Region of Waterloo International Airport - YKF

[BuildingScout]

This would be true if SFO was a destination only. However it is also a hub. By my estimation there are somewhere between 15 to 40 daily trips from RoW with SFO as a destination, to which we need to add people connecting on to Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Hawaii, Philippines, and Australia. This can easily fill to capacity a CRJ200/LR every day of the week or a CRJ705 at 80-90%.

Neither aircraft you suggest has enough range.  YKF-SFO is 1932nm, and you need to allow margin due to winds (which are not always favourable).  CRJ200LR is closest, but at 2004nm of range you end up with only 72nm of margin, and that's simply not enough.

It's my understanding that range as described in manufacturer specifications means effective range and not "you arrive there with the last drop of fuel". So if the range is 2076nm it means: you can reach any airport at that distance with enough spare fuel to meet normal airline regulations.

That aside, you would also be taking away traffic from the YKF-ORD route, which might (or might not) be a problem as well.

Not in any significant way. First, few people would be flying YKF-ORD-SFO since there are six direct flights from YYZ and with the exception of Hawaii all other destinations are still too far from ORD, outside of you-don't-want-to-take 16-18hr direct flights which are already available from YYZ to begin with. So very little cannibalization there.

JFK or MIA would make much more sense, giving connections to the east coast and Europe/Latin America.  And no problems with range.

Huh? Is YKF already at capacity, unbeknownst to me?

Because short of that I don't see what the viability of YKF-JFK has to do with YKF-SFO. They serve different parts of the globe. I have argued for YKF-JFK for pretty much the exact same reasons as YKF-SFO. So almost the opposite to what you say, if JFK makes sense this is an argument in favour of SFO as well.