Air Canada’s On Time Record Needs to Improve

I noted in a July post that Air Canada’s service from Toronto to Thunder Bay had been showing some rather erratic performance when it came to on-time arrival.  I monitored performance rather casually for a few weeks later and noticed there were still issues and finally decided to do a more formal monitoring and see what statistics I could come up with.  For the period August 25^th to September 7^th 2019, I noted the scheduled and actual arrival times for the three daily Toronto to Thunder Bay Air Canada flights.  If the flights actually arrived within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, they were deemed to be on time. Otherwise, they were late and the amount of time they were late was also noted. 

The 15-minute window is a pretty standard application of this type of this type of airline performance metric.  If you are looking for a benchmark, Forbes reported on a recent airline performance – the OAG 2019 Punctuality League statistics – and they also use this 15 minute window.  If you are looking for an international benchmark, in the top 20 airlines for on-time performance for all airlines in the report, the top airline was Copa Airlines with a 89.8 percent on time rate (that is arrived within plus or minus 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival nearly 90 percent of the time).  Rounding out the top 20 was Alitalia which was on-time 82.9 percent of the time.   If one only looked at mega airlines, the top 20 ranged from 85.6 percent for LATAM Airlines Group to 66.8 percent for – Air Canada – just below Air China at number 19 with 68.8 percent.  By the way, Westjet had a 76.3 percent on time rate.  Porter did not appear to be included in the report.

Without giving to much away early for the rest of the post, Air Canada’s Toronto to Thunder Bay on time performance during the August 25^th to September 7^th period was pretty abysmal as it did not even meet its low overall on-time performance.  Over this time period, the planes were late 57 percent of the time with an average late arrival of 29 minutes.  You might think that 29 minutes is not so bad – but the time differential ranged from a maximum of 201 minutes (that is 2 hours and 21 minutes late for AC 1512 on September 1^st) to 11 minutes early for AC 1512 the next day.   

 

The accompanying figure plots each flight during this period and at least 8 flights (that is about 20 percent of flights) were at least 50 minutes late.  The only good news is that during this period, there is a slight downward trend in minutes late but there is still a lot of room for improvement.  Keep in mind, aside from the last flight of the day which even if a couple of hours late is able to take off as the first flight the next morning on time – all the late flights coming mean a late flight the other way.  And, this poor performance is during a summer period where there is relatively good weather.  One can only imagine what this winter is going to be like.

So, there you have it.  Air Canada has work to do period but it would be nice if it could bring up its Thunder Bay run performance to at least its overall standard – which is not great by international standards.

And Here it Is! The New Air Canada Thunder Bay-Toronto Schedule

Well, you can now book starting May 1st on the new schedule Air Canada has for the Thunder Bay-Toronto run.  As noted in my last post, much was made of the move to larger A319 jets that would shave off 20 minutes off  a flight from the current turboprops but the more frequent schedule of six flights daily has now been replaced by three flights a day.  One thing remains the same however, the earliest flight out of Thunder Bay to Toronto is still at 5 am.

Going from Thunder Bay to Toronto, Air Canada now has three flights a day and every day:  5am, 11am and 5:15pm. 



 Coming back, its 8:20am, 2:30pm and 9:10 pm.



So there you have it, the new Air Canada out of Thunder Bay.  It will be interesting to see how it does compared to the competition from Porter and Westjet.  Going to Toronto on a weekday, Porter in early May currently has seven flights from Thunder Bay to Toronto Island (as opposed to Pearson for Air Canada): 6:45am, 9:00am, 11:10am, 12:40am, 2:10pm, 4:05pm and 7:15pm.  As for the return, another seven flights at 8:30am, 9:55am, 11:25am, 1:25 am, 4:35 am, 6:45pm and 8:20pm.  As for Westjet (which goes to Pearson also), from Thunder Bay to Toronto it is 6:10am, 11:50am and 5:50pm while the returns are departing at  9am, 3:10pm and 9:50pm.

