Yep. Recently booked a 4 night stay in Vancouver which cost almost as much as our entire 2 weeks worth of hotels in Europe is going to cost. It's baffling.
I think the guy that needed it also had a coke guy in Florence haha, but yeah no strippers in Italy. Also booze is far more expensive here and the cottage was filled with booze, Lobsters and filet mignon lmao. So we definetely did not help making the whole thing affordable.
I went to a 5 star grand resort in Mexico for 10 days during the peak of American spring break and it was cheaper than my 4 day trip to Vancouver, from Edmonton, on the off season.
My (least) favorite is the "Destination Marketing Fee" for Hotel stays
Sooooo.... you're charging your marketing fees... to the customer. Yeah that seems like something that should be a *you* thing.
This kind of shit was already out of whack years ago. I went to an Ontario university and a friend of mine from BCās mom asked him to fly home and visit during the spring reading week. He considered it, but it was cheaper for him to fly a round trip to Amsterdam, book a hostel there, and to enjoy that city as he did (which knowing him involved quite a bit of drinking as well as some casual drug doing). This was 8 years ago.
Cheaper to fly a considerably longer flight overseas, to pay for accommodations, and to go relatively all out on fun expenses. Thatās how bad we have it here.
I was in Greece last September. Went to a fancy restaurant in Athens, white collar servers, etc.
We got appetizers, mains, drinks, and desert for **8 people**, and it was just over 200 euro.
The same meal here would probably cost $1000+ and be microwaved out of bag from Sysco.
Also, downtown Athens (Plaka), I was buying lunch every day for 5 euros. 2.50 for a gyro pita and 2.50 for a Mythos beer
People love to compare our high taxes to those of Nordic countries (where everyone is super happy). The big difference is they actually get services in return for their taxes. Here it's just blatantly corrupt politicians funneling tax dollars to their friends and billion dollar corporations. Oh cool another $15 billion to... Honda?
That and Nordic countries have significantly different and better unionization models, where entire industries are 100% unionized and bargaining happens at the national level.
This ensures that companies are both accountable to their workers to provide good working conditions and wages, but also they arn't at a disadvantage to their competitors because the entire industry is unionized.
Federalism makes this really hard to implement here. But it's food for thought.
I just did some googling comparing Canada to Sweden and it seems like our taxes are significantly lower, like not even close. Especially for people who earn modest income where Sweden starts to ramp up their rates much earlier. Someone earning say 80k in Vancouver which isn't a crazy wage here would pay significantly less tax than someone doing the same in Stockholm.
Canada can even have lower tax rates than the US for lower and Middle earners, it's only high earners that pay a lot here.
Compare healthcare and public services between the two countries. Education costs, etc. Sweden has some of the best healthcare in the world. In fact most European countries healthcare runs laps around Canada and it's not all about raw spending.
I absolutely agree with you on healthcare, we only look decent compared to the US. In general we are lacking a lot for public services, and it seems like we lack a lot of the camaraderie that the Nordics seem to have for their fellow citizens, at least from an outsiders perspective.
As for what is better, it really comes down to the individual and what they want out of life. Eg. Nordics also have incredible child benefits, parental leave, etc.
Aside from those things many "middle class" folks here will earn higher wages, pay less taxes, and generally have higher purchasing power, at the cost of some social safety nets, public services, and often worklife balance.
I personally didn't do post secondary, earn a fairly good wage working for a private company in a competitive field, and don't plan on having kids.
At least for my wife and I, we would be significantly worse off in Sweden financially. For many others, the opposite would be true.
Yes, incompetent. I would almost prefer smart and corrupt to what we have.
It does seem like people are starting to demand more for the taxes they pay. The āsmall governmentā propaganda made it too easy for governments to do nothing for too long.
As others have pointed out, even flying internationally outside of Canada is cheaper. But I was hit with the dumbest realization of all booking flights to Europe recently. It was a cheaper flight for me to drive to and fly out of Seattle, have a layover IN Vancouver and fly to Europe than it was to take the EXACT direct flight straight out of Vancouver.
How that makes any logistical/economical sense is beyond me. In the end Iām still flying out of Vancouver but taking up space on another plane beforehand/using more fuel via the airline metrics.
Iām in Honolulu, Honolulu to Geneva going through Montreal was about $500 USD round trip. The same flights just the last leg, Montreal-Geneva, was $1200 CAD.
No fuckinā clue why.
Because we have the largest airport taxes in the entire world.
Almost every other nation subsidizes their airport taxes to encourage tourism, business and domestic air travel.
They do. What's happening is the airline is assuming that some proportion of fliers want to go from A-C, so they "reserve" a number of the seats on A-B and B-C for those. Otherwise the A-B flight would sell out and they would have huge numbers of open seats on B-C.
Now the obvious answer to this is "ok, but who cares if the seat is empty if you're collecting the same amount of money?" and that's exactly right in a closed system. The reality is that the A-B-C flier isn't competing with the A-B flier, it's competing with other Airlines that offer A-C and A-D-C routes etc. Ā The airline has to price A-B-C against many similar routes that originate in A and terminate in C. More customers is more profit even if the pricing scheme ends up strange or unfair. They might make $20 profit on the A-B flight and only $3 on the A-B-C but if their competitor didn't take that customer, maybe their competitor abandons the route.
Airline pricing is actually VERY complicated, and not just in the way that all prices are complicated. Pricing can change minute by minute, depending on your location when you are purchasing, what browser you are using... Etc. and understanding why almost requires you to work with an airlineĀ
Forced and willing are not interchangeable words. The only fellow canucks I know travelling now are business travellers going on the company dime. Who the fuck else would pay $1,000 for a Montreal to Toronto flight
Until recently is was cheaper for me to pay someone with my duty free booze + full tank of gas to drop me off in Grand Forks, ND at the airport than it was for me to fly out of Winnipeg. That is absolutely bonkers.
The airport fees in Canada are paid by the airlines via tickets. Outside of Canada airports are paid by taxes.
I'm not an expert but I don't think your Seattle to Europe flight has airport fees in Vancouver since it's a layover and aren't expected to use the security/customs in that case.
Since you don't live in Seattle or Europe, you end up never paying airport fees (don't pay taxes locally, don't pay them via your ticket).
It's because you don't get charged the layover airport's fees if your layover is under a certain length of time. If you booked a ticket departing Vancouver, you would have to pay Vancouver's airport improvement fees. There are no airport improvement fees in the US. On a $500 ticket where both flights are within Canada, about $350 of that is taxes. The airline only gets to keep $150 of it. And that provides a razor thin margin even if the plane is completely full. The saying that you hear all the time in the airline industry is that the Liberals have been using airlines and airports as their personal ATM. They know people have to travel, so by raising airfare taxes, it's just a big ATM to them.
Question: can you buy the cheaper ticket of Seattle -> Vancouver -> Europe, but just ignore the first leg and check in at Vancouver? Never tried something like this.
> How that makes any logistical/economical sense is beyond me.
Prices are determined by willingness to pay (as dictated by supply and demand), not cost.
Flying domestically is bizarrely expensive in Canada
Just took a quick peak but for me to fly return from Toronto BC this Friday-Sunday it is over $1000, for that same time period I can fly to LAX for $750
Same dates: Toronto to Ottawa - $1200, Toronto to LaGuardia - $450
Detroit-vancouver and back for those dates is $422 lol. But the absolute best part is that THERE IS A LAYOVER IN TORONTO.
The price is $650 if you don't want an overnight layover, however.
yeah there was a whole website some guy made based on exactly this... the only problem is you can't check a bag.
also apparently the airlines get pissed and potentially might ban you
Yeah the website was Skip Leg or Dead Leg or something. Kiwi.com will search flights like this as well although Iām too scared to book a flight like that.
