Region of Waterloo International Airport - YKF

[SammyOES2]

I could see that. I bet the international gates are more expensive than the domestic gates.

[tomh009]

It didn't work with AA, but they only had a connection to ORD, and only a few times a day.  Not enough to establish critical mass.

What didn't work for AA?  The flights were consistently overbooked!  There is definatly a demand for the service, and subsequent connections.  I flew from YKF to Venice Italy via ORD and it was a great experience... even though I flew the "wrong way".

What didn't work was that it wasn't sufficiently profitable for AA, so they pulled the plug.

[Canard]

No, it was reported that they could just make more money by moving that particular aircraft to fly out of Akron. The dollar worked against YKF. It wasn't that it wasn't popular; it was.

[tomh009]

Correct. It's not the passenger count, it's that it wasn't sufficiently profitable for AA, so they pulled the plug.

[Canard]

Right; I just kept seeing that people were saying it wasn't profitable, but that's not really true - it's just that Akron was more profitable and it was that exact aircraft that was torn between two places. If they had another plane to use, we'd still have the flight. But they didn't.

[MacBerry]

Right; I just kept seeing that people were saying it wasn't profitable, but that's not really true - it's just that Akron was more profitable and it was that exact aircraft that was torn between two places. If they had another plane to use, we'd still have the flight. But they didn't.

Ahhhh .... beautiful downtown Akron

[MidTowner]

Ahhhh .... beautiful downtown Akron

Have you been? It's not so bad for a city of its size in North America. Most people would be surprised at the quality of Akron's downtown given how prominent it used to be, and what a "rust belt" economy it now has.

Kind of funny: Kitchener used to be known as "Canada's Akron" because of all the rubber here.

[Coke6pk]

Ahhhh .... beautiful downtown Akron

Have you been? It's not so bad for a city of its size in North America. Most people would be surprised at the quality of Akron's downtown given how prominent it used to be, and what a "rust belt" economy it now has.

Kind of funny: Kitchener used to be known as "Canada's Akron" because of all the rubber here.

But have we ever been the "Meth Capital" of anything? 

Coke

[rangersfan]

There was an article a couple weeks back talking about how Vidyard flys in sales and other executives from the United States weekly because they couldn't find the talent locally. Without a local connection to the United States (technically you could go YKF to Calgary to certain American destinations, but requires substantial added time and flexibility loss) I hope it doesn’t have an effect on the competitiveness for local businesses and attracting new business.

[tomh009]

There was an article a couple weeks back talking about how Vidyard flys in sales and other executives from the United States weekly because they couldn't find the talent locally. Without a local connection to the United States (technically you could go YKF to Calgary to certain American destinations, but requires substantial added time and flexibility loss) I hope it doesn’t have an effect on the competitiveness for local businesses and attracting new business.

Realistically YYZ isn't that bad.  Even if we still had AA, it would be Chicago only, so might not help Vidyard (or others) much.  I know our US visitors would normally fly direct to YYZ rather than connecting through ORD to YKF.  And it takes 45+ minutes to get to our offices from PHL, ATL or SFO as well.

[SammyOES2]

Yeah, as much as I would have loved to use YKF for flights to the US, about 95% of the time YYZ ended up being more convenient. To me at least a direct flight from Toronto was generally marginally better than a flight with a stop-over in Chicago from YKF. Stop-overs are huge for introducing delays/problems in a trip. I can't imagine losing the Chicago flights will have much of a noticeable effect on local business.

[BuildingScout]

There was an article a couple weeks back talking about how Vidyard flys in sales and other executives from the United States weekly because they couldn't find the talent locally. Without a local connection to the United States (technically you could go YKF to Calgary to certain American destinations, but requires substantial added time and flexibility loss) I hope it doesn’t have an effect on the competitiveness for local businesses and attracting new business.

Realistically YYZ isn't that bad.  Even if we still had AA, it would be Chicago only, so might not help Vidyard (or others) much.  I know our US visitors would normally fly direct to YYZ rather than connecting through ORD to YKF.  And it takes 45+ minutes to get to our offices from PHL, ATL or SFO as well.

Actually as some one who used to fly to SFO every other week, YKF is a perfectly fine alternative once the direct YYZ-SFO fights were full, which was about half of the time. However, as I suggested, I think we have enough traffic for a YKF-SFO direct flight twice daily. If you are going say, to LA you can take a $120 shuttle flight from SFO that will get you there.

[Canard]

Re local business - my company used the AA flight all the time because we have a huge customer base in Chicago. That flight was gold for us. We hate that we have to go back ocome Pearson now.

[Viewfromthe42]

It's not just the direct flights. If they are hires who travel (e.g. sales and marketing), they will take the less convenient flight in order to keep their points and status going up with whichever carrier they employ. For most of them, even the AA flight we've lost wasn't worth it.

[jgsz]

Too bad no one locally is willing to start an airline to serve this area.