Things in the Sky

This morning Air Canada issued a news release announcing that the company has “launched its California expansion” today with the inaugural flight between Toronto and Orange County. The airline has also announced its entrance into the San Diego market with a nonstop from Toronto beginning on June 17. But the airline also announced some interesting additions to its existing flights from Toronto to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Both of these routes have very little competition at the moment – on each route Air Canada has four frequencies, while a US airline flies one. For LAX, that’s American. In San Francisco, United has one daily flight but Air Canada has a codeshare on it anyway. But Virgin America recently announced that it intends to launch service on these routes as early as June, pending government approval. Lo and behold, Air Canada is enhancing its service on both routes starting on June 1, which makes me think that the prospect of new competition from Virgin is the motivator for these moves.

San Francisco is pretty basic – a fifth frequency will be added using an A320. That means the earliest flight from Toronto to SFO moves up an hour and twenty minutes to 8 AM, and San Franciso will get an additional midday departure back to Toronto.

Los Angeles will remain at four frequencies to Toronto, but is replacing an A319 with an internationally-configured 767-300ER, which features Air Canada’s Executive First cabin with lie-flat beds (pictured above). The aircraft will operate the first YYZ-LAX flight be and then fly back to Toronto as the second departure from Los Angeles. So here the airline is boosting capacity but is also trying to provide a superior product (and therefore is charging a slightly higher fare compare to the other flights). On one hand I thought this might be a move to attract more premium traffic for those traveling across the pond to Europe, but the flight to YYZ arrives there at 8:09 PM. One can still make some European connections at that time but it’s definitely not the most attractive schedule for that purpose, which makes me think that Air Canada is really focusing on the O&D passengers between the two cities.

Air Canada has announced a couple of interesting new over the past few days. The first is new daily service to Copenhagen (CPH) from Toronto (YYZ), operated with a 767-300ER. While Air Canada has announced European routes that will be operated with a denser configuration, this route will be operated in the traditional 211-seat layout. That route will help increase connectivity with Star Alliance partner SAS.  Service will only be daily in the summer, with reduced frequency during the colder months (after a check of the timetable it looks like four flights/week). Service begins June 24.

The airline has also announced seasonal daily service from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador (YYT) to London Heathrow (LHR) from May 27 to September 26. The airline has served this route on a seasonal basis before, but did not during the two most recent summers. But the route is interesting because it’s a transatlantic flight being operated with an A319 (the same aircraft was used in the past). Because St. John’s is so far east, the flight isn’t too long at 2,316 miles. For comparison’s sake, a nonstop to London from Toronto is 1,240 miles longer, while a Toronto-Los Angeles flight is only 141 miles shorter.

Nick Careen, Vice President, Airports for Air Canada remarked that this route will be the “fastest and most efficient way of making connections to several European capitals such as Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Vienna, Moscow, as well as Dubai.” I found that Dubai mention a bit odd, considering that none of Air Canada’s Star Alliance partners fly there from London, which doesn’t sound too convenient compared to other options that already exist (i.e. YYT-YYZ-FRA-DXB).

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/husseinabdallah/ / CC BY 2.0

Air Canada announced last week that it has begun a ten-week trial of inflight Wi-Fi provided by Aircell’s Gogo service, which will be available on some flights to Los Angeles from Montreal and Toronto. Two A319s have been equipped for the trial period, which lasts until January 29. After that, Air Canada will evaluate rolling out the service to other aircraft and routes.

Photo credit: Chris Weyer.

So, why pick those flights? Well, right now the service will be turned on once the flights cross the United States border. As you can see on this Gogo coverage map* (I decided to add on some estimated routes), both of these flights spend a lot of time over U.S. airspace. Plus, take rates are generally higher on long routes like these.

The plan is to eventually have the service throughout Canada, and Flight reports that “Aircell is in negotiations with the Canadian ATG licensee, SkySurf Canada Communications, to provide connectivity in Canadian airspace.”

The service is available for laptop users for $9.95 in US dollars, which is cheap considering that Wi-Fi for flights of that length usually costs $12.95.  Apparently that price was chosen due to the exchange rate. Aircell tells me that “we opted to launch this initial phase at our USD 9.95 price point rather than $12.95 – which would convert to approximately $13.75 in Canadian dollars. We intend to ultimately provide the product in Canadian dollars with pricing in line with our U.S. market pricing structure.” The price for users of mobile devices is $7.95, which is the same amount a traveler on a domestic U.S. flight would be paying.

So let’s see if Air Canada decides to expand the service. The big question is how many people will actually use the service. Mary Kirby had a very interesting blog post on that subject earlier this week.

*Original map can be found here.

Last week, Air Canada announced new service to Barcelona and Athens from Toronto and Montreal, with 767-300s configured to seat 244 passengers.

Wait, 244 seats? That’s way bigger than what Air Canada currently has on its 763s. I asked about how the cabin would be configured and received this answer:

These two new seasonal routes for the summer of 2010 to leisure destinations Athens and Barcelona will offer Economy service in both cabins and will be operated using Boeing 767-300ER aircraft that will be specially configured: 222 seats that provide 31 inches of legroom, and the option of a forward cabin with 24 seats that are larger and provide enhanced legroom of 38 inches.

Air Canada has three 763s left that weren’t refurbished as part of Project XM. They were supposed to leave the fleet, according to this report, but now, there’s a use for them.

I was told that the three aircraft will go under a “cabin refresh program and reconfiguration this fall” and that the 767s “will be operated to select seasonal leisure destinations.”

This news article also reports that there will be a third market served this summer in addition to Barcelona and Athens, and that they will be used for new seasonal service from Calgary to Honolulu and Maui, and some other leisure routes.

This is pretty interesting here, as Air Canada is kind of making an LCC within itself, not necessarily in terms of the costs, but simply how it will be laying out the cabin. Note how the forward cabin will still be receiving “economy service.” Plus, right now the front cabin has 58-60 inches of legroom – that’s going down to 38 inches! (This almost sounds like Air Transat.)

Will it work? I think there’s a solid chance here. Delta and United, for example, use 767s that are in domestic configurations on Hawaii routes. These aircraft seat more and have premium offerings that certainly aren’t as luxurious as the international aircraft. (The domestic United 763s, for example, won’t be receiving the new business and first seats, as far as I know.)

As always…we’ll see how it goes.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rich90/ / CC BY-ND 2.0