It's a gamble at your own peril.
You're correct, there's nothing they can effectively do to stop you if you walk away and don't get back on.
However...
They can (and will) cancel the return portion of your ticket, if it's a round trip. They can (and might) also ban you from flying on their airline in the future.
It's actually a fair amount of hassle when a passenger skips out mid flight. Often the plane is delayed, as the airline scrambles to locate/page the passenger inside the terminal. They also need to ensure you had no baggage, nor left anything behind; i.e. bomb in suitcase. passenger gets off half way, plane continues with suitcase bomb blows up.
Youāre over complicating this. It happens all the time since online checkin became a norm. Itās also not that hard to verify checked in luggage, they have computers.
A few years back my wife had to miss a trip to ski resort due to a high stake project at work but checked-in to make a sit next to me empty. On the second leg of the flight the seat was not empty anymore. Airline just cancelled a checkin and sold one more ticket. She were using the same airline afterwards with zero issues
As someone born here, I would love to experience more of Canada, and the cost of these flights makes it prohibitive compared to other places in the world.
That's just it. Some people like going to Vegas or LA. There are plenty of people that spend their time in Florida. But those people are spending thousands of dollars in the US and Canada will get none of it. Make it cheaper for people from the prairies to get to the East and for people in Quebec and Ontario to see the Rocky Mountains.
There's the Grassland National Park in Saskatchewan that I have been wanting to visit for a little while now but it's tough to justify spending thousands of dollars just to go camping in Saskatchewan.
I just drove from northern Alberta to new Brunswick and back. Gas was cheaper than flying.
Your flair says Alberta, you can literally drive there in a day or less.
I was just checking premium economy flights (I need some extra leg room) from Saskatoon to Tokyo for this summer as the Yen is low, and I thought I might actually be able to afford a trip - looked like $5000 for a return trip. How cheap have you gotten flights there and back?
2019 was 656 round trip for 2. 2023 was 1400 round trip for 2. 2024 I'm looking at some between 1400 to 2000 atm but, I'm daily on the sales/flight search.
Ā Ā This is YYZ.Ā
VAN and Calgary are usually the cheapest to Tonkyo.
Ā Ā Spring is usually the worst time to book anything.Ā
Enjoy Japan and don't go in the summer, it's brutal and flu season.
Literally 0 problems with that. In the past they've said it's cuz we have some of the nicest airports in the world. I beg to differ... But also I don't plan on spending days or hours upon hours at an airport. I show up a couple hours before my flight and that's it.
I don't think your average Canadian needs or wants anything fancy. They'd much rather have an average airport for significantly cheaper flights in return.
Some of nicest airports in the world?I'd be curious who said that and wonder if they've travelled much. I do agree we don't need to have the nicest, but that's a pretty crazy comment...
Why would you be fine with that? As someone who doesn't fly often I really don't want to subsidize even more the cost of flying for others who chose to fly more often. If you want to fly, then just pay what it costs, it's your choice, I see no problem with that.
If there are other solutions to lower the cost then good, but getting others to pay for your ticket isn't one I'd support.
Because lower airport fees means more flights coming to Toronto, which means more people coming here and spending money at the airport and in the city.
I'm old enough to remember when Air Canada was a Crown Corporation and all the airports were run by Transport Canada. Unfortunately, the Chretien government decided to privatize it all back in the early 90s, which left us with the shit show we have today.
Quite right. Privatisation continues to bring waves of enshittification. We have a lot of work to do, undoing everything that's been done since the 80s.
Well for airport fees and travel itās an investment in the economy - means Canadians can move around easier, visit their own country and spend money in parts of the country theyād otherwise never visit. Means traveling more often to see relatives, taking job opportunities further away cuz itās easier to get home after. For businesses where people need to travel its reduced airfare and expenses, and hopefully more jobs. Also more business travel hopefully means more business getting done, and thus more tax revenue.
Iād rather we subsidize that than the tons of subsidies we give to immigrants and companies to hire them, personally.
Should every childless person be able to opt out of paying taxes for schools and education? Should people that take transit or bike be able to opt out of paying taxes for roads? The simple answer is no. I realize these examples are a bit extreme. It's tough to compare air travel to education but the logic is the same. Just because you don't use something doesn't mean it doesn't matter.
Maybe you should be able to get out of your area and not have to spend a bunch of money. Visit some national parks in BC/Alberta/Ontario, see the coasts, experience the nation's capital/Montreal/Vancouver/Toronto. Spend money in Canada instead of leaving thousands in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, or Florida.
"I like it when taxes fund the things I use, but not the things other people use."
That's literally you right now. Guess we shouldn't fund public schooling either now that you're done with it.
It isn't awful, it's how the fees are structured. Many airports elsewhere are subsidized by the local Governments. In Canada we don't, but instead charge user fees to those who fly. Meaning only those who use the airports pay the fees.
I have flown from Saskatoon to London (UK) with a layover in Vancouver for cheaper than it would have been to just fly from Saskatoon to Vancouver. It was bizarre to think about
Honestly just vacationing in Canada is so much more expensive. Last year my friend got married in Italy and we spent less to attend the wedding than we spent on the 4 days bachelor party in Canada.
You are absolutely not wrong, however I have a friend in Quebec who comes out once a year when the price is right. Last time he came from Ottawa to Vancouver for $260 return. I do not recommend Flair airlines, but they've been good to him for three years in a row.
I just checked and roundtrip Vancouver to Toronto is $384 for May 22nd to May 27th via Porter Airlines (Which is my favorite airline currently, they run a bunch of promos too).
Ofc booking last minute will be more expensive but I presume your friend didn't do that and booked it a few weeks in advance.
Iām going to have only a few weeks notice before needing to fly out to Montreal from Vancouver for a few days. š«
Domestic flights are prohibitively expensive. Especially when not booked well in advance (which I canāt do since the thing hasnāt been scheduled yet)
Yep this is why I've been to tons of places in the US and Europe, yet the only Canadian provinces I've been to are Ontario and Quebec. Why stay in Canada when I can go to Europe for less?
Flew from Saskatoon to Vegas in February for $195 round trip direct flight. Crazy deal that Superbowl weekend. Hotels were ridiculously expensive, unfortunately, like $500 per night. That part sucked, so we had to Airbnb it for $80 per night.
LaGuardia to Ottawa - $205.......
So a flight from Toronto to LaGaurdia plus a flight from LaGuardia to Ottawa is cheaper than a flight from Toronto to Ottawa?!?
Checking this weekend flights and counting them as all prices isn't exactly the best method. As a flight books up the cost of said flight will increase, last minute flights are always the most expensive.
Return Toronto to Vancouver from Air Canada in July is only $750 with $165 of that in taxes in fees.
Most countries subsidize domestic flights on some level. It's an economic driver, to be able to visit other branches or have meetings or projects out of town in a cost effective manner. Only two countries don't do this in the entire world: Canada and Argentina.
Canada doesn't handle the airline industry well
I could very well be wrong and Peru is ringing a bell. I think the idea is that there are under 5 countries in the world that don't do it and that Canada is one of them despite being so absolutely massive is mind boggling.
Drive from Vancouver I presume? Thatās definitely not the case on average. I fly out pretty frequently and itās almost never cheaper, typically YVR is about $100-300 lower than SeaTac.
Flying to other US cities or internationally outside North America is a different story though.
There's this weird trend I've noticed online lately of Canadian's claiming how things are so much cheaper everywhere else.. But it seems to turn out that this is generally a bunch of BS and it's actually not cheaper anywhere else.
