Yesterday, 05:45 AM
(Yesterday, 03:23 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: I do not think "we'd have to do data entry in a computer for our system" is at all relevant. There are already flights that include train stations as their destination, INCLUDING in Canada, the Ottawa -> Montreal service operates as a code share with AC and also departs from the Ottawa train station.
Air France/KLM not Air Canada. From what I can read, there are no boarding passes for the Ottawa bus and I suspect they don't tag your bags, so it is logistically different. It seems like they don't have all the airport stuff at XDS, the Ottawa train station. Could they? Sure, for the right amount of money. Am I going to second guess this particular decision? Nah.
(Yesterday, 03:37 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: There were no taxis at YKF when we arrived last time (possibly that was not typical, I don't know). I'd also have to call a taxi from the boardwalk, except no I wouldn't, because there are buses.
But leaving aside buses and taxis, the boardwalk is simpler closer to most places in the city than YKF even for driving and getting picked up or booking a taxi.
Boardwalk is 8km from the Kitchener Market, while YKF is 11km from the Kitchener Market.
I have taken public transit from YKF but that's a weird thing to do. I wouldn't expect most people to be able to do this. (GRT Flex, if you're trying to do that). It has weird hours.
(Yesterday, 03:37 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: I am not arguing that there is not value provided by the service. Yes, not risking a missed connection is the biggest one by far. I'm always paranoid about missing my flights. But that isn't really that big a deal, the connections at least with my flights were not tight, we waited more than 2 hours even after spending more than an hour to pickup our baggage.
But I do care about baggage and I don't have NEXUS. This is what I said before. If they managed the connection through YKF, check my bags there, check me through security there, then drop me past security at YYZ and handle my bags for me, then there would be a lot of value to going to YKF. But they don't. They don't leverage any of the equipment at YYZ other than the curb outside the terminal building (and apparently the baggage tag printer which they didn't use when I was there).
As for boarding passes, that's not relevant at all. I get my boarding pass on my phone at my house the day before my flight.
Basically we have different priorities here. The YKF bus serves my needs reasonably well from YKF rather than, well, the bus station that doesn't exist anymore.
The YKF-YYZ-XXX connection is by definition not going to be tight, they respect a minimum connection time. But the value is that AC is on the hook to rebook you.