The expanding operations of two airlines at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) will provide Vancouverites with the city’s first non-stop flight to Munich and a new option to fly non-stop to New York.
Lufthansa will fly daily non-stop flights to Munich between May and October 2013, Vancouver International Airport Authority (VIAA) director of aviation marketing John Korenic told Business in Vancouver November 13.
The airline already flies daily non-stop flights to Frankfurt from YVR.
“Munich is a major new route that we’ve worked on for a number of years,” Korenic said. “Munich is not a Frankfurt but it’s a sizable hub, particularly for markets in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe.”
Germany is B.C.’s seventh largest source of incoming tourists.
Delta Airlines plans to launch a new daily non-stop route to New York, May through October 2013 – flights that will compete with Air Canada and Cathay Pacific’s daily non-stop service to John F. Kennedy Airport.
United Airlines will continue to offer daily non-stop flights between Vancouver and Newark Airport in nearby New Jersey.
“It is a significant new destination for Delta that will assist with the capacity requirements for cruise ship passenger growth next year,” Korenic said.
The Port of Vancouver is expecting a 20% jump in the number of cruise ship sailings out of Vancouver to 230 in 2013. Passenger counts are expected to rise about 25% to 820,000 in 2013 and that will likely require excess air capacity to transport those passengers to Vancouver.
The new routes come on the heels of YVR attracting several new carriers in the past couple years:
•China Southern launched thrice-weekly flights in June 2011 and bumped that up to five times per week during summer 2012;
•Sichuan Airlines launched thrice-weekly flights in June 2012; and
•Virgin Atlantic Airlines launched May through October flights May 2012.
Virgin Atlantic plans to return next May, although no one from the airline was available by press time to say whether permanent flights are on the horizon.
YVR statistics show that new international long-haul flights generate between $5 million and $8 million annually in local wages and add between $8 million and $15 million to B.C.’s gross domestic product.
YVR aims to add non-stop flights to India, South America
VIAA executives are negotiating with carriers to launch non-stop flights to India, Peru and Chile to service business demand.
Executives such as Optimus Information Inc. CEO Pankaj Agarwal have told Business in Vancouver that they would buy business-class tickets on non-stop flights to India if those flights existed.
Agarwal travels to India about four times each year because his company has a New Delhi office, and he currently has to fly business class out of Vancouver either on Japan Airlines or Lufthansa. He believes that were a carrier to fly non-stop to India from Vancouver that the flights would also attract Seattle passengers because there’s no non-stop option to New Delhi from the North American west coast.
VIAA’s Korenic said that strong demand for business-class tickets is key to the viability of non-stop flights between Vancouver and New Delhi.
“Volume is not the issue. We have a large market with India and a large potential market on the tourism side – but do we have a big enough business market to support the route? Some aircraft could have a full flight and still lose money.”
Korenic has been researching the viability of non-stop flights to Peru and Chile partly because there’s no non-stop service from Vancouver to South America. Many local mining companies have major operations in those countries. Vancouver-based Finning International Inc.’s (TSX:FTT) Chilean subsidiary has been growing fast and won US$497 million worth of new contracts earlier this month.
Korenic is also trying to convince airlines to agree to launch non-stop flights to:
•second-tier Chinese cities such as Wuhan, Xiamen and Huangzhou;
•the Persian Gulf; and
•Southeast Asia.