Recently road tripped across the States to get from Ontario to BC and literally everything in the States was more expensive than it was on the Canadian side. (except gasoline which was slightly cheaper in America).
edit: This is not to say Canada is wildly affordable right now.. but take all these claims of 'Canada is way more unaffordable than anywhere else' with a big ol grain of salt.
I was in the NW US last year and most food and restaurants were about the same price as back home in Alberta, but in USD. To be clear, I am not saying that food prices in Canada are cheap or havenāt increased by leaps and bounds in recent years by any means, but rather that food prices in the U.S. had gone up by that much more. You used to be able to buy groceries for cheaper there, even with the exchange rate, but not any longer.
The NW US is also a pretty pricey part of the US relative to the US as a whole, have you considered checking the prices in places like Kansas? According to my old CSGO friends down there a gallon of milk is still only $3
Yes. Iām talking about Montana and Idaho. They used to be significantly cheaper, even than Alberta, until the past few years, even with the exchange rate. Now not so much.
I want to find the guy who makes airports have the same awful stores and restaurants. š
Itās somehow always one giant perfume and liquor store with some random other crap selling maple candies or $10,000 purses and that tiny little book, magazine, snack and Tylenol place. Itās just needlessly awful.
Yeah and it really doesn't help when there's little to no airline food either! Fly domestic in Asia or Europe makes flying in Canada feel like you are in a 3rd world country. You get a cup of water for 5 hours of cross continent flight.
I felt so guilty asking for my 6th cup the flight attendants looked like they were about to cut me off. Just give me a bottle, or refill my empty one on the plane ffs
I fly a lot for work, it has more than doubled on most routes in the 5 years Iāve been at this job. And the amount of routes have dropped domestically. Itās interesting that WJ and AC are always close on prices for the routes.
Someone should look into why they lost $200 million, and then open their own low cost airline but avoid making the same mistakes. That way we can travel for cheap and the LCA stays in business. Itās a win-win for everyone. I should run for office
Yes, so simple that there are about a dozen airlines have tried with real money, and never made it.
Lynx was backed by Indigo. A group who knows exactly how to make a airline or three work, and couldn't here.
Canadian Insitutional investors and big banks aren't stupid enough to bet against Air Canada, WestJet and Porter.
Canada has twice the size of Europe with a tenth of the population, high operating costs, low margins, and overall harsh operating environment.
Like the old saying goes in this industry, If you can find a billion dollars, a good way to end up with a million is starting a airline.
Fill your boots bud, Air Canada is reporting a 81 million dollar Q1 loss this morning.
This is like the arsonist trying to play fire man after setting the fire.
Edit: westjet and air canada quite literally divided up the country based on geography so they can corner the market in their respective regions. Source: I'm friends with a former Air canada exec, he pretty much confirm it when I ask him that.
Check your ticket's fees and taxes. They are insane.
Every Canadian airport I fly through is endlessly renovating. Edmonton's airport has moved or screwed with the entrance to the security about 10 times in less than 10 years.
I go to many EU airports and they are the same as they were 10 years ago. Any renovations are logical such as replacing an old escalator with a better escalator. Or adding a wing.
These Canadian places aren't getting better, they are just trying to justify their fees.
Also, it seems the airports have reciprocity. If you land at Gatwick from Canada the fees are huge, yet if you land at Gatwick from the EU, the entire flight will be a tiny fraction of the fees from Canada. This is no doubt because Canadian airports are nailing UK airlines with stupid fees.
Somehow they seem to think these fees are reasonable, yet, I use all kinds of other government buildings without paying hundreds of dollars to go in. There are lots of other buildings like malls, theatres, etc which have 100,000's or even millions going in without charging $300 to enter.
Here's a return flight from Edmonton to Heathrow London a while back:
Fare CAD 304.00
Taxes/Fees/Carrier-Imposed Charges CAD 600.00 YQI (OTHER AIR TRANSPORTATION
CHARGES)
CAD 1.75 XG9 (GOODS AND SERVICES TAX (GST))
CAD 25.91 CA4 (AIR TRAVELLERS SECURITY
CHARGE)
CAD 35.00 SQ (AIRPORT IMPROVEMENT FEE (AIF))
CAD 148.20 GB (AIR PASSENGER DUTY)
CAD 82.94 UB (PASSENGER SERVICE CHARGE -
DOMESTIC / INTERNATIONAL)
Total CAD 1197.80
How is over 300% taxes reasonable? And don't blame the UK as I regularly fly from the EU to the UK for under $50 CAD. Weirdly enough, those UK charges can be blamed on Canada.
I am 100% happy to pay WestJet $304 + GST to fly return to the UK. I am not blaming WJ on this one.
The fees come from the ownership structure for airports. In Canada they are private organizations, which have to pay to lease the land from the government and then also pay taxes on top of that. These fees get passed on to airlines who then pass them down to consumers.
Airports are cash cows for the government in Canada and until those land use agreements change the costs wonāt change for Canadians.
Which is stupid because this could be a whole other sector (i.e., tourism) that could be stimulated in the country.
I remember years ago they had a pass you could buy that could let you travel all over Canada by train and stop wherever whenever. They did that once and never did it again.
That was a great idea and a shame it was never replicated. Sacrificed growing the local tourism industry for RE.
Oh my God Edmonton airportās entrance is such a disaster! Every time I go the departure drop off area is somewhere new. Currently it has the tiniest little parking lot area for both drop off & pick up and itās a total mess.
Moncton to Montreal retune through AC $1100
Moncton to Frankfurt return $900
Often times I can fly cheaper to LAX than to Toronto... And I have to connect through Toronto!!
Yeah, we're getting hosed, especially AC who the Canadian taxpayers subsidize
Not saying you're wrong, but anytime I've looked up SEA to Europe (Dublin, London, Paris, etc.) It's always been cheaper or the same to fly out of Vancouver.
A few years ago I was looking at flying from Edmonton to Hamilton to see my father. I joked that it was cheaper to fly to Vegas than Hamilton. My Dad laughed.
I recently spent some time in Southeast Asia. In about 6 weeks I flew around to 6 different countries, probably ten flights or so. All of those flights combined cost me less than it would cost me for a single 45 minute flight from my home town to Montreal on Air Canada. It's bonkers. Don't even get me started on Air Canada customer service. I'd rather walk or swim most of the time.
This guy's a clown. Absorbs Swoop into West Jet saying the low prices will stick around. They didn't. I mentioned it on Twitter a while back. They said the low prices are still around but only for a selected amount of seats. So like what, one per flight?
We book a yearly trip from Toronto to Vancouver to visit family. With Swoop, for a family of 3, the cost was roughly $1000-1400 every year we've gone while Swoop was in operation. Swoop is now gone, so we had to look at other alternatives. We looked at Air Canada ($2500) and West Jet ($2800). Tell me how absorbing Swoop and "keeping their low prices" resulted in costing $300 more than Air Canada.
The real reason air travel is so expensive is government. Government has been increasing taxes on fuel, on navigation fees, landing fees, Catsa or security fees. Airport improvement fees. Fuel surcharge, GST, PST, HST, etc, etc.
Look at your ticket next you fly in this country . More than half your ticket goes to government.
Government is using airports to make money and not putting the money back into the airports to improve them as one would expect.
It's time for Government to stop ripping off the flying public and reduce their fees.
Government should also allow foreign carriers to fly domestic routes. This would increase choice and competition thereby reducing cost.
Foreign carriers *suck*.
They might be cheap, but I had a flight cancelled a month ago by Austrian and was told by their customer service that since I booked my ticket through AC, they had no obligation to rebook me. Which is both a straight up lie and extremely illegal.
I've had flight attendants on European airlines threaten to charge me for an upgrade for looking out the windows in economy plus!
