Just curious

[MartinB]

I've been seeing lots of fear on these forums about Air Canada finishing their partnership with Jazz once the CPA is expired in 2020 due to Jazz being an expensive operation. I was wondering if AC did ditch Jazz, would that be the end of Jazz or would the operation continue as a separate company? I have a feeling that operating as an independent regional airline wouldn't be very successful, but maybe it would be a possibility. Jazz could just order a few more planes and they could connect all of Canada. Add a few more planes and you've got the US covered. :p I'm not familiar with the rules regarding this, but I thought maybe it would be worth asking. Anyways, would jazz operating on it's own rather than an operator under the AC CPA agreement be possible or am I going nuts?

[TopperHarley]

I highly doubt that Jazz will disappear completely. They still provide a valuable and efficient service to AC and do a good job. They may downsize, they may lose planes, they may get new ones, they may diversify and find more work... who knows, but I think they'll be around in some form or another.

[Stinky]

Unfortunately Jazz could never set out on its own. There are a few insurmountable problems.

We don't have any marketing, ticketing or reservations infrastructure or experience and we certainly wouldn't be able to find anybody willing to help us in establishing that.

Our route structure is set up as a feeder, many of the routes we fly are only profitable because they feed Air Canada. A load of 20 people on a 50 seat aircraft only makes sense if a number of those people are connecting to Asia or elsewhere.
Also, nobody wants to fly from Gander, NL to Vancouver hopping across the country for two days.

Every major airline in North America would make it there mission to crush us. All the majors rely on cheap regionals that know their place. The regionals need to know that they are the helpless little b*tch@$.

If you look at the regionals in the U.S., the ones that have decent (slightly above the poverty line) wages are shrinking, they'll still be around but much smaller. The ones that signed concessionary contracts and accepted reasonable wages (poverty line or below) are seeing rapid growth. This is our future. There is still farther to fall in terms of wages, Sky Regionals compensation could look pretty generous in another 5 to 10 years.

[MartinB]

They may downsize, they may lose planes, they may get new ones, they may diversify and find more work... who knows, but I think they'll be around in some form or another.

I hope this is this case! I'd hate to see Jazz disappear.

Our route structure is set up as a feeder, many of the routes we fly are only profitable because they feed Air Canada. A load of 20 people on a 50 seat aircraft only makes sense if a number of those people are connecting to Asia or elsewhere. Also, nobody wants to fly from Gander, NL to Vancouver hopping across the country for two days.

Well maybe Jazz could just adjust the route structure to make it less like a feeder network, get rid of the unprofitable routes, and use the extra aircraft for new more profitable routes/added frequencies to routes that would need more planes. If they still had extra planes left, they could sell them and use the money gained from selling them to buy bigger planes and then become our third national carrier. As for having no experience with marketing, ticketing, and reservations infrastructure, I'm sure they could attract experienced people for those things if Jazz adjusted their airline to be...well a mainline airline I guess. Oh and for the record, I would love doing a cross country flight in 2.5 days!

In all seriousness, I can see where you're coming from and as I said, I hope AC doesn't ditch Jazz!

[DHC-1 Jockey]

Here's my vision for 2020: From now until then Jazz saves up as much money as possible. Come 2020 Jazz doesn't renew the CPA with AC. With the money saved, Jazz buys 1 fleet type (C-Series, 737 Max, etc.) and gets rid of the Dash 8 100's, 300's and all the RJ's while keeping the Q400's. The Q's then feed the bigger Jazz aircraft instead of feeding Air Canada. Most outstations are already staffed by Jazz agents, so Jazz would only need to supply agents at the larger airports and set up their own ticketing system.

Essentially what I'm advocating is for Jazz to follow the WestJet/Encore model but with one pilot group instead of two. We feed ourselves rather than feeding Big Red and in the process Jazz becomes the third national airline.

Thoughts?

[MartinB]

Here's my vision for 2020: From now until then Jazz saves up as much money as possible. Come 2020 Jazz doesn't renew the CPA with AC. With the money saved, Jazz buys 1 fleet type (C-Series, 737 Max, etc.) and gets rid of the Dash 8 100's, 300's and all the RJ's while keeping the Q400's. The Q's then feed the bigger Jazz aircraft instead of feeding Air Canada. Most outstations are already staffed by Jazz agents, so Jazz would only need to supply agents at the larger airports and set up their own ticketing system.

Essentially what I'm advocating is for Jazz to follow the WestJet/Encore model but with one pilot group instead of two. We feed ourselves rather than feeding Big Red and in the process Jazz becomes the third national airline.

Thoughts?

+1 Solid Plan.

[prop2jet]

Here's my vision for 2020: From now until then Jazz saves up as much money as possible. Come 2020 Jazz doesn't renew the CPA with AC. With the money saved, Jazz buys 1 fleet type (C-Series, 737 Max, etc.) and gets rid of the Dash 8 100's, 300's and all the RJ's while keeping the Q400's. The Q's then feed the bigger Jazz aircraft instead of feeding Air Canada. Most outstations are already staffed by Jazz agents, so Jazz would only need to supply agents at the larger airports and set up their own ticketing system.

Essentially what I'm advocating is for Jazz to follow the WestJet/Encore model but with one pilot group instead of two. We feed ourselves rather than feeding Big Red and in the process Jazz becomes the third national airline.

Thoughts?

