Not from me, they won't.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by bmc »

photofly wrote:
Not a fair comparison.
On the contrary, it was an entirely fair (fare) comparison. As the customer I'm not in the least bit bothered about yields and all that other blather. Merely that I was at RDU and I needed to get to Toronto. Both quotes were for economy seats leaving at the same time, from the same airport. Entirely unsurprisingly I chose to fly to Buffalo and even with the $250 taxi fare to Toronto I was still several hundred dollars better off. Air Canada can go f*ck themselves at that sort of fare differential.
AC is charging that because they know they will get it.
Not from me, they won't.
Good for you.

I'm defending them. I don't work for them or any airline for that matter. I thought you might be interested in learning something about the airline business. Clearly that was a friggin huge leap on my part.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by photofly »

I'm sorry if I was ill-mannered towards you; I didn't mean to be. As a pilot I love to know how the airline industry works. But as a passenger? Not so much. Nobody is going to get me to agree that I should pay the extra $700 out of "patriotism". At least the majority of the taxi fare went to a Candian cab driver, since I swapped cabs at the border.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by double-j »

Well I hope you pilots who take advantage of the cheap, Colgan type fares are not the same crybabies that piss and moan that pilots deserve higher wages in Canada!

Hypocrites!

JJ
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by bmc »

photofly wrote:I'm sorry if I was ill-mannered towards you; I didn't mean to be. As a pilot I love to know how the airline industry works. But as a passenger? Not so much. Nobody is going to get me to agree that I should pay the extra $700 out of "patriotism". At least the majority of the taxi fare went to a Candian cab driver, since I swapped cabs at the border.
\

No problem mate.

I'll give you another tip. If you are making a booking for a family of four, go through the online booking procedure for an airline and see what fares they give you. Then, back out of it and check the price for one person. The psychology of passengers is well understood and often airlines will charge a slightly higher price becuase they know consumers will feel safer booking the whole family on one reservation, as opposed to four separate bookings.

My point about paying higher isn't about patriotism. I did mix the two points, but that wasn't fair. If an airlines flight is full or near full, they may crank up the last minute price knowing that some business person travelling on their company expense will opt for the nonstop regardless of price charged. That can backfire as per your example. Arguably, the carrier you chose left money on the table and could have charged more and still got your business.

From Canadian airline perspective, there are limited times in the year to make money: summer, Christmas, spring break. Throw in time of day, day of week, gauge of equipment, competition, network flow, any unusual business conventions going on in a city, and the whole pricing puzzle to optimize revenue is part science and part art.

A colleague bought four tickets for his family on AC from Geneva to Montreal at Christmas. He bought them last week. This week, he checks the same flights and noticed that the price dropped more than $100 per person. His tickets were non refundable. Now, common sense would tell me that the closer in to Christmas, the higher the price. But, behind the scenes, this flight may not have the right booking profile to hold off for higher yield traffic. Most of the Christmas holidays have been booked and maybe the bookings are slowing down.

Apologies for my strong words. I'm generally a decent guy. Generally.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by DEL »

I have been flying in and out of Buffalo for over twenty years now. I have looked at using Toronto but the taxes, fee's etc are way too much. The using of American airports will continue till we wake up but I don't see that ever happening. My 2 cents.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by yycflyguy »

DEL wrote:I have been flying in and out of Buffalo for over twenty years now. I have looked at using Toronto but the taxes, fee's etc are way too much. The using of American airports will continue till we wake up but I don't see that ever happening. My 2 cents.
Taxes and fees. That is the difference.
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Re: whopping 21% of Cdn. fliers depart out of U.S airports.

Post by Nark »

double-j wrote:Well I hope you pilots who take advantage of the cheap, Colgan type fares are not the same crybabies that piss and moan that pilots deserve higher wages in Canada!

Hypocrites!

JJ
None of the regionals here in the US set the prices.
I imagine Jazz is the same.
I used to fly for a regional airline that did work for Delta and United. Whether we had a full plane, or 1 passenger, the company was paid the same for that segment. This is called Fixed Fee Departure, FFD.
This made my company a lot of money. With this extra money they bought two bankrupt airlines. One was shut down (Midwest), the other is struggling very badly (Frontier), and has had the Board's approval to sell it off.

Most Regionals who pay crappy wages has nothing to do with the price of the ticket you pay. If that was the case, the mainlines would also have horrible wages, which isn't the case. An FO at Southwest I know grossed $140,000 last year.

Not typical, however ticket price does not equal pilot wage.
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