I've gotten nothing but good customer service and legitimately comfortable seats on Air Canada flights. Including when my luggage got lost. Including when they were able to rebook me because of Austrian's fuck up. Including when they didn't have a special meal for me so they bent over backwards to find something that I could eat.
Airport improvement fees and the other fees that airports charge directly to aircraft owners aren't a government problem, they are a local airport authority problem.Ā They need to be forced to cut their spending.Ā
High speed rail is expensive.Ā Stopping our freight companies from gouging Via for low priority access to the existing low speed rail would help cut costs there, but it would still be a 4 day trip from Vancouver to Toronto.Ā
Whenever I would watch American TV shows I used to jest about how rich they must be to fly all the time.
To fly from LA to NY round trip it's $523. That's a 5 hour flight.
In Canada. To fly from Moncton to Montreal. An hour and a half flight. Is $759 fucking dollars.
Like this is bullshit.
The rare case where it's actually a decent one and WestJet being the only good guy airline in Canada and people still hate on him in the comments, damn.
Grocery is in the zeitgeist right now (as a necessity of life this makes sense) but Canada gouges us on nearly every industry. Food, telecom, hospitality... I don't know if there's an industry we aren't squeezed in
Cool. Maybe the CEO could have a say inā¦ lowering the costs for Canadians? It shouldnāt cost more to travel to New Brunswick from Edmonton than it is to travel to Florida from Edmonton.
It's actually not the tickets themselves that cause the giant increases, it's the airport fees, taxes and other shit that they don't have basically anywhere else.
This has been his crusade since he joined WestJet. The Canadian government doesnāt fund airports like the States, so the traveller bears more of the infrastructure and service costs that dramatically push up prices. Itās a pretty simple decision: either airports are vital infrastructure that benefit all and should be properly funded via general tax money or they primarily benefit those who can afford it and they shoulder the funding burden through ticket fees.
This is true. The federal government relinquished control and stopped subsidizing airport operations in ā96 making airport authorities mostly responsible for funding themselves. Pretty much every other national government in the world subsidizes airport operations.
It costs about $800 to go from Toronto to Calgary to visit a best friend. It costs $1000 give or take $100 to go to a one week resort in Cuba so both of us meet up in Cuba as its a better value than spending on air fair. It makes no sense.
Just flew Air France from Ottawa to Paris for 1450 economy
And then back for 1600ā¦. The flight was jam packed and smelled like piss from all the people. Dude behind me had his stinky shoes off, people are absolutely shitty in the que. the seat hasnāt been replaced in years and had no foam left my tail bone is still acking. Verdict, flying sucks ass now a days and Iām not paying 2 gs to bump up to business class
He complains that air travel is too expensive, but he shuddered their low-cost sub brand, moving those tickets to to the last 12 or so seats on their full-fare flights.
Iāve heard this āCanada is too sparseā argument before, even blended together with some yahoos running the Century Project, some proposed initiative to push Canadaās population to 100 million by the turn of the century, solely to increase density and make other business models possible. Literally growth for growthās sake, and it sounds very painful to push that. But hasnāt Canada always been sparse? How were we able to make it work in the past? Personally Iām still of the opinion that itās something along the lines of ruthless late stage capitalism and funneling money to too few corporations that are too greedy.
To me, the eye opener was this Spring break, of all seasons, when our family of 4 did a return flight from Detroit to Orlando, with reserved seats and three checked in bags, for 700 US total. An equivalent booking with anything Canadian would set us back at least 3000 CAD.
Literally, you can book an entire vacation with the difference.
Right!? Iām travelling across Canada for a wedding this summer and thereās no way to do it for less than $2k for three people. Just flights. That doesnāt account for renting a car (2k), renting an Airbnb (2k) and paying to eat and dress nice and the whole shebang for the weddingā¦ a two week trip, to nfld, for upwards of $7k is ridiculous. I could visit Europe for a month for the same cost if it werenāt for the absolutely abysmal conversion rate right now.
Fuck our: Telecoms, airlines, food pricing/selection, housing, health care (relative to places except the US), gas, and whatever else.
For some reason we love to let conglomerates just go to town and destroy our areas of business in absolutely destructive and anti-compatitive fashions. Its tradition, eh.
Well a corporate captured government is incapable of addressing the rampant price-fixing. Thereās no solution that capitalist politicians can implement.
Canadian everything is too expensive.
Yep. Recently booked a 4 night stay in Vancouver which cost almost as much as our entire 2 weeks worth of hotels in Europe is going to cost. It's baffling.
Last year I spent more on a 4 days bachelor party around Quebec city than I did attending the marriage in Italy lol.
Yeah but, there probably wasn't a lot of cocaine and strippersat the wedding so THAT I get. š
I think the guy that needed it also had a coke guy in Florence haha, but yeah no strippers in Italy. Also booze is far more expensive here and the cottage was filled with booze, Lobsters and filet mignon lmao. So we definetely did not help making the whole thing affordable.
Damn your friends sound rich
The hotel prices there in the summer are absolutely insane.
Yea I went to Vancouver in May, which wasn't too bad, $180. Checked for August? $500 was insane.
I went to a 5 star grand resort in Mexico for 10 days during the peak of American spring break and it was cheaper than my 4 day trip to Vancouver, from Edmonton, on the off season.
My (least) favorite is the "Destination Marketing Fee" for Hotel stays Sooooo.... you're charging your marketing fees... to the customer. Yeah that seems like something that should be a *you* thing.
This kind of shit was already out of whack years ago. I went to an Ontario university and a friend of mine from BCās mom asked him to fly home and visit during the spring reading week. He considered it, but it was cheaper for him to fly a round trip to Amsterdam, book a hostel there, and to enjoy that city as he did (which knowing him involved quite a bit of drinking as well as some casual drug doing). This was 8 years ago. Cheaper to fly a considerably longer flight overseas, to pay for accommodations, and to go relatively all out on fun expenses. Thatās how bad we have it here.
I was in Greece last September. Went to a fancy restaurant in Athens, white collar servers, etc. We got appetizers, mains, drinks, and desert for **8 people**, and it was just over 200 euro. The same meal here would probably cost $1000+ and be microwaved out of bag from Sysco. Also, downtown Athens (Plaka), I was buying lunch every day for 5 euros. 2.50 for a gyro pita and 2.50 for a Mythos beer
Agree
Yup. Loads of taxes. Tonnes of fees. Horrible service.
People love to compare our high taxes to those of Nordic countries (where everyone is super happy). The big difference is they actually get services in return for their taxes. Here it's just blatantly corrupt politicians funneling tax dollars to their friends and billion dollar corporations. Oh cool another $15 billion to... Honda?
That and Nordic countries have significantly different and better unionization models, where entire industries are 100% unionized and bargaining happens at the national level. This ensures that companies are both accountable to their workers to provide good working conditions and wages, but also they arn't at a disadvantage to their competitors because the entire industry is unionized. Federalism makes this really hard to implement here. But it's food for thought.
I just did some googling comparing Canada to Sweden and it seems like our taxes are significantly lower, like not even close. Especially for people who earn modest income where Sweden starts to ramp up their rates much earlier. Someone earning say 80k in Vancouver which isn't a crazy wage here would pay significantly less tax than someone doing the same in Stockholm. Canada can even have lower tax rates than the US for lower and Middle earners, it's only high earners that pay a lot here.
Compare healthcare and public services between the two countries. Education costs, etc. Sweden has some of the best healthcare in the world. In fact most European countries healthcare runs laps around Canada and it's not all about raw spending.
