Air Canada did not respond to Contrarian's invitation to explain its price gouging on the Halifax-Sydney run, where it often costs more to get off in Halifax than to fly on to Toronto or St. John's (original complaint here). However, an Air Canada employee has argued forcefully that Sydney Airport (now called J. A. Douglas McCurdy Airport) "has extremely high fees and rents even for a Canadian Airport." I challenged my correspondent for specifics, and he responded: I called the YQY airport and asked how much it cost to land an airplane. There does not seem to be anything published. [An employee] said it...

03 October, 2011

Contrarian's aviation guru, Adrian Noskwith, thinks the Porter Airlines 50%-off sale may have played a role in the weird pricing I encountered flying from Toronto to Sydney (as Joe MacKay argued), but it's not the whole story. Airline pricing is a weird science at the best of times. When Porter is whipping Air Canada's ass out of Toronto Island, as they are at the moment, this drives airline pricing executives to do even weirder things. But why is it consistently cheaper to fly from Sydney to St. Johns (via Halifax) than from Sydney to Halifax? To check this claim, I priced one-way Air Canada...

27 September, 2011

Air Canada flight attendant to passengers in Row 4 of a flight to Sydney Tuesday afternoon: "You are in the emergency exit row, so I have to show you how to open the emergency door." [Gestures to door handle.] "Pull it down. It opens in. Throw it out." [Pause.] "Any questions?" Airline safety instructions are so often wordy and prissy. How refreshing to encounter a  no-nonsense pro who understands the value of brisk, imperative prose, and isn't afraid to use it....

27 September, 2011

I am posting from the tarmac at Montréal-Trudeau  Airport, part way through the strangely priced Air Canada flight I wrote about here. Contrarian reader Joe MacKay offers a plausible if partial explanation for Air Canada's charging more for a Halifax-Sydney ticket than the Toronto-Sydney ticket I'm flying on, even though the Halifax-Sydney leg is the same flight on the same plane I'll be taking. I think this was a side effect of a Porter sale. Porter ran 50% off flights from the Island briefly a week or so ago. Air Canada responded (as they do) with a predatory sale on all bookings...

27 September, 2011

Contrarian needed to make a reservation yesterday from Toronto to Sydney. The fact I had to get all the way to Sydney meant I couldn't use Porter Airlines' magnificent service from Toronto Island Airport. Porter is the upstart airline known for its curious, retro habit of treating passengers as welcome guests. Leaving from the Island Airport avoids the time and money wasted getting to and from unspeakable Pearson. So I made a quick check to see if Air Canada could accommodate me from Toronto Island. To my astonishment, I found the following: $219.36 is an almost unheard of low fare. As I snapped...

19 September, 2011

This is a tired tune, but indulge me for a few bars. A few weeks ago, a Halifax physician went on Air Canada's website to book two round-trip flights: one to Sydney, Nova Scotia, 306 kilometers away; another to San Diego, 4,724 away (via Toronto). Air Canada charged $827 for the Sydney flight; $548 for SanDiego. That works out to $2.63/km for the Sydney flights vs. 11¢/km. for SanDiego. Years ago, some Sydney friends attended a wedding in St. John's, NF. Another wedding guest came from Cairo, Egypt. Guess who paid the lower fare? Try doing business with that handicap. Or as my...

26 January, 2011