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Video from Alex Praglowski covering the inaugural flight to Seoul. He makes some interesting comments regarding the fleet of 7 x 787s and I tend to agree with him. WS can still focus on going the 737 route, but if they are going to service this many overseas destinations, there going to need to increase the widebody fleet, even if by one 787 or they'll get caught.

everyone in Calgary think WS should get 2-3 more 787. except for Alexis (CEO of WS)
 
Alexis is all about making money and the 787s have yet to prove they can turn a profit 12 months of the year. It's easy to make money to Europe in the summer with wide-bodies but then you have to figure out what to do with them the other 7 months of the year to keep the profitable. I've been told by more than one airline executive that it is far more profitable and costs far less to run two 737-8s to Cancun or Hawaii than it is to run one 787. They run them south in the winter because they would lose far more money sending them to Europe than sending them south but that doesn't necessarily mean they're making any money by doing it either. If WestJet can find a way to make the 787s profitable year-round, Alexis has already stated they will acquire more of them.
 
Video from Alex Praglowski covering the inaugural flight to Seoul. He makes some interesting comments regarding the fleet of 7 x 787s and I tend to agree with him. WS can still focus on going the 737 route, but if they are going to service this many overseas destinations, there going to need to increase the widebody fleet, even if by one 787 or they'll get caught.

A Friend of mine is a maintenance supervisor at YYC for WestJet and he was saying most the time those 787's are on the ground for less than 3 hours then back up in the air for 8 hours. So most their life's they spend in the air, I thought that was staggering.
 
I'm not sure where WS will go with the widebody strategy, but I agree with the video that having all 7 constantly going in the summer doesn't leave much margin for error or unexpected snags, and could cost them in the long run. In the recent announcement they mentioned using the 787s for Mexico (PV and Cancun) and Hawaii, so I guess they'll try and at least keep them busy.

Here's a question for those who know the airline business. What if one of those 787s had maintenance issues and had to be grounded for a week? What would WS do to get people overseas? A wet lease? Hire another charter airline?
 
Here's a question for those who know the airline business. What if one of those 787s had maintenance issues and had to be grounded for a week? What would WS do to get people overseas? A wet lease? Hire another charter airline?
Curious as well. Even if for a couple days it was grounded in Europe or Asia, how does Westjet have the extra capacity? Unless they rebook on a partner and at least bring the passenger back to Canada, but that'd be so costly.

On a separate note, wonder if any airline has done a sharing agreement like Sunwing did with TUI for widebodies. Westjet gets the plane for the summer and swaps with another carrier in the Southern Hemisphere or winter travel destination for the winter.
 
AC adding seasonal same-plane service to DEL this winter, via LHR


AC850/851 will operate YYC-LHR-DEL-LHR-YYC.
Another question for those in the know. Is this a type of flight where the plane arrives in London and the passengers can deplane for a bit, and then get back on the same aircraft? Looks like a 2.5 hour gap from when it lands at LHR, and then departs to
DEL.
 
AC adding seasonal same-plane service to DEL this winter, via LHR


AC850/851 will operate YYC-LHR-DEL-LHR-YYC.
Interesting addition, I would have preferred they used the extra plane to add another direct route from YYC to somewhere since this flight will take up at least 2 787s to operate and you could already connect through LHR to India with another airline anyway.
 
Discover Airlines is planning YYC-Munich in 2025, up to 5x weekly.
 

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