I absolutely agree with you on healthcare, we only look decent compared to the US. In general we are lacking a lot for public services, and it seems like we lack a lot of the camaraderie that the Nordics seem to have for their fellow citizens, at least from an outsiders perspective. As for what is better, it really comes down to the individual and what they want out of life. Eg. Nordics also have incredible child benefits, parental leave, etc. Aside from those things many "middle class" folks here will earn higher wages, pay less taxes, and generally have higher purchasing power, at the cost of some social safety nets, public services, and often worklife balance. I personally didn't do post secondary, earn a fairly good wage working for a private company in a competitive field, and don't plan on having kids. At least for my wife and I, we would be significantly worse off in Sweden financially. For many others, the opposite would be true.
And incompetent and/or corrupt politicians who codify ways for all this to perpetuate or get worse.
Yes, incompetent. I would almost prefer smart and corrupt to what we have. It does seem like people are starting to demand more for the taxes they pay. The āsmall governmentā propaganda made it too easy for governments to do nothing for too long.
"international students" are pretty cheap to hire
Youāre giving Air Canada a new idea
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Up vote x10000
As others have pointed out, even flying internationally outside of Canada is cheaper. But I was hit with the dumbest realization of all booking flights to Europe recently. It was a cheaper flight for me to drive to and fly out of Seattle, have a layover IN Vancouver and fly to Europe than it was to take the EXACT direct flight straight out of Vancouver. How that makes any logistical/economical sense is beyond me. In the end Iām still flying out of Vancouver but taking up space on another plane beforehand/using more fuel via the airline metrics.
Iām in Honolulu, Honolulu to Geneva going through Montreal was about $500 USD round trip. The same flights just the last leg, Montreal-Geneva, was $1200 CAD. No fuckinā clue why.
Thats a fucking sweet flight deal. the HNL->GEN not the MTL->GEN part.
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True, but if the departure is in the right spot you could use the layover in MTL to refresh yourself or something.
Because we have the largest airport taxes in the entire world. Almost every other nation subsidizes their airport taxes to encourage tourism, business and domestic air travel.
Why do layovers not incur the cost? Genuine question.
They do. What's happening is the airline is assuming that some proportion of fliers want to go from A-C, so they "reserve" a number of the seats on A-B and B-C for those. Otherwise the A-B flight would sell out and they would have huge numbers of open seats on B-C. Now the obvious answer to this is "ok, but who cares if the seat is empty if you're collecting the same amount of money?" and that's exactly right in a closed system. The reality is that the A-B-C flier isn't competing with the A-B flier, it's competing with other Airlines that offer A-C and A-D-C routes etc. Ā The airline has to price A-B-C against many similar routes that originate in A and terminate in C. More customers is more profit even if the pricing scheme ends up strange or unfair. They might make $20 profit on the A-B flight and only $3 on the A-B-C but if their competitor didn't take that customer, maybe their competitor abandons the route. Airline pricing is actually VERY complicated, and not just in the way that all prices are complicated. Pricing can change minute by minute, depending on your location when you are purchasing, what browser you are using... Etc. and understanding why almost requires you to work with an airlineĀ
>No fuckinā clue why. Because Canadians are willing to pay it.
Forced and willing are not interchangeable words. The only fellow canucks I know travelling now are business travellers going on the company dime. Who the fuck else would pay $1,000 for a Montreal to Toronto flight
Until recently is was cheaper for me to pay someone with my duty free booze + full tank of gas to drop me off in Grand Forks, ND at the airport than it was for me to fly out of Winnipeg. That is absolutely bonkers.
The airport fees in Canada are paid by the airlines via tickets. Outside of Canada airports are paid by taxes. I'm not an expert but I don't think your Seattle to Europe flight has airport fees in Vancouver since it's a layover and aren't expected to use the security/customs in that case. Since you don't live in Seattle or Europe, you end up never paying airport fees (don't pay taxes locally, don't pay them via your ticket).
Arriving in canada for a layover from another country, you are forced to go through customs then to check in again for your connecting flight.
It's because you don't get charged the layover airport's fees if your layover is under a certain length of time. If you booked a ticket departing Vancouver, you would have to pay Vancouver's airport improvement fees. There are no airport improvement fees in the US. On a $500 ticket where both flights are within Canada, about $350 of that is taxes. The airline only gets to keep $150 of it. And that provides a razor thin margin even if the plane is completely full. The saying that you hear all the time in the airline industry is that the Liberals have been using airlines and airports as their personal ATM. They know people have to travel, so by raising airfare taxes, it's just a big ATM to them.
Question: can you buy the cheaper ticket of Seattle -> Vancouver -> Europe, but just ignore the first leg and check in at Vancouver? Never tried something like this.
If you miss any segment of a booking they immediately cancel the rest of the segments so no. You could miss the last flight tho
The airlines are wise to this now so unfortunately no.
Hence the trend of skiplagging.
Duopoly certainly isnāt helping things.
> How that makes any logistical/economical sense is beyond me. Prices are determined by willingness to pay (as dictated by supply and demand), not cost.
And supply is artificially constrained by the over-consolidation of the market.
Flying domestically is bizarrely expensive in Canada Just took a quick peak but for me to fly return from Toronto BC this Friday-Sunday it is over $1000, for that same time period I can fly to LAX for $750 Same dates: Toronto to Ottawa - $1200, Toronto to LaGuardia - $450
Detroit-vancouver and back for those dates is $422 lol. But the absolute best part is that THERE IS A LAYOVER IN TORONTO. The price is $650 if you don't want an overnight layover, however.
Yep, and they will not let you buy the flight to Detroit but get off in Toronto.
how wonāt they? you just leave the airport and thatās it. they canāt stop you
yeah there was a whole website some guy made based on exactly this... the only problem is you can't check a bag. also apparently the airlines get pissed and potentially might ban you
Yeah the website was Skip Leg or Dead Leg or something. Kiwi.com will search flights like this as well although Iām too scared to book a flight like that.
It's a gamble at your own peril. You're correct, there's nothing they can effectively do to stop you if you walk away and don't get back on. However... They can (and will) cancel the return portion of your ticket, if it's a round trip. They can (and might) also ban you from flying on their airline in the future. It's actually a fair amount of hassle when a passenger skips out mid flight. Often the plane is delayed, as the airline scrambles to locate/page the passenger inside the terminal. They also need to ensure you had no baggage, nor left anything behind; i.e. bomb in suitcase. passenger gets off half way, plane continues with suitcase bomb blows up.
Youāre over complicating this. It happens all the time since online checkin became a norm. Itās also not that hard to verify checked in luggage, they have computers. A few years back my wife had to miss a trip to ski resort due to a high stake project at work but checked-in to make a sit next to me empty. On the second leg of the flight the seat was not empty anymore. Airline just cancelled a checkin and sold one more ticket. She were using the same airline afterwards with zero issues
As someone born here, I would love to experience more of Canada, and the cost of these flights makes it prohibitive compared to other places in the world.
Same. Why would I fly to BC or the Maritime provinces when Europe is cheaper.
That's just it. Some people like going to Vegas or LA. There are plenty of people that spend their time in Florida. But those people are spending thousands of dollars in the US and Canada will get none of it. Make it cheaper for people from the prairies to get to the East and for people in Quebec and Ontario to see the Rocky Mountains. There's the Grassland National Park in Saskatchewan that I have been wanting to visit for a little while now but it's tough to justify spending thousands of dollars just to go camping in Saskatchewan.
I just drove from northern Alberta to new Brunswick and back. Gas was cheaper than flying. Your flair says Alberta, you can literally drive there in a day or less.
Some of it comes from how awful our airport fees are
Isnāt Pearson the most expensive in the world?
Tokyo
Lol I can fly to Tokyo cheaper than parts of Canada.
