7636 replies to this topic

[Kilo95]

I emailed the VAA inquiring when the minutes would be posted. Received a reply saying they needed to be approved at the next board meeting and would be posted by mid-December.

[AllseeingEye]

They hired a PR person over a couple months ago, has only made one public comment to the media and it was over the striking food services workers distancing themselves from Compus Food Group of Canada. I think they lack huge PR / media relations. Other smaller airports like YCD and YLW promote and support their carriers for bums in seats and services offered at the airport along with travel advisories and pictures of the going ons at the airport. VAA just auto tweets or RT's 

As for the meeting, I missed it and waiting for anything to be posted normally takes a while and someone reminding them to post it. I looked the power point presentation over from the CEO and it was mainly repeated repeated repeated slides from the years previous. It's super sad no one goes to these meetings except the odd senior citizen complaining about Cessna or sea king traffic.

I get the feeling the CEO is not a public person, very uncomfortable doing public talks and lacks drive and enthusiasm for the airport....."its exists and runs - don't touch it".  

Are they still flying? Perhaps the Sea Kings are a good metaphor for YYJ communication practices - old, (out)dated, and easily best experienced in a museum....

[G-Man]

Yeah it is odd how little you see of the airport. You go to Vancouver and everywhere you look you see "Fly to Paris!" "Fly to Shanghai" etc etc all courtesy of the YVR comm shop...

[shoeflack]

Yeah it is odd how little you see of the airport. You go to Vancouver and everywhere you look you see "Fly to Paris!" "Fly to Shanghai" etc etc all courtesy of the YVR comm shop...

 

Heck, even wee little Nanaimo Airport does a better job at this. Every time you drive past the airport there they have a couple large highway signs promoting their routes.

[Missed Approach]

Heck, even wee little Nanaimo Airport does a better job at this. Every time you drive past the airport there they have a couple large highway signs promoting their routes.

YCD media does a great job connecting passengers via social media esp with their twitter - sports, shows or vacation destinations, they really make it know "you can fly YCD to get there"

I think YLW is good as well, YXS even has a mascot too!

YYJ is asleep at the switch, I know people who didn't know Delta even flew to Victoria. 

"Victoria is still a little puddle jumper airplanes to Vancouver only airport" is the impression of most in Victoria 

[Jackerbie]

Yeah it is odd how little you see of the airport. You go to Vancouver and everywhere you look you see "Fly to Paris!" "Fly to Shanghai" etc etc all courtesy of the YVR comm shop...

 

Is that YVR doing the promo though? All of the ones I have seen are airline or country specific. Air Canada has some here and there, but the ones that come to mind immediately are the numerous Air France, Iceland Air, and Allegiant ads, as well as some from tourism boards in Taiwan, Japan, China, etc.

[Mike K.]

United used to have a giant billboard along the highway promoting their Frisco fight. I haven’t seen anything like that since.

[Missed Approach]

Random thought hit me tonite, how many fun in the sun flights has WJ cut out of YYJ, this article sumed it up.

Gone so far is Las Vegas, Phoneix ( was there one or am I thinking of PSP ) and HNL ....

 

Number of YEG flights is down to 2 daily on 12345, and 1 on the weekend operated by a Encore Q400

 

Yet YLW is saturated with Sun/Fun destinations and domestic routes by AC/WJ/FA and charters.....go figure.

 

Spoke and wheel system they say - will everything soon be Encore 

 

https://www.timescol...emand-1.2310730

[Kilo95]

Random thought hit me tonite, how many fun in the sun flights has WJ cut out of YYJ, this article sumed it up.
Gone so far is Las Vegas, Phoneix ( was there one or am I thinking of PSP ) and HNL ....

Yeah.. there used to be a PHX flight as well. Started seasonally in 2011, can’t remember how long it lasted. Announced here:

http://www.victoriaa...phoenix-service

Back in the day (2006?) Delta also used to have service via SLC. Seems overall there has been a significant reduction in transborder destinations.. which will continue as UA leaves in 2019.

Edited by Kilo95, 29 November 2018 - 12:55 AM.

[shoeflack]

Random thought hit me tonite, how many fun in the sun flights has WJ cut out of YYJ, this article sumed it up.

Gone so far is Las Vegas, Phoneix ( was there one or am I thinking of PSP ) and HNL ....

 

Number of YEG flights is down to 2 daily on 12345, and 1 on the weekend operated by a Encore Q400

 

Yet YLW is saturated with Sun/Fun destinations and domestic routes by AC/WJ/FA and charters.....go figure.

 

Spoke and wheel system they say - will everything soon be Encore 

 

https://www.timescol...emand-1.2310730

 

Regarding YLW, as I've said it before here, they have a much larger market for winter travel. YYJ is far behind YLW in that regard.

