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Region of Waterloo International Airport - YKF
(04-03-2017, 09:25 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: It's a chicken-in-every-pot plan. Those who want expansion get to see many potential expansions over the years. Those who don't want to see any get to see that only if a bunch of airlines jump into our lap and drag us kicking and screaming will we actually do a small sequential expansion and then reset the parameters.

Is that actually a constituency of any consequence?  I've not seen much evidence of it.
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(04-03-2017, 10:21 AM)panamaniac Wrote:
(04-03-2017, 09:25 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: It's a chicken-in-every-pot plan. Those who want expansion get to see many potential expansions over the years. Those who don't want to see any get to see that only if a bunch of airlines jump into our lap and drag us kicking and screaming will we actually do a small sequential expansion and then reset the parameters.

Is that actually a constituency of any consequence?  I've not seen much evidence of it.

That constituency regularly shoots down any airport improvements.
There was talk of reorganizing the flight paths a few years ago, and that got shot down. There was a short-lived mining service to Nunavut (Nolinor Aviation) which got endless noise complaints that drove them away.

It seems that the "don't change anything" constituency is the most successful one so far.
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I thought the talk of reorganizing flight paths was combined with extending the runway? Which really doesn't make sense to me at this point. And I'm pretty skeptical that the mining service left for reasons related to the noise complaints (which were at least somewhat valid - their planes were noticeably louder than the other planes that fly in/out of Waterloo and left very early in the morning).

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/6328...l-airport/

"Coun. Tom Galloway said politicians were informed about a month ago the company was packing its bags for financial reasons and only after staff asked how to keep the operation here were the early morning flights raised."

I'm pretty sure the "don't change anything" constituency is the most successful because there hasn't been a reason to change anything. The lack of changes to the airport is clearly because of a lack of success in getting business. Unless I'm missing something that should be done in order to attract business, its mostly seemed out of the airport's hands.
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Where is this idea coming from that the airport has not been improved? There have been a number of projects in recent years.
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The financial reasons would likely stem from the schedule changes, considering the costs of pilots and airplanes are incredibly high, and shifting them around by an hour or more is of very real financial significance, let alone if it meant that upon landing up north, the entire schedule for their operations there also had to change, and/or if arrival later during the day up north compromised daylight landings.
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The folks who complained about noise from the Nolinor flights (whose complaints may have contributed to Nolinor's departure, but probably weren't anything close to the sole reason) are people who live close to the airport, and have a problem with some of the inevitable consequences of that. I wonder if they're all opposed to airport expansion? I bet not, when it would come to flights that would be useful to them.

I think that Viewfromthe42's "people who don't want to see any expansion" are probably pretty numerous. I talk to a lot of people who feel about the airport, when they consider it at all, that it is unlikely to ever attract service that will be useful to them, that the money that has invested in it so far has not paid off, and that expanding it is pointless.
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(04-03-2017, 11:32 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: The financial reasons would likely stem from the schedule changes, considering the costs of pilots and airplanes are incredibly high, and shifting them around by an hour or more is of very real financial significance, let alone if it meant that upon landing up north, the entire schedule for their operations there also had to change, and/or if arrival later during the day up north compromised daylight landings.

Almost certainly not (imo).  But I doubt we can know either way.
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(04-03-2017, 11:36 AM)MidTowner Wrote: The folks who complained about noise from the Nolinor flights (whose complaints may have contributed to Nolinor's departure, but probably weren't anything close to the sole reason) are people who live close to the airport, and have a problem with some of the inevitable consequences of that. I wonder if they're all opposed to airport expansion? I bet not, when it would come to flights that would be useful to them.

I think that Viewfromthe42's "people who don't want to see any expansion" are probably pretty numerous. I talk to a lot of people who feel about the airport, when they consider it at all, that it is unlikely to ever attract service that will be useful to them, that the money that has invested in it so far has not paid off, and that expanding it is pointless.

Nolinor definitely had a larger than usual group of people complaining about it.  I don't feel particularly strongly about it (although I generally go with 'if you live near an airport, expect noise' philosophy), because it was extra burdensome on residents and didn't really offer local benefits aside from money (as opposed to commercial flights which bring extra benefits to the area).

And I think we need to distinguish between people that don't want to see changes "right now" from those that don't want to see it at all.  I'd love to see the airport become successful and offer all sorts of different flights.  But I don't want to see significant changes w/o a real clear immediate benefit.  Because as far as I can see everything is in place to offer a really good service to a new customer airline.  But the overall economics just don't seem to make sense right now for airlines.
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I think I mentioned it earlier... the most vocal complaints of Nolinor were the residents of Hidden Valley. (See: $$$ / Politicians Listen More).

Lets not blame the residents in Breslau, the area of the Fairway Rd extention, or Ottawa/Lackner area... they for the most part knew what they were in for, and live with it.

Coke
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I've more or less been in a flight path in Preston Heights for years and only ever notice when it's the air show.
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This 18-minute flight to Toronto sounds interesting. I hope it works out for them.
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The thing I will never understand about these ultra-short flights, is this:

Let's say they run 4 flights a day.  10am, Noon, 2pm, 4pm.

What if your meeting is at Noon in Toronto, and you're done at 2pm?

You have to take the 10am flight, show up at 10:18... and do nothing for the hour and a half.

Then your meeting is done at 1:30 since it was early.  You can't quite make it for the 2pm flight... so now you sit around for 2 and a half hours waiting for the 18 minute flight.

Higher frequency at slower speeds almost always makes more sense for origin-to-destination travel for scheduled events than it does for less frequent, higher speed travel.
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You could always find examples where it doesn't make sense. And also, that 10:18 arrival doesn't get you to your meeting, just to the airport. You still need to get off the island.

If it's worth spending $200 round trip to go to a meeting in downtown Toronto, you can probably schedule the meeting around the flight.
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Respectfully,I think you missed my point (or I didn't articulate it properly); an infrequent service, no matter how fast, will never be convienent because the odds of the trips times matching your activity are significantly lower.

If you have to find things to do, waiting for your transport, you're no better off.
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And I think there might still be a market for this service, even at one trip each way a day. I know many people who have to occasionally travel into Toronto, and they plan meetings with all the people they need to see, and fill up their day. It would be great to travel in 18 minutes instead of 2 hours.
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