Air Canada has cut capacity starting in May by 13 percent going from 468 to 408 seats.  Porter at seven flights a day with a Turboprop (assuming 78 seat capacity) will have 546 seats available while Westjet with three 78 seat Turboprop flights will have 234 seats.  So the smallest local player here is Westjet and given that they appear to be having some issues that have caused it to lag Air Canada nationally, one wonders if they will be the airline hit hardest by these changes in the Thunder Bay market and as a result be the most likely to exit.  Or will they counter with their own jet service and business class to compete directly with Air Canada on the Thunder Bay run?

Stay tuned.

From Air Canada to Thunder Bay with Love...Well Maybe Not

Air Canada chose Valentine’s Day to announce a number of route changes that consist of removing older, slower, more frequent and smaller regional propeller planes (the Q400s) currently operating under Jazz and substituting newer, faster (by about 20 minutes in Thunder Bay's case) less frequent but larger jet aircraft (A319s) operating under the Rouge banner.  In the case of Thunder Bay, this means that the current six flights a day to Toronto (with 78 seat capacity for each flight) will be replaced with three flights a day (with 136 seat capacity each).  If you do the math, daily capacity on the Thunder Bay-Toronto run for Air Canada will actually fall from 468 to 408 – a drop of about 13 percent. That means you can expect a price increase at some point in the future even though the newer planes and crews Rouge uses are likely lower cost per passenger mile.

I guess I am now old enough to remember the preamble to the era of airline deregulation when Norman Bonsor, my Transportation Economics professor, would intone that deregulation was a plus for small regional markets like Thunder Bay because more expensive jet service would be replaced by more frequent and cheaper albeit slightly slower turbo-props – which is indeed what came to pass in Thunder Bay.  Air Canada’s announcement is a bit like back to the future but the new jets today are much more fuel efficient and cost effective than they were in the 1970s and 1980s.

Still, I am looking forward to seeing how this transition proceeds and the passenger response.  Going from six flights a day to three will reduce passenger travel flexibility and one expects that Air Canada will schedule its three daily flights to Pearson similar to what Westjet is doing (which incidentally also in the last while went to three from four flights daily but still uses Q400s).  For May, Westjet is showing departure times to Pearson from Thunder Bay of 6:10am, 11:50am and 17:50 pm and returns to Thunder Bay from Toronto departing at 9am, 15:10 and 21:50.  One suspects that given Air Canada is more directly competing for passengers to Pearson with Westjet, it will have its flights in slots pretty close to Westjet.

Air Canada’s move pretty much consolidates the alternatives from Thunder Bay into two – going to Pearson at nearly the same times at three times a day or going to the Island Airport.  Of course, Porter is still maintaining its Q400 6-7 flights a day service to Toronto Island which means it may pick up even more business travel from Air Canada.  It is unfortunate that Porter was not able to bring regional jet service to the Toronto Island airport because 5-6 flights a day from Thunder Bay on smaller yet faster regional jets such as a CRJ550 or CRJ700 (50 and 78 passenger max respectively) would definitely have smoked the competition out of Pearson.  Still, I suspect that Porter will see a pickup in its bookings given its greater flexibility as well as its downtown location for business travellers. It will however probably need to reinvest in its aircraft stock as its fleet begins to age.

The other claim that was made was that the Rouge airplanes were roomier and more comfortable.  Perhaps I am missing something here but having flown on some of the newer jets and flown Rouge overseas, I found the seating in the Q400 was actually a bit roomier compared to my last Rouge flight.  But it will be roomier in business class (the 136 seat version of the A319 has a business class) and that may also be part of Air Canada’s strategy to hold onto business travellers who are much more lucrative to airlines than the rest of us.

 

So, the changes have pros and cons and it will be interesting to see how everything comes out in the wash.  The increased competition may eventually spark some real consolidation on the Thunder Bay route - after all, if Air Canada adopts Westjet time slots with larger and faster planes to Pearson, one might see an exit by Westjet and going down to only two airlines out of Thunder Bay.  That really would be going back to the future. Or Westjet may respond by bringing in jets which will spark a pretty competitive period until the inevitable departure by one or more players brings back monopoly and higher prices. Interesting times are ahead.

For those of you who have travel with Air Canada booked in May from Thunder Bay to Toronto, you can look forward to a message soon rescheduling your flight. Have a wonderful long weekend.