Yesterday, Air Canada announced an interesting expansion of its existing transborder flying out of Toronto, boosting current stations and adding new ones. To me, it really looks like Air Canada wants to add additional feed for its international routes out of Toronto, and Air Canada isn’t very shy about it. Ben Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer said that the move “demonstrates our commitment to drive Toronto’s growth as a hub…Our strategy is to leverage our hub to make it a global transfer point for domestic, transborder and international travellers.”
Air Canada will be using E-190s on the Portland (OR) -Toronto route.
Photo Credit: Air Canada.
First, let’s take a look at the West Coast cities. Currently, Air Canada only has Toronto nonstops to the bigger cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. But now some smaller stations will be getting them as well: Orange County, San Diego, and Portland (OR), each with a daily roundtrip year-round. Orange County is a completely new destination, though Air Canada has expressed interest in serving it for awhile (though Vancouver was originally thought of as one of the first destinations). San Diego and Portland already have service to Calgary and Vancouver (it’s mainline for the former, Jazz for the latter). Service for San Diego and Orange County will be with A319s, while the Portland trip will have an E190. That’s a decently-long route, nearly 2,100 miles, which I think shows the flexibility it provides for carriers. And while some might think of the E-Jet has an RJ, it’s a mainline aircraft for Air Canada, complete with TVs for each passenger.
As we move across the country, the other announcements aren’t too out of the ordinary for Air Canada. Memphis will get two roundtrips to Toronto with Jazz CRJs. This used to be a route served by regional carrier Pinnacle for Northwest/Delta. Cincinnati will also be getting two roundtrips on CRJs, though for now it only appears to be a seasonal service. Delta also has a few daily CRJs on this route as well. Meanwhile, Portland (ME) and Syracuse will be getting two daily seasonal flights with Air Georgian Beech 1900s, like many other cities in the Northeast.
Anyway, I looked at some Air Canada schedules, and these flights seem pretty well-timed for connections, especially to and from Europe. And to be honest, Toronto is a good place for connections, just geographically speaking. For example, an San Diego-Toronto-London itinerary is 217 miles shorter than a San Diego-Dulles-London itinerary.
Personally, I think this is a great move. If Air Canada can bring over US passengers who want to travel internationally from other carriers, it will provide a nice boost to its Toronto hub and potentially boost load factors on its existing international routes.
Dan – Nice synopsis. I fly out of PWM and already looked at the connections to Europe since I go to LHR and CDG. You are correct in that the flights times are really good for those connections and since I am US DM Gold, it adds 1 more Star carrier rather than connecting thru ORD/IAD/PHL/CLT or driving to BOS.
Thanks.
PWMFlyer19 – Free beer or wine, seat-back TV, and power at every row make flying Air Canada’s 763s, 777s, and A333s even in economy, quite tolerable on the short flights to Europe from YYZ.
These may be good times for outbound connections, but the real issue is coming back. Are the return flights timed to allow for going through customs twice in Toronto? With the increased scrutiny of passengers from Canada to US (for many years now), there would have to be some fantastic fares to get US travelers to connect to Europe.
I flew YYZ-DEN on Jan. 24 and it took almost two hours just to get INTO customs at Pearson. Once into customs with a Nexus card and Star Gold status the process took only about 30 minutes. But Air Canada is going to have to work with the authorities to solve the wait time problems.
A lot of these moves remind of Air Canada’s transborder service pre-9/11. SYR and PWM were served, not sure about the others.