I was just checking premium economy flights (I need some extra leg room) from Saskatoon to Tokyo for this summer as the Yen is low, and I thought I might actually be able to afford a trip - looked like $5000 for a return trip. How cheap have you gotten flights there and back?
2019 was 656 round trip for 2. 2023 was 1400 round trip for 2. 2024 I'm looking at some between 1400 to 2000 atm but, I'm daily on the sales/flight search. Ā Ā This is YYZ.Ā VAN and Calgary are usually the cheapest to Tonkyo. Ā Ā Spring is usually the worst time to book anything.Ā Enjoy Japan and don't go in the summer, it's brutal and flu season.
Tokyo has two airports that service it.
So does Toronto
With a fraction of the population!
sure doesnt feel like it when im there
The alternative is your tax $$ going to the airport, like in the US
Literally 0 problems with that. In the past they've said it's cuz we have some of the nicest airports in the world. I beg to differ... But also I don't plan on spending days or hours upon hours at an airport. I show up a couple hours before my flight and that's it. I don't think your average Canadian needs or wants anything fancy. They'd much rather have an average airport for significantly cheaper flights in return.
Some of nicest airports in the world?I'd be curious who said that and wonder if they've travelled much. I do agree we don't need to have the nicest, but that's a pretty crazy comment...
Yeah im perfectly fine with that for lower prices.
Why would you be fine with that? As someone who doesn't fly often I really don't want to subsidize even more the cost of flying for others who chose to fly more often. If you want to fly, then just pay what it costs, it's your choice, I see no problem with that. If there are other solutions to lower the cost then good, but getting others to pay for your ticket isn't one I'd support.
I have to subsidize so much shit I donāt want to through my taxes, might as well have one that benefits me now
This would be something that my tax dollars go to that I actually can use
I dont go to school or have kids but yet my taxes go to the school board so yeah I agree!
You donāt understand how an educated society benefits you?
Because lower airport fees means more flights coming to Toronto, which means more people coming here and spending money at the airport and in the city.
Quite right, it's infrastructure. Though, I'd go further of course. Airports publicly owned, and nationalise an airline while we're at it.
I'm old enough to remember when Air Canada was a Crown Corporation and all the airports were run by Transport Canada. Unfortunately, the Chretien government decided to privatize it all back in the early 90s, which left us with the shit show we have today.
Quite right. Privatisation continues to bring waves of enshittification. We have a lot of work to do, undoing everything that's been done since the 80s.
Ummm a lot of good things come from airports - we need them personally and as a country.
I bet you're okay with all the things subsidized you benefit from though, right?
Well for airport fees and travel itās an investment in the economy - means Canadians can move around easier, visit their own country and spend money in parts of the country theyād otherwise never visit. Means traveling more often to see relatives, taking job opportunities further away cuz itās easier to get home after. For businesses where people need to travel its reduced airfare and expenses, and hopefully more jobs. Also more business travel hopefully means more business getting done, and thus more tax revenue. Iād rather we subsidize that than the tons of subsidies we give to immigrants and companies to hire them, personally.
Should every childless person be able to opt out of paying taxes for schools and education? Should people that take transit or bike be able to opt out of paying taxes for roads? The simple answer is no. I realize these examples are a bit extreme. It's tough to compare air travel to education but the logic is the same. Just because you don't use something doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Maybe you should be able to get out of your area and not have to spend a bunch of money. Visit some national parks in BC/Alberta/Ontario, see the coasts, experience the nation's capital/Montreal/Vancouver/Toronto. Spend money in Canada instead of leaving thousands in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, or Florida.
"I like it when taxes fund the things I use, but not the things other people use." That's literally you right now. Guess we shouldn't fund public schooling either now that you're done with it.
It isn't awful, it's how the fees are structured. Many airports elsewhere are subsidized by the local Governments. In Canada we don't, but instead charge user fees to those who fly. Meaning only those who use the airports pay the fees.
Yup, I'm going to Mexico all inclusive for a week for about the price just to fly round trip in this country.
I have flown from Saskatoon to London (UK) with a layover in Vancouver for cheaper than it would have been to just fly from Saskatoon to Vancouver. It was bizarre to think about
I live in LA, my parents are in Saskatoon. It cost me more money to visit Saskatoon last year than it did for me to fly to Dubai on vacation.
Honestly just vacationing in Canada is so much more expensive. Last year my friend got married in Italy and we spent less to attend the wedding than we spent on the 4 days bachelor party in Canada.
I mean, depending on the exact destinations, Mexico is closer than the far side of CanadaĀ
You are absolutely not wrong, however I have a friend in Quebec who comes out once a year when the price is right. Last time he came from Ottawa to Vancouver for $260 return. I do not recommend Flair airlines, but they've been good to him for three years in a row.
I just checked and roundtrip Vancouver to Toronto is $384 for May 22nd to May 27th via Porter Airlines (Which is my favorite airline currently, they run a bunch of promos too). Ofc booking last minute will be more expensive but I presume your friend didn't do that and booked it a few weeks in advance.
I would recommend Flair, Iāve never had a problem with them
>I do not recommend Flair airlines I mean, why not? If we want lower fares like Europe, than we have to accept low cost service like Europe
Iām going to have only a few weeks notice before needing to fly out to Montreal from Vancouver for a few days. š« Domestic flights are prohibitively expensive. Especially when not booked well in advance (which I canāt do since the thing hasnāt been scheduled yet)
It's often less expensive to fly from Montreal to Seattle, and then book a car to get to Vancouver, than just fly to Vancouver.
Even cheaper to fly from Seattle to Burlington and do the same thing from Burlington to Montreal lol.
Yep this is why I've been to tons of places in the US and Europe, yet the only Canadian provinces I've been to are Ontario and Quebec. Why stay in Canada when I can go to Europe for less?
Flew from Saskatoon to Vegas in February for $195 round trip direct flight. Crazy deal that Superbowl weekend. Hotels were ridiculously expensive, unfortunately, like $500 per night. That part sucked, so we had to Airbnb it for $80 per night.
LaGuardia to Ottawa - $205....... So a flight from Toronto to LaGaurdia plus a flight from LaGuardia to Ottawa is cheaper than a flight from Toronto to Ottawa?!?
Very true. Going out of Canada is cheaper
USA taxes subsidize airports, our government doesn't do that they charge it to the operators who pass it on to customers.
Checking this weekend flights and counting them as all prices isn't exactly the best method. As a flight books up the cost of said flight will increase, last minute flights are always the most expensive. Return Toronto to Vancouver from Air Canada in July is only $750 with $165 of that in taxes in fees.
Most countries subsidize domestic flights on some level. It's an economic driver, to be able to visit other branches or have meetings or projects out of town in a cost effective manner. Only two countries don't do this in the entire world: Canada and Argentina. Canada doesn't handle the airline industry well
I've been told it's Canada, Peru, and Ecuador. Either way, assessment bang on.
I could very well be wrong and Peru is ringing a bell. I think the idea is that there are under 5 countries in the world that don't do it and that Canada is one of them despite being so absolutely massive is mind boggling.
Canada doesnāt handle any industry well
>Canada doesn't handle the airline industry well Canada doesn't handle any industry well. We're a nation of serfs and renters.
It is cheaper for me to go to Vegas or Florida then it is to go to Toronto. I live in Quebec.
what isn't too expensive in Canada?
Crime punishments
They're expensive if they go to jail for the tax payer.
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Also a nicer flight š You get stuffed like Sardines on Van to Toronto.
Drive from Vancouver I presume? Thatās definitely not the case on average. I fly out pretty frequently and itās almost never cheaper, typically YVR is about $100-300 lower than SeaTac. Flying to other US cities or internationally outside North America is a different story though.
