So What's Up With Air Canada Service to Thunder Bay Now?

Air Canada’s new three times a day with larger planes Rouge service from Toronto Pearson to Thunder Bay seems to have become quite erratic over the last few weeks based on some of the arrival times.  The new service began May 1^st with a ceremonial greeting at the Thunder Bay airport using water cannon.   However, the anecdotal evidence from conversations with a few people suggests that there have some significant delays of up two hours and sometimes more in recent weeks.  This is likely not due to adjustment to a new schedule as it has now been in place for several months.  One also suspects it is not an official part of some type of preliminary celebration of Canada’s new air passenger protection laws.

In terms of some specifics over the last week: Last Friday (July 12th), my in-laws were on Air Canada 1512 which was supposed to arrive at 4:17pm and they arrived at almost 7pm.  A flight earlier in the day also had a substantial delay of several hours.  On Sunday the 14^th, AC8547 was supposed to arrive at 11:02pm but did not show up until one and a half hours later. On Monday July 15^th, the last flight of the day 8547 was only about a half hour late.   On Tuesday July 16^th, AC 1510 due at 10:17 am arrived at 11:40am while AC 1512 due at 4:17pm came in at 6:04pm.  On Wednesday July 17^th, AC 1512 was again late and at the time of this posting is supposed to be coming in at 6:42 pm. 

Not sure what is responsible for this service deterioration – it does seem like a pretty bad on-time rate.  In a discussion with one of my more well-traveled sources, we hypothesized that part of the problem seems to be the fact that Rouge also services international markets and some of these planes coming to Thunder Bay may be part of a chain with origins in the United States and the Caribbean.  So, for example, the story is some of these planes do runs for Rouge like say New Orleans-Toronto and then Toronto-Thunder Bay or a Caribbean destination to Toronto and then Toronto-Thunder Bay.  Small delays on the earlier international leg then cascade into larger ones on the final leg into Thunder Bay. Another story is that this may have something to do with the removal of capacity resulting from the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max8.  Given that Rouge has larger planes – AC 1512 last Friday was a 270 seater – there may be last minute diversions onto other routes going on which complicate the schedule.  Air Canada does claim in their messages to delayed passengers that there  have been “scheduling issues.”

Of course, who really knows what is going on here other than God and Air Canada. It would be nice for Air Canada to acknowledge that they are having difficulties getting to Thunder Bay on time with an explanation why and what they are doing to address the situation.  One expects that passengers in Thunder Bay will have better luck getting an answer from God.