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Region of Waterloo International Airport - YKF
(05-28-2022, 10:05 AM)ac3r Wrote: Canada sure loves transportation monopolies it seems. Greygound had pretty good control over bus routes in Southern Ontario (maybe all of Canada? I'm not sure). Flair has YKF. porter has Billy Bishop. Bombardier often wins awards for contracts as there are often stipulations on projects that X% must be done by Canadian companies. I'm no capitalist but if the free market is free, then anyone should be allowed to operate a business and the best ones will prevail over the others.

In transportation it is well known that rules are required. I know of at least two problems with a “no rules” regime: first, large companies can undercut services offered by small competitors, then once the small competitor has gone bankrupt either increase prices or cancel the service entirely; second, jitneying, where buses are scheduled immediately ahead of an existing competitor’s schedule, so that they pick up the passengers waiting for the existing service.

Neither of these is a hypothetical; they actually happen if there aren’t rules.

That being said, my understanding is we had a ridiculous situation in the bus market where demand was not being serviced, but the incumbents could still prevent it from being served by arguing against the license application. Any new entrant who proposes to provide actually better service should be allowed to do so; but the service has to be an actual self-sustaining improvement on existing service, not just run one minute ahead of existing service or be subsidized by other operations of the operator.
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(05-28-2022, 10:05 AM)ac3r Wrote: I'm no capitalist but if the free market is free, then anyone should be allowed to operate a business and the best ones will prevail over the others.

Unfettered capitalism, especially in high start-up cost industries, is terrible for consumers. The idea that a completely free market is automatically good for consumers is nonsense propaganda that many people try to push. And, for the record, I would call myself a capitalist! Smile

The exclusivity offer is both time-limited (3 years?) and limited to particular routes. Further, it was an open offer to all airlines at a time when almost nobody was flying commercial routes here and it took years before anyone took them up on it. The free market was available to everyone.

And further, there are are a ton of viable destinations that YKF doesn’t have flights to that SWOOP could service and do just as well as Flair. The fact that they don’t want to us another clue that they don’t actually care about consumers.

There are many reasons the article angers me, but one is that the airport spent years getting shit on for not attracting airlines and requiring subsidies. Then once they’ve achieved some success, people turn around and shit on them for one part of making that success happen. And while I’m sure everyone involved is used to taking crap I don’t have to like seeing it.
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(05-28-2022, 01:35 PM)SammyOES Wrote:
(05-28-2022, 10:05 AM)ac3r Wrote: I'm no capitalist but if the free market is free, then anyone should be allowed to operate a business and the best ones will prevail over the others.

Unfettered capitalism, especially in high start-up cost industries, is terrible for consumers.  The idea that a completely free market is automatically good for consumers is nonsense propaganda that many people try to push.  And, for the record, I would call myself a capitalist!  Smile

[…]

Lots of excellent points.

I like to say “fair markets, not free markets”. Note however that fair markets are still markets; and they’re also still free, just not emphasizing the “no rules” aspect of freedom.

The nature of the rules which keep a market fair will differ considerably from one market to another.
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Flair 'is Canadian' and will be allowed to keep their license. This is good news for the airport

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/flair-airlin...-1.5927629
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(06-01-2022, 01:19 PM)neonjoe Wrote: Flair 'is Canadian' and will be allowed to keep their license. This is good news for the airport

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/flair-airlin...-1.5927629

I love this. Not just good news for the airport but good news for consumers. I have my first flights next week (although out of Pearson, I'm not looking forward to it).
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Good news for Flair and for YKF. Now the onus is on Flair to prove itself.
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I’m glad Flair kept their license but I think their description of:

Quote:[Flair] characterized the CTA review as the result of "wild speculation" and a takedown attempt by competitors.

"There's been such a cozy duopoly here for so long that whenever you stir the pot, whenever you come and spoil the party by actually showing people you don't need to spend $800, you can spend $150 to fly across the country, of course people are going to be upset," Jones told reporters.

Is just plain old bs. There were a bunch of problems and they addressed them. That’s why they kept their license and it’s good evidence this wasn’t just wild speculation or unfair targeting.

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/flair-airlin...-1.5927629
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Regional council to consider airport shuttle proposal tonight: https://kitchener.citynews.ca/local-news...ht-5505832

I read this headline and got excited. A bus shuttle...great! But it's just a shuttle that would go between the parking lot to the terminal. It would also not rely on Grand River Transit and instead the private bus and patient transfer company Voyago would be awarded an 800'000 dollar contract.
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https://kitchener.citynews.ca/local-news...ht-5505832

More bad planning and waste for the airport. Why does an airport that has 10 scheduled aircraft movements per day really need a two bus shuttle to the far parking lot. It's better service than most people receive from GRT.

But more to the point, if we're going to spend 800k (and up) on a shuttle service, can anyone explain to me why building a parking garage closer to the terminal wasn't considered?