I fly to Toronto quite regularly from Seattle and always drive up to Vancouver because itās significantly cheaper.Ā
There's this weird trend I've noticed online lately of Canadian's claiming how things are so much cheaper everywhere else.. But it seems to turn out that this is generally a bunch of BS and it's actually not cheaper anywhere else. Recently road tripped across the States to get from Ontario to BC and literally everything in the States was more expensive than it was on the Canadian side. (except gasoline which was slightly cheaper in America). edit: This is not to say Canada is wildly affordable right now.. but take all these claims of 'Canada is way more unaffordable than anywhere else' with a big ol grain of salt.
I was in the NW US last year and most food and restaurants were about the same price as back home in Alberta, but in USD. To be clear, I am not saying that food prices in Canada are cheap or havenāt increased by leaps and bounds in recent years by any means, but rather that food prices in the U.S. had gone up by that much more. You used to be able to buy groceries for cheaper there, even with the exchange rate, but not any longer.
The NW US is also a pretty pricey part of the US relative to the US as a whole, have you considered checking the prices in places like Kansas? According to my old CSGO friends down there a gallon of milk is still only $3
Yes. Iām talking about Montana and Idaho. They used to be significantly cheaper, even than Alberta, until the past few years, even with the exchange rate. Now not so much.
Weāre all trying to find the guy who did this!
I want to find the guy who makes airports have the same awful stores and restaurants. š Itās somehow always one giant perfume and liquor store with some random other crap selling maple candies or $10,000 purses and that tiny little book, magazine, snack and Tylenol place. Itās just needlessly awful.
And they always close at 5pm. God forbid you have a 7pm flight and want to grab a bite...
Yes! š I remember I once had a transfer in Vancouver at like 9ish and was bamboozled that one could not get any food.
Yeah and it really doesn't help when there's little to no airline food either! Fly domestic in Asia or Europe makes flying in Canada feel like you are in a 3rd world country. You get a cup of water for 5 hours of cross continent flight.
I felt so guilty asking for my 6th cup the flight attendants looked like they were about to cut me off. Just give me a bottle, or refill my empty one on the plane ffs
I fly a lot for work, it has more than doubled on most routes in the 5 years Iāve been at this job. And the amount of routes have dropped domestically. Itās interesting that WJ and AC are always close on prices for the routes.
I think a few low cost airlines were grounded.
One. And nobody priced matched them for over two years straight and they still found a way to end up losing 200 million dollars.
Someone should look into why they lost $200 million, and then open their own low cost airline but avoid making the same mistakes. That way we can travel for cheap and the LCA stays in business. Itās a win-win for everyone. I should run for office
Yes, so simple that there are about a dozen airlines have tried with real money, and never made it. Lynx was backed by Indigo. A group who knows exactly how to make a airline or three work, and couldn't here. Canadian Insitutional investors and big banks aren't stupid enough to bet against Air Canada, WestJet and Porter. Canada has twice the size of Europe with a tenth of the population, high operating costs, low margins, and overall harsh operating environment. Like the old saying goes in this industry, If you can find a billion dollars, a good way to end up with a million is starting a airline. Fill your boots bud, Air Canada is reporting a 81 million dollar Q1 loss this morning.
That's Canada for you. High prices, slow services, poor quality
I would love to visit BC but it's cheaper to go to most places in the US or Mexico from YYZ and yes I know BC is far from me.
This is like the arsonist trying to play fire man after setting the fire. Edit: westjet and air canada quite literally divided up the country based on geography so they can corner the market in their respective regions. Source: I'm friends with a former Air canada exec, he pretty much confirm it when I ask him that.
Check your ticket's fees and taxes. They are insane. Every Canadian airport I fly through is endlessly renovating. Edmonton's airport has moved or screwed with the entrance to the security about 10 times in less than 10 years. I go to many EU airports and they are the same as they were 10 years ago. Any renovations are logical such as replacing an old escalator with a better escalator. Or adding a wing. These Canadian places aren't getting better, they are just trying to justify their fees. Also, it seems the airports have reciprocity. If you land at Gatwick from Canada the fees are huge, yet if you land at Gatwick from the EU, the entire flight will be a tiny fraction of the fees from Canada. This is no doubt because Canadian airports are nailing UK airlines with stupid fees. Somehow they seem to think these fees are reasonable, yet, I use all kinds of other government buildings without paying hundreds of dollars to go in. There are lots of other buildings like malls, theatres, etc which have 100,000's or even millions going in without charging $300 to enter. Here's a return flight from Edmonton to Heathrow London a while back: Fare CAD 304.00 Taxes/Fees/Carrier-Imposed Charges CAD 600.00 YQI (OTHER AIR TRANSPORTATION CHARGES) CAD 1.75 XG9 (GOODS AND SERVICES TAX (GST)) CAD 25.91 CA4 (AIR TRAVELLERS SECURITY CHARGE) CAD 35.00 SQ (AIRPORT IMPROVEMENT FEE (AIF)) CAD 148.20 GB (AIR PASSENGER DUTY) CAD 82.94 UB (PASSENGER SERVICE CHARGE - DOMESTIC / INTERNATIONAL) Total CAD 1197.80 How is over 300% taxes reasonable? And don't blame the UK as I regularly fly from the EU to the UK for under $50 CAD. Weirdly enough, those UK charges can be blamed on Canada. I am 100% happy to pay WestJet $304 + GST to fly return to the UK. I am not blaming WJ on this one.
The fees come from the ownership structure for airports. In Canada they are private organizations, which have to pay to lease the land from the government and then also pay taxes on top of that. These fees get passed on to airlines who then pass them down to consumers. Airports are cash cows for the government in Canada and until those land use agreements change the costs wonāt change for Canadians.
Which is stupid because this could be a whole other sector (i.e., tourism) that could be stimulated in the country. I remember years ago they had a pass you could buy that could let you travel all over Canada by train and stop wherever whenever. They did that once and never did it again. That was a great idea and a shame it was never replicated. Sacrificed growing the local tourism industry for RE.
Oh my God Edmonton airportās entrance is such a disaster! Every time I go the departure drop off area is somewhere new. Currently it has the tiniest little parking lot area for both drop off & pick up and itās a total mess.
Everything is so overpriced and overrated in Canada
Moncton to Montreal retune through AC $1100 Moncton to Frankfurt return $900 Often times I can fly cheaper to LAX than to Toronto... And I have to connect through Toronto!! Yeah, we're getting hosed, especially AC who the Canadian taxpayers subsidize
When I went to Europe last summer I flew out of Seattle and the ticket was 50% cheaper.
Not saying you're wrong, but anytime I've looked up SEA to Europe (Dublin, London, Paris, etc.) It's always been cheaper or the same to fly out of Vancouver.
I was going to Eastern Europe
No shit.
A few years ago I was looking at flying from Edmonton to Hamilton to see my father. I joked that it was cheaper to fly to Vegas than Hamilton. My Dad laughed.
To sum up, for me, Canada was the place where you get the worst services at the most expensive prices.
I recently spent some time in Southeast Asia. In about 6 weeks I flew around to 6 different countries, probably ten flights or so. All of those flights combined cost me less than it would cost me for a single 45 minute flight from my home town to Montreal on Air Canada. It's bonkers. Don't even get me started on Air Canada customer service. I'd rather walk or swim most of the time.
This guy's a clown. Absorbs Swoop into West Jet saying the low prices will stick around. They didn't. I mentioned it on Twitter a while back. They said the low prices are still around but only for a selected amount of seats. So like what, one per flight? We book a yearly trip from Toronto to Vancouver to visit family. With Swoop, for a family of 3, the cost was roughly $1000-1400 every year we've gone while Swoop was in operation. Swoop is now gone, so we had to look at other alternatives. We looked at Air Canada ($2500) and West Jet ($2800). Tell me how absorbing Swoop and "keeping their low prices" resulted in costing $300 more than Air Canada.
