Air Canada expands Seoul and London services

Air Canada has officially announced that it is expanding its long haul foot print in Asia and UK from June 2016 as the carrier looks to fully capitalize on the major benefits the Boeing 787 fleet is bringing to the bottom line. 

To begin with, AC will be launching new daily nonstop services from YYZ-Toronto to ICN-Seoul effective 17JUN16 using a B788. The schedule is as follows:

AC 061 Dep YYZ 1335 Arr ICN 1620+1
AC 062 Dep ICN 1500 Arr YYZ 1450 

FYI in 2014, the demand (round trip) between YVR-ICN was 135,000 pax versus 105,000 for YYZ, 19,000 for YYC and 10,000 for YUL. 

With regards to the UK, AC revealed the following adjustments for S16 season:

YYC/LHR - frequencies reduced from 11 weekly to daily nonstop using an A333

YEG/LHR - all 3 weekly flights suspended 

YVR/LHR - frequencies increased from daily to double daily i.e. daily B773ER + daily B788


Analysis:

Adding a second daily YVR-LHR is a smart move in retaliation to the BA daily A380 product that is coming to YVR in S16 as passengers especially the higher yielding corporates prefer schedule flexibility majority of the time. 

For Seoul, AC continues to operate a daily service out of YVR-Vancouver too using a B788 with also a 1620 arrival into ICN and departure back at 1800. The above mentioned schedule to/from YYZ means that the aircraft sits in ICN for almost 24 hours which seems to be strange of a high value asset. One suggestion here is for AC to look at extending its YYZ-ICN flight into SIN as it should have 5th freedom traffic rights on this sector (considering SQ operated SIN-ICN-YVR in the past). 

There are other potential contenders too such as SGN but the main difference is that even though SGN and SIN have the same market size demand to/from YYZ+YVR combined in 2014 (i.e. 50,000 passengers), the pax yield of Canada-SIN is 40% higher!

The schedule for ICN-SIN-ICN would look like this:

AC 061 Dep ICN 1800 Arr SIN 2120 
AC 062 Dep SIN 0600 Arr ICN 1330

With this schedule to/from ICN, it allows a scissors hub to be created as both YVR and YYZ will be connected via ICN on a daily basis by AC in both directions.