 

There is a much higher percentage of people in the Okanagan who fly south for the winter than there is on the South Island, not to mention the reverse group of folks looking to ski. Victoria is nice enough in the winter to keep more locals in town, yet still ugly enough not to attract a ton of visitors. Population fluctuations in the Okanagan between summer and winter are pretty outrageous, and that all leads to why YLW has more winter sun/fun destinations...and does well with them. That all being said, really the only difference between YLW and YYJ is that YLW has two additional sun destinations on WestJet. Their Air Transat and Sunwing service is essentially the same.

 

Victoria can really only sustain the charter-style vacation flights, thus the Air Transat, Sunwing, and WestJet Mexico destinations that are typically wrapped up nicely in a week-long vacation beau.

[lanforod]

The exchange rate doesn't help flights to warm US destinations.

[ryno8097]

Go to Comox... you can fly seasonally to Varadero, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and Puerto Vallarta direct.  Yes that's right - you heard me correctly - Comox Airport offers direct seasonal service to Cuba and the southeast of the U.S. of A.

 

Victoria gets shafted with the lack of direct service.  Last winter we (family of four) flew Air Transat to Puerto Vallarta, but we flew from Vancouver as it saved us 33% for one week.  I am of firm belief that these airlines are not wanting to fly out of Victoria.  Even with two overnights and transport to/from YVR we came out with $1100 in our pockets.

[shoeflack]

Go to Comox... you can fly seasonally to Varadero, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and Puerto Vallarta direct.  Yes that's right - you heard me correctly - Comox Airport offers direct seasonal service to Cuba and the southeast of the U.S. of A.

 

Victoria gets shafted with the lack of direct service.  Last winter we (family of four) flew Air Transat to Puerto Vallarta, but we flew from Vancouver as it saved us 33% for one week.  I am of firm belief that these airlines are not wanting to fly out of Victoria.  Even with two overnights and transport to/from YVR we came out with $1100 in our pockets.

 

That's simply not true. WestJet has a seasonal flight to PV, but I have no idea who is operating these supposed Cuba and US flights from Comox (unless the Royal Canadian Air Force has some luxe flight charters?). Care to shed some light?

[Kilo95]

^

The YQQ website lists these destinations on their website as “5 Sun Destinations from Comox”, but I don’t think they’re implying that they are non-stop flights. As far as I know, a seasonal WS flight to PVR is their only sun destination.

Edited by Kilo95, 29 November 2018 - 01:22 PM.

[Missed Approach]

^

The YQQ website lists these destinations on their website as “5 Sun Destinations from Comox”, but I don’t think they’re implying that they are non-stop flights. As far as I know, a seasonal WS flight to PVR is their only sun destination.

I can see how that looks like non stop to those destinations but https://www.comoxairport.com/routes explains it abit better, with great connections via ……. YVR/YYC/YEG. WJ only offers PVR for YQQ over the winter....

[Sparky]

I just flew from YYJ to PVR direct via WestJet

Delightful

[LJ]

Direct or non-stop?

 

You can fly direct from YYJ to many places by making a stop in YVR or SEA.

[shoeflack]

Direct or non-stop?

 

You can fly direct from YYJ to many places by making a stop in YVR or SEA.

 

I only know of two true "direct" flights out of YYJ. Direct, of course, meaning that flight numbers don't change, or the plane continues on elsewhere without you having to get off. The only true "direct" flights out of YYJ that are like this is Pacific Coastal to Cranbrook (makes a stop in Vancouver) and Air North to Whitehorse (makes a stop in Kelowna). No other airlines out of YYJ market any direct, multi-stop flights. 

 

But to answer your question, WestJet runs a once-weekly non-stop flight to PVR from YYJ.

Edited by shoeflack, 29 November 2018 - 08:10 PM.

[Mike K.]

Don’t some of Westjet’s Edmonton flights continue on to several other cities and you just remain on the plane? I flew from Toronto that way once and the return had a similar stopping arrangement. But I don’t know if flight numbers changed.

[shoeflack]

They used to do this quite a bit. I remember way back when the WestJet flight to Toronto operated Victoria-Kelowna-Toronto both ways. WestJet now doesn't even let you stay on the plane if their fleet schedule lines up like this...they even use direct and non-stop interchangeably now in their marketing. But ya, you used to see that quite a bit on departure boards where multiple cities would show for a flight. Now you're more likely to see multiple airlines attached to a flight for codeshares.

 

Flair still does this though with most of their routes.

Edited by shoeflack, 29 November 2018 - 08:24 PM.