Air Canada Launches New US Routes

I would strongly disagree that the new flights to JFK will help with connections to other Star Alliance carriers. In fact, I have trouble thinking of flight times which would be any LESS helpful for connecting. The Montreal flight and the second Toronto flight both get in too late for everything except LOT, Avianca, and Turkish (which all fly from Canada anyway) or Singapore (which has never liked cooperating with Air Canada and doesn’t release partner awards). I guess the first Toronto flight might be of some use, but with an arrival time of 12:36 pm you’ll be sitting around JFK for hours waiting since the international departures all leave in the evening.

I’m really struggling to see the logic of these flights myself. Both the Montreal and second Toronto planes will stay overnight at JFK, meaning AC will be paying for aircraft parking and crew accommodations. Visitors to New York generally prefer to use LGA or EWR, and the arrival times are terrible anyway (who wants to land at JFK at 10:06 pm?) The late morning/early afternoon departure times to Canada are incovenient for business travellers going to Montreal or Toronto since it kills the entire day. We’ve already established there’s little opportunity for connections on the JFK end.

Having excluded the other possibilities, I can only assume these flights are primarily designed for passengers connecting at YYZ or YUL. Both the second JFK-YYZ and JFK-YUL (and vv) times work well with AC and partner flights to Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. I guess AC’s decided there are enough potential connecting passengers from New York who aren’t already being captured at LGA and EWR to make these flights worthwhile.

The first Toronto flight still doesn’t make a lot of sense though. It’s too early for connections in either direction. Maybe AC has a lot of spare room in its capacity agreement with Jazz and needs something to do with a surplus E75.

Great to see more routes added … but others are being dropped. Air Canada has also quietly announced it will be dropping Calgary to Saskatoon, Calgary to Regina flights starting mid-January. Unfortunate news for those of us in the prairies.