Kitchener is planning 10M for a parking garage. With this shuttle running, such a structure would pay for itself in only a decade or so. And that's considering a parking structure like Kitchener builds rather than simply providing a much cheaper one storey over-decking of the existing lot. Did nobody consider this cost in the planning of this? I'm betting they didn't.
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(06-22-2022, 10:12 PM)ac3r Wrote: Regional council to consider airport shuttle proposal tonight: https://kitchener.citynews.ca/local-news...ht-5505832

I read this headline and got excited. A bus shuttle...great! But it's just a shuttle that would go between the parking lot to the terminal. It would also not rely on Grand River Transit and instead the private bus and patient transfer company Voyago would be awarded an 800'000 dollar contract.

The longest distance from the door of the terminal to parking is about 200m. Do we really need a shuttle? I assume there are wheelchair spots for those who need them, and of course if more than one person drives to the airport one of them can park the vehicle after unloading all the luggage and the others.
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(06-23-2022, 01:19 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(06-22-2022, 10:12 PM)ac3r Wrote: Regional council to consider airport shuttle proposal tonight: https://kitchener.citynews.ca/local-news...ht-5505832

I read this headline and got excited. A bus shuttle...great! But it's just a shuttle that would go between the parking lot to the terminal. It would also not rely on Grand River Transit and instead the private bus and patient transfer company Voyago would be awarded an 800'000 dollar contract.

The longest distance from the door of the terminal to parking is about 200m. Do we really need a shuttle? I assume there are wheelchair spots for those who need them, and of course if more than one person drives to the airport one of them can park the vehicle after unloading all the luggage and the others.

OK, I see that the shuttle is for a newly built parking lot. Still, I think Dan’s points are all right on the money.

Also, I would point out that this is one of the few times when wheelchair accessibility does not need to be considered: people who need accessibility should park in the designated spots near the terminal. The required accommodation is to be able to park at the airport, not to reach every single parking spot. To be fair, at this point there probably isn’t much additional cost associated with accessibility, now that it’s designed in more widely to transit vehicles.
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(06-23-2022, 01:17 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: More bad planning and waste for the airport. Why does an airport that has 10 scheduled aircraft movements per day really need a two bus shuttle to the far parking lot. It's better service than most people receive from GRT.

It doesn't, the current lot is adequate for 10 scheduled movements per day. However, the expansion is opening soon, and the second that expansion opens Flair is doubling the number of flights. That requires more parking.

(06-23-2022, 01:17 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: But more to the point, if we're going to spend 800k (and up) on a shuttle service, can anyone explain to me why building a parking garage closer to the terminal wasn't considered?

The long term plan is a parking garage, where the current parking lot is. However, that creates a problem for where people will park during construction. Also, the timelines associated with garage construction are problematic. The terminal expansion was built with modular relocatable buildings because of their speed of construction, but I'm not aware of any similar technology for parking garages.
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(06-23-2022, 10:44 AM)taylortbb Wrote:
(06-23-2022, 01:17 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: More bad planning and waste for the airport. Why does an airport that has 10 scheduled aircraft movements per day really need a two bus shuttle to the far parking lot. It's better service than most people receive from GRT.

It doesn't, the current lot is adequate for 10 scheduled movements per day. However, the expansion is opening soon, and the second that expansion opens Flair is doubling the number of flights. That requires more parking.

(06-23-2022, 01:17 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: But more to the point, if we're going to spend 800k (and up) on a shuttle service, can anyone explain to me why building a parking garage closer to the terminal wasn't considered?

The long term plan is a parking garage, where the current parking lot is. However, that creates a problem for where people will park during construction. Also, the timelines associated with garage construction are problematic. The terminal expansion was built with modular relocatable buildings because of their speed of construction, but I'm not aware of any similar technology for parking garages.

I think the same holds true for 20 movements a day. These aren't large planes.

As for parking garages, the site has 3 large parking lots already, they could easily have staged construction a different way, there are spaces for temporary parking if absolutely necessary. If it was a priority, it could have been made to work.

The fact that they are coming to approve this now, just shows that they were not considering this when they made the choices they did, but I guess compared with constructing an entire new parking lot.

This is where I am fiscally conservative. We waste so much money doing stuff like this. Yes, I disagree that we should have banked such an enormous amount of money on Flair, but leaving that aside, we should do better with the money we have.

I see this with transit too. I still don't understand why the transit terminal is such an astronomical price. But fiscal conservatism goes the other way too. Cutting heaters from some stations (the Waterloo city centre station no less) was an absolutely fiscally irresponsible choice as well.

</rant>
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Seems a Flair plane overshot the runway at YKF.

https://twitter.com/jonathan_strom/statu...landing%2F
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(11-25-2022, 11:32 AM)jamincan Wrote: Seems a Flair plane overshot the runway at YKF.

https://twitter.com/jonathan_strom/statu...landing%2F

Luckily no injuries.

Kitchener was trending on Twitter - seems we had a lot going on this week: Borje Salming died - there is a biopic movie (TV movie/series) coming out about his, the Aud was used in place of Maple Leaf Gardens, but with his death, this topic was trending. Titans new ownership, Rangers and concert at The Centre in the Square had people talking as well.

At least this time, we weren't trending because of more gun violence.
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