Region of Waterloo International Airport - YKF

[danbrotherston]

For me it isn't a rollercoaster.  It is an ok idea. What I dont like is that it is a way for Air Canada not to service our airport with actual aircraft...

I really don't think AC would service YKF anytime soon. They are really not into serving small airports these days. Heck, they're not even flying Edmonton-Ottawa nonstop, and these airports are neither small nor close to other airports.

This just gets better and better...

Although it is ironic that they have chosen a layout with more space than a typical bus, given that a typical bus is vastly more spacious than a typical Air Canada seat, at this rate, the bus right might be the most comfortable portion of the trip.

A lot better than the average bus, but it's still running on the 401, so absolute comfort is sort of limited. Certainly sounds like more legroom. But that is an undersold advantage of being short: I don't need as much legroom as taller people.

I don't see that it would steal that many passengers from Flair's direct service, at least for direct flights, as the bus connection will substantially increase flight time.

It's actually pretty hard for me to guess how people would make Flair vs AC purchasing decisions with the bus involved.

There is surely a "minimum connection time" stated with the bus that prevents booking it too close to the plane departure time.

I am perhaps approaching this from a different position than others...YKF will never fly to Schiphol...my choice isn't with direct from YKF and my destination...it's "how do I get to/from Pearson"...

But I think that's actually the most likely scenario...even Flair only serves a small number of destinations. At best, you might have the choice of "...get to Pearson and fly direct..." or "...fly YKF and connect somewhere other than Pearson..." and I think in both cases, AC going up the 401 with a guarantee of a transfer is going to be compelling. The 401 was always the riskiest part of my trip and AC taking the risk (if there's a crash and I'm stuck for 3 hours, I just get put on the next flight instead of being out of pocket 3k dollars) is a massive feature.