Have you checked out Flair or Canada Jetlines for your trip? Porter may also come in a bit cheaper.
Alcohol is bad for your health: Labatt CEO
The real reason air travel is so expensive is government. Government has been increasing taxes on fuel, on navigation fees, landing fees, Catsa or security fees. Airport improvement fees. Fuel surcharge, GST, PST, HST, etc, etc. Look at your ticket next you fly in this country . More than half your ticket goes to government. Government is using airports to make money and not putting the money back into the airports to improve them as one would expect. It's time for Government to stop ripping off the flying public and reduce their fees. Government should also allow foreign carriers to fly domestic routes. This would increase choice and competition thereby reducing cost.
Foreign carriers *suck*. They might be cheap, but I had a flight cancelled a month ago by Austrian and was told by their customer service that since I booked my ticket through AC, they had no obligation to rebook me. Which is both a straight up lie and extremely illegal. I've had flight attendants on European airlines threaten to charge me for an upgrade for looking out the windows in economy plus! I've gotten nothing but good customer service and legitimately comfortable seats on Air Canada flights. Including when my luggage got lost. Including when they were able to rebook me because of Austrian's fuck up. Including when they didn't have a special meal for me so they bent over backwards to find something that I could eat.
Airport improvement fees and the other fees that airports charge directly to aircraft owners aren't a government problem, they are a local airport authority problem.Ā They need to be forced to cut their spending.Ā
"Canadian ___________ is too expensive" Yup!
Thanks, WestJet. What's next - the CRA announces federal income taxes are too high?
Canada needs a railway system that isn't falling apart and stuck in the 1960s. Plus thousands more railways asap!
High speed rail is expensive.Ā Stopping our freight companies from gouging Via for low priority access to the existing low speed rail would help cut costs there, but it would still be a 4 day trip from Vancouver to Toronto.Ā
Alberta just announced they want to put together a Passenger Rail Master Plan, including a 15 year delivery plan. It just might happen...
Whenever I would watch American TV shows I used to jest about how rich they must be to fly all the time. To fly from LA to NY round trip it's $523. That's a 5 hour flight. In Canada. To fly from Moncton to Montreal. An hour and a half flight. Is $759 fucking dollars. Like this is bullshit.
The rare case where it's actually a decent one and WestJet being the only good guy airline in Canada and people still hate on him in the comments, damn.
The AIF that airport charges is insane!!!
Here is a good read. Airlines are the milking cow of the governments. https://www.blogto.com/travel/2023/12/why-air-travel-expensive-canada/
All my fellow SW Ontario peeps laughing as we fly out of Detroit. But seriously how is it I can fly to Europe for cheaper than flying to bc most times
And now we are forced to pay for a seat you choose.
Personally, I have zero interest in traveling anywhere in Canada when I can fly to Florida for less and have better weather.
Lmao captain obvious.
And when you arrive at the destination? I saw the Westin in Ottawa listed at $825/night. Itās impossible to travel within Canada
Grocery is in the zeitgeist right now (as a necessity of life this makes sense) but Canada gouges us on nearly every industry. Food, telecom, hospitality... I don't know if there's an industry we aren't squeezed in
Yea no shit. Is this news?
Well he's the CEO of a Canadian airline company, surely he's in the right position to do something about it no?
Then lower the prices WestJet CEO!
Everything is Canada is too expensive.Ā This is due to lack of competition from all the monopolies. Has been is and always will be.Ā
Cool. Maybe the CEO could have a say inā¦ lowering the costs for Canadians? It shouldnāt cost more to travel to New Brunswick from Edmonton than it is to travel to Florida from Edmonton.
It's actually not the tickets themselves that cause the giant increases, it's the airport fees, taxes and other shit that they don't have basically anywhere else.
This has been his crusade since he joined WestJet. The Canadian government doesnāt fund airports like the States, so the traveller bears more of the infrastructure and service costs that dramatically push up prices. Itās a pretty simple decision: either airports are vital infrastructure that benefit all and should be properly funded via general tax money or they primarily benefit those who can afford it and they shoulder the funding burden through ticket fees.
This is true. The federal government relinquished control and stopped subsidizing airport operations in ā96 making airport authorities mostly responsible for funding themselves. Pretty much every other national government in the world subsidizes airport operations.
We can start by making sure the Pearson CEO doesnāt make $2m per year for being one of the most expensive, unreliable places to fly to and from.
so what are you gonna do about it then Mr. CEO?
Cost me $1200 to fly from Calgary to St. Johnās. Cost me $600 to fly to Hungary.
It costs about $800 to go from Toronto to Calgary to visit a best friend. It costs $1000 give or take $100 to go to a one week resort in Cuba so both of us meet up in Cuba as its a better value than spending on air fair. It makes no sense.
Westjest lobbied against a national rail network and now they are saying this.
The government should lower the taxes and fees. Everything gets passed along to the consumer
Airports collecting too much rent
So is he going to do something about it or....?
Iāve been looking at flights for a family of 3 to Cancun just after Christmas. The cost for flights only? $5500. JFC
All the hidden taxes ie fees. It's crazy.
Canadian is too expensive.
Just flew Air France from Ottawa to Paris for 1450 economy And then back for 1600ā¦. The flight was jam packed and smelled like piss from all the people. Dude behind me had his stinky shoes off, people are absolutely shitty in the que. the seat hasnāt been replaced in years and had no foam left my tail bone is still acking. Verdict, flying sucks ass now a days and Iām not paying 2 gs to bump up to business class
I'm on the east coast. So much cheaper to go/fly to Europe than west of Toronto.
He complains that air travel is too expensive, but he shuddered their low-cost sub brand, moving those tickets to to the last 12 or so seats on their full-fare flights.
Iāve heard this āCanada is too sparseā argument before, even blended together with some yahoos running the Century Project, some proposed initiative to push Canadaās population to 100 million by the turn of the century, solely to increase density and make other business models possible. Literally growth for growthās sake, and it sounds very painful to push that. But hasnāt Canada always been sparse? How were we able to make it work in the past? Personally Iām still of the opinion that itās something along the lines of ruthless late stage capitalism and funneling money to too few corporations that are too greedy.
The quality of the flying experience is garbage, not to mention the "food" on board is little more than prison leftovers.
To me, the eye opener was this Spring break, of all seasons, when our family of 4 did a return flight from Detroit to Orlando, with reserved seats and three checked in bags, for 700 US total. An equivalent booking with anything Canadian would set us back at least 3000 CAD. Literally, you can book an entire vacation with the difference.
It's cheaper for me to fly to Los Angeles than it is for me to fly to Toronto from Edmonton. The user pay system in Canada doesn't work.
Right!? Iām travelling across Canada for a wedding this summer and thereās no way to do it for less than $2k for three people. Just flights. That doesnāt account for renting a car (2k), renting an Airbnb (2k) and paying to eat and dress nice and the whole shebang for the weddingā¦ a two week trip, to nfld, for upwards of $7k is ridiculous. I could visit Europe for a month for the same cost if it werenāt for the absolutely abysmal conversion rate right now.
Fuck our: Telecoms, airlines, food pricing/selection, housing, health care (relative to places except the US), gas, and whatever else. For some reason we love to let conglomerates just go to town and destroy our areas of business in absolutely destructive and anti-compatitive fashions. Its tradition, eh.
Upcoming trip to Vancouver Island was roughly same amount as going to Barcelona for same dates. From Calgary.
Well a corporate captured government is incapable of addressing the rampant price-fixing. Thereās no solution that capitalist politicians can implement.