Region of Waterloo International Airport - YKF

[Coke6pk]

It's a catch-22. Accessibility to the airport is poor because there are too few flights; new flights aren't coming because accessibility is poor. And so on.

I don't think this is true.  I believe a bunch of the flights that were cancelled had high seat occupancy.  It was just the overall economics of the route that made it not worthwhile for these companies.  I believe the AA flight to Chicago was heavily used - but AA found a more profitable route in the US driven in large part by the poor Canadian -> US exchange rate.  I also believe the Ottawa flight was cancelled because of the economics on the Ottawa end and not here.

I like the general approach of the Master plan -> Laying out what they want to do to expand and tying it to passenger numbers.  But I'm not sure if there's been a good public explanation* for what the main road blocks are to getting more flights here.  My intuition though is that its not really about facilities, runways, or other things covered in the master plan (at least, not yet).


* If there has been, I'd love to read it.

AA was OVERSOLD almost every flight.  There is a demand for service.

Swoop (because of its mother company WestJet) is loyal to Hamilton.  YHM was their Ontario hub before they were forced to move into YYZ.  YHM will ALWAYS get WestJet/Swoop flights before us.  London is getting some bones thrown at them as their next best option is 2 hrs away... We have 3 airports within a 1 hr drive to get those flights... so why saturate the market with more at YKF.  [This rings true ONLY for WestJet/Swoop]

The other discount airline is Flair (WestJet bullied them out of YHM, now they fly out of YYZ).  I think Flair would like to move here... but with their old livery, our runways are too short.  We need more passengers to get our runways expanded.  If Flair upgrades to newer equipment, they could fly out of here, and I think they would prefer to.

Canada Jetlines and EnerJet are the ULCC's that still are not off the ground.  Those are the best hopes of getting new flights into YKF.

Coke