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Mackwin said:
No way, eh. Pretty much this attitude why I would never purposefully assist in making Calgary a major international hub airport in Canada. Calgary would be nothing without Banff and would be just another airport spoke, and with the AC Calgary de-hubbing in progress, this may help other regional airports to attract more direct continental and international flights. I'm not saying YWG will ever get to the level of Canada's big three airport, but less Calgary competition will help both Winnipeg and Edmonton become a bit more competitive, and that is great for the rest of us.
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Without Banff, things would be different for YYC no doubt, but it would likely be a hub, only to a lesser degree.
If Banff didn’t exist there’s a good chance YWG would be almost exactly where it’s at today. With Calgary being double the population of Winnipeg and Alberta more than triple the population of Manitoba, YYC would still a much busier airport than YWG.
Due to it being busier, airlines would still be trying to funnel traffic from other prairie cities through YYC. It wouldn’t be as pronounced as it is today, but for Winnipeg it wouldn’t be much different. Traffic would get funneled more often to cities like Toronto instead.
Edmonton and YEG has been the most affected by Banff, and YYC. If Banff never existed, who knows maybe YEG might have become a main hub instead of YYC. Or if only oil had never been discovered maybe Winnipeg would be the hub of the West. The list of hypotheticals is endless but In the end Banff and Calgary do exist and things are what they are.
 
Mackwin said:
No way, eh. Pretty much this attitude why I would never purposefully assist in making Calgary a major international hub airport in Canada. Calgary would be nothing without Banff and would be just another airport spoke, and with the AC Calgary de-hubbing in progress, this may help other regional airports to attract more direct continental and international flights. I'm not saying YWG will ever get to the level of Canada's big three airport, but less Calgary competition will help both Winnipeg and Edmonton become a bit more competitive, and that is great for the rest of us.
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If the country needs an airline hub btwn toronto and vancouver, why wouldnt it be the biggest city, 45 min from the rocky mountains? I guess all airlines should ignore those stupid things like tourism potential, economic profile, and market size when determining airline hubs. Believe it or not, airlines like making money, if they felt winnipeg and edmonton could handle those routes, wouldn't they do them?
 
Mackwin said:
No way, eh. Pretty much this attitude why I would never purposefully assist in making Calgary a major international hub airport in Canada. Calgary would be nothing without Banff and would be just another airport spoke, and with the AC Calgary de-hubbing in progress, this may help other regional airports to attract more direct continental and international flights. I'm not saying YWG will ever get to the level of Canada's big three airport, but less Calgary competition will help both Winnipeg and Edmonton become a bit more competitive, and that is great for the rest of us.
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Two things.
1) Calgary not having Banff wouldn’t help Winnipeg’s numbers. Edmonton doesn’t have a Banff and is also cursed with having Calgary 3 hours away by car, yet still handles twice as many passengers as YWG.
2) AC scaling back at YYC will have very little if any affect at all on Winnipeg or the other cities in the region. AC would only feed passengers into Toronto or Vancouver. Winnipeg is about half way between Calgary and Toronto, so Toronto is the most likely place to route them. There’s no reason for AC to suddenly give international flights to Winnipeg, it isn’t a big enough market for that. It’s far, far more profitable for AC to route them to Toronto, just as is the case for WS to route them to Calgary.

Look, I feel bad for cities like Edmonton, Winnipeg, or Ottawa. Clearly, the Canadian market is trending towards a system of 4 major hubs, and why wouldn’t they? It’s what works best for the airlines, and is the same setup in other countries around the world. It’s not fair that London gets all the traffic and Manchester and Birmingham don’t, but that’s the way it is.
 
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This little “debate” or discussion made me remember this similar pseudo-debate on SSP many years ago. The exact same thing as “Calgary would be nothing without Banff!!” was “Calgary would have the same temperatures as Edmonton if it weren’t for Chinooks!!”

To me it’s like…. Gurl… these things literally exist and have completely real physical manifestations. Banff isn’t going anywhere, so what’s the point of saying “but but but Calgary wouldn’t be anything without Banff”?? Like, um, sure… interesting thought experiment I suppose, but we’ll never know, since Banff exists, and so do the Rockies. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
Mackwin said:
No way, eh. Pretty much this attitude why I would never purposefully assist in making Calgary a major international hub airport in Canada. Calgary would be nothing without Banff and would be just another airport spoke, and with the AC Calgary de-hubbing in progress, this may help other regional airports to attract more direct continental and international flights. I'm not saying YWG will ever get to the level of Canada's big three airport, but less Calgary competition will help both Winnipeg and Edmonton become a bit more competitive, and that is great for the rest of us.
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You probably feel like you’re being suddenly ganged up on, so I’m going to offer some advice. Stay away from comments like ‘Calgary would be nothing with Banff’. You might as well say that Yellowknife would have palm trees if the earth was closer to the sun, or Winnipeg would be a large port city if the pacific coast was in Manitoba. It’s a pointless endeavour. Every place in the world is what it is.

Regarding Winnipeg and Edmonton. I agree they’ve kind of been shafted, but again things are what they are. Other cities like Ottawa, London, Quebec City and Hamilton also suffer from their geographical location and how thing things have shaken out.
If Winnipeg or Edmonton had become the main hub of prairies, people in those cities would be celebrating, while others would be complaining. It just is the way it is.
 
