Despite what out friend from Mississauga thinks. I actually anticipate success here.
When Westjet first came to Eastern Canada (YHM) they were extremely successful at YHM, I know I was working there at the peak. Loads across the board we're in the 95% to 98% Capacity. They left for YYZ because the merger of Canadian Airlines and Air Canada had been completed and that left a very empty T3. Along ame the GTAA with some lucrative deal and pulled WJ away. Despite then never admitting this and instead blaming the weather.
Then swoop came in and again was successful up until 2020. Infact I think swoop offered more routes than Westjet did, or atleast different ones.
Again nother to do woth YHM but.more.to do with union bs they shut.down the airline.
Now what hasn't Westjet added more mainline flights into YHM. Probably because they have decided to build up YYC.
They don't really even offer much from YYZ anymore compared to what they used to.
Since the beginning Westjets business model has changed significantly. They are basically Canadian Airlines 2.O not an ULCC.
Having said all of that the demographics of the Greater Hamilton area have changed the past 10 to 15 years. A lot of Toronto transplants. Greater economic growth throughout the region.
Plus we are seeing significant investment in the terminal.
As for the schedule structure it's strictly designed for maximum aircraft utilization.
2 jets for the 4 flights.
If I had a buck for everyone who said "but the flights were always full" I'd be a rich man. I've lost track of the number of airlines that I worked with that had very high load factors yet still ceased ops.
Terminal three was hardly empty during the period from 2001 to 2004. Don't forget that a bunch of the ex CAIL A320s were rebranded into Tango starting late 2001 and operated out of T3. There was a time where AC operated out of all three Terminals. C3 had swallowed Royal and canjet n 2000 but were still booming until they went bankrupt in November of 2001 and not long after Michel Leblanc surfaced again with his MD83 and later on F100 based Jetsgo before they spectacularly crashed and burned March break weekend in 2005. So, no T3 wasn't a ghost town and there was no "lucrative deal" with the GTAA but there was some space available.
But there was a shift in play at westjet because of the Cail/AC merger. The market was in in flux and they quickly realized an opening. That opening wasn't at Hamilton though. The expansion opportunities that they saw, particularly in the US, and Caribbean as well as the insane decision to enter the Bermuda triangle profitability killer with the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal thing was not something that was going to be handled at Hamilton. It couldn't simply because the throughput of that facility just wouldn't allow it. How many check-in positions are there? Is there US pre-clearance? How many gates? Those were all questions they asked and knew the answers to. Even if they wanted to stay at YHM, there is no way that facility was going to run the operation that they were planning and they certainly weren't going to be pumping $1b into a new terminal. Once the large tranche of 737-7CTs and -8s were coming on property, there was no way they weren't going to shift their focus to Pearson. And this really is the rub here.
@ShonTron said it best a couple of posts up. The timings suck. People want choice and if they need to be somewhere outside of the two limited times that porter offers, they're going to YYZ.
No, the schedule is never solely designed based on fleet utilization. Marketing and scheduling work hand in hand. If you plot your flights just on best aircraft utilization you'll get killed on a lot of routes. To me it looks like a connection play between Halifax and points west. Fleet utilization at Porter - at least with the E-jets - seems quite poor over their entire network.
Porter's growth strategy reminds me of target starting from scratch in Canada and trying to open more than a hundred stores in a year. They've got way too many new tails coming that need to find work.
Is there actually a true facility expansion in terms of terminal space and footprint or is it just the new facade and adding boarding bridges?
Love,
-your friend from Mississauga.