No law against dreaming... but alas that is but a pipe dream you have. You forget one thing... SLOTS. All those slots that Jazz has at the major airports belong to AC, not Jazz. Most of the traffic from the outstations feeds to the AC system. If you are going to dream a slightly more plausible one would be Merger / Acquisition of Porter.

[North Shore]

Essentially what I'm advocating is for Jazz to follow the WestJet/Encore model but with one pilot group instead of two. We feed ourselves rather than feeding Big Red and in the process Jazz becomes the third national airline.

Thoughts?

Are there enough bums to fill the seats of a third national airline? History would seem to suggest that there's barely enough to keep two carriers going...

[DHC-1 Jockey]

Are there enough bums to fill the seats of a third national airline? History would seem to suggest that there's barely enough to keep two carriers going...

Well if you read the papers these days, both WJ and AC are setting record load factors as of late, so it seems more and more people are flying.

If Jazz uses their current pay scale system, where the Q4 and 737/C-Series pilots make the same regardless of aircraft, our cost structure would be much lower than WJ or AC. And no, I'm not saying "we can do this work for less.. it's a race to the bottom" but rather we are doing a lot of this work already with jets going from YYZ and YYC to Houston or New Orleans or Atlanta. I'm saying get rid of the fuel hungry RJ's and go with one larger type of new and fuel efficient machine.

As well, start small with a few big jets going to the high yield markets in Canada : YYZ-YVR, YYZ-YYC, YYZ-YMM etc. and expand from there once Jazz's unique brand becomes more recognizable to the flying public.

If you build it they will come.(?)

Keep in mind that this is all just a pipe dream. But if this does happen, you can look back here in 6 years and see who called it first!

[cdnpilot77]

Well if you read the papers these days, both WJ and AC are setting record load factors as of late, so it seems more and more people are flying.

Honest genuine question, is that the case that more people are flying or are the asm's more closely controlled to ensure higher load factors? I haven't looked at the stats personally so I ask the question.

[Localizer]

Jazz already has a brand, and brand power. Before the new "express" livery was introduced people were already exposed to the Jazz brand, and knew what it was.

It's easy to imagine what the future could be .. The hard part is having the right people at the top to see it through...

[cv990]

Unfortunately Jazz could never set out on its own. There are a few insurmountable problems.

We don't have any marketing, ticketing or reservations infrastructure or experience

s.

Thats not necessarily true..... people forget that the majority of our history has been at-risk flying. There very much is infrastructure in place. A higher up was asked not too long ago how long it would take to implement our own at-risk flying again if it ever came to that, and the answer was along the lines of one week. That isnt to say thats where this is headed......

[B52]

Take a look at Australia.
Lots of airlines have come and gone.
Virgin however pulled a surprise and now appears to be in a position
where it may wipe Qantas off the map.

Just imagine if Virgin decided to play a similar game in Canada
and no doubt that scenario got be a possible
card to be played by Virgin or anyone else with a truck load of cash
to get it up and running and enough reserves to wipe out
the reserves of the opposition without loosing their own.

[teacher]

Jazz is capable of launching it's own standalone system. The infrastructure, ie reservation system etc. is in place if one day needed.

Jazz has shown time and time again that it is VERY versatile and capable on short notice to execute whatever is asked. I have no doubt that if it came down to it we could succeed as a standalone airline. It might require some mergers and/or acquisitions but it could happen I'm sure.

The preferred route from everyone's perspective though is a continued partnership with Air
Canada. Hopefully that continues.

[mbav8r]

Does anyone know if there is an airline out there with a reservation system, slots, deep pockets, options on C-series and an appetite to compete against Air Canada, with which a merger could happen?

[Stinky]

Does anyone know if there is an airline out there with a reservation system, slots, deep pockets, options on C-series and an appetite to compete against Air Canada, with which a merger could happen?

Porter does seem well positioned to become a bigger threat to Air Canada down the road but I don't see what Jazz could bring to the table. I apologize for being such a pessimist but we have an expensive unionized workforce, a largely outdated fleet of airplanes and I would imagine a lot of baggage in terms of legal and contractual issues with Air Canada. I would think Porter or anybody else would want to stay far away from Jazz.

For sale, clapped out Dash 8's and fuel hungry CRJ's flown by unionized pilots making 6 figure incomes; I just don't see the appeal.

[Stinky]

Double post again, what is wrong with my darn keyboard?

[rudder]

Does anyone know if there is an airline out there with a reservation system, slots, deep pockets, options on C-series and an appetite to compete against Air Canada, with which a merger could happen?

Porter does seem well positioned to become a bigger threat to Air Canada down the road but I don't see what Jazz could bring to the table. I apologize for being such a pessimist but we have an expensive unionized workforce, a largely outdated fleet of airplanes and I would imagine a lot of baggage in terms of legal and contractual issues with Air Canada. I would think Porter or anybody else would want to stay far away from Jazz.

For sale, clapped out Dash 8's and fuel hungry CRJ's flown by unionized pilots making 6 figure incomes; I just don't see the appeal.

The only logical commercial union (if that was the desired corporate direction) would be Porter and Chorus combined with a massive C-series order. Chorus has a geographic presence and infrastructure that Porter is years away from if ever. The merged company would have to establish interline ties with as many international partners as possible taking a cue from the WJ/Alaska/Saretsky playbook.