Mackwin said:
No way, eh. Pretty much this attitude why I would never purposefully assist in making Calgary a major international hub airport in Canada. Calgary would be nothing without Banff and would be just another airport spoke, and with the AC Calgary de-hubbing in progress, this may help other regional airports to attract more direct continental and international flights. I'm not saying YWG will ever get to the level of Canada's big three airport, but less Calgary competition will help both Winnipeg and Edmonton become a bit more competitive, and that is great for the rest of us.
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Hopefully you’re not like some of the SSP Edmonton forumers who are purposely avoiding YYC even if it means more money or an inferior schedule lol.
With YYC handling 18 million passengers a year, they aren’t going to notice the absence of a half dozen disgruntled forumers.
You can avoid YYC if all things are equal, but it’ll be a boost to either YYZ or YVR. It doesn’t change the situation for YEG or YWG.
 
Beltline_B said:
Regarding Winnipeg and Edmonton. I agree they’ve kind of been shafted, but again things are what they are. Other cities like Ottawa, London, Quebec City and Hamilton also suffer from their geographical location and how thing things have shaken out.
If Winnipeg or Edmonton had become the main hub of prairies, people in those cities would be celebrating, while others would be complaining. It just is the way it is.
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Good point. People from Edmonton or Winnipeg can hate on Calgary or WestJet for creating the current situation, but it’s no different for people in Ottawa or QC with AC routing all their traffic through Montreal.
If Westjet wasn’t routing 8 flights a day of traffic from Winnipeg through Calgary, AC would be routing 8 flights a day through Toronto.
 
It seems reasonable to me that there would be a fourth hub in Canada, given that there's 3300 km and 18-20%+ of the country's population between Toronto and Vancouver. The three major US airlines each have a hub in the Mountain time zone, even though Denver, Phoenix and Salt Lake City are smaller than the megacities that have the majority of hubs, while similar-sized cities like Cleveland, St. Louis, Tampa, Portland and San Diego are not hub cities. There's a number of criteria that could be used to figure out which city is the most likely hub, depending on whether you value business, family-and-friend or leisure travel; domestic or international travel. The hub could go in the place with the:
  • Largest city population
  • Largest metropolitan area population
  • Biggest international tourism draw
  • Highest gross metropolitan product (most economically powerful city)
  • Most head offices
  • Has an airline head office
  • Largest population of immigrants
  • Largest population of recent immigrants
  • Most interprovincial migrants
  • Most high-income households
  • Most highly educated people
  • Most white-collar workers
Fortunately, all twelve of these are the same city.
 
ByeByeBaby said:
It seems reasonable to me that there would be a fourth hub in Canada, given that there's 3300 km and 18-20%+ of the country's population between Toronto and Vancouver. The three major US airlines each have a hub in the Mountain time zone, even though Denver, Phoenix and Salt Lake City are smaller than the megacities that have the majority of hubs, while similar-sized cities like Cleveland, St. Louis, Tampa, Portland and San Diego are not hub cities. There's a number of criteria that could be used to figure out which city is the most likely hub, depending on whether you value business, family-and-friend or leisure travel; domestic or international travel. The hub could go in the place with the:
  • Largest city population
  • Largest metropolitan area population
  • Biggest international tourism draw
  • Highest gross metropolitan product (most economically powerful city)
  • Most head offices
  • Has an airline head office
  • Largest population of immigrants
  • Largest population of recent immigrants
  • Most interprovincial migrants
  • Most high-income households
  • Most highly educated people
  • Most white-collar workers
Fortunately, all twelve of these are the same city.
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lol..."but but but". You could honestly make the argument, on a number of those points, that YYC should be ahead of Montreal in terms of national "hub" rankings. but that's a can of worms so i digress
 
Tothewest said:
lol..."but but but". You could honestly make the argument, on a number of those points, that YYC should be ahead of Montreal in terms of national "hub" rankings. but that's a can of worms so i digress
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Montreal is also used as an Eastern Canada hub. Toronto doesn’t have the capacity so it basically provides another routing option. Montreal also has more traffic to French speaking regions, which typically wouldn’t have a direct flight to Canada.
 
UrbanWarrior said:
This little “debate” or discussion made me remember this similar pseudo-debate on SSP many years ago. The exact same thing as “Calgary would be nothing without Banff!!” was “Calgary would have the same temperatures as Edmonton if it weren’t for Chinooks!!”

To me it’s like…. Gurl… these things literally exist and have completely real physical manifestations. Banff isn’t going anywhere, so what’s the point of saying “but but but Calgary wouldn’t be anything without Banff”?? Like, um, sure… interesting thought experiment I suppose, but we’ll never know, since Banff exists, and so do the Rockies. 🤷🏻‍♂️
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I get liking the convenience of a larger list of direct flights but obviously there are things people like about living in smaller cities. If someone from Winnipeg wants the same number of direct flights, they also need to accept lots of tourists in the summer and winter, double their city population, having an airport within city limits (looking at EDM) with the associated noise, etc… Some of these probably are not concerns for people on this forum (like the noise) but I’m sure there are lots of people that want the more direct flights but don’t want to give up anything they like about their city, which is just fantasy land.
 
Surrealplaces said:
globalnews.ca

Air Canada pilots protest against route cuts in Calgary - Calgary | Globalnews.ca

Air Canada announced it would slash six routes out of Calgary this winter due to an ongoing pilot shortage that the airline said threatens its 'overall operational stability.'
globalnews.ca globalnews.ca
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Wait, Pilots are protesting route cuts as a result of there not being enough pilots... This this like the guy working his butt off but not willing to share his work with others because then he'll be less "valuable" to the company.
 
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