Come April 2019, the stand alone EZE & SCL flights will be joined, once again, into one, YYZ-SCL-EZE with 5th freedom rights on the SCL-EZE-SCL sectors. 4 times weekly with the 787-9.

Why such long waits from the arrivals in Santiago to departures, 2 hours seems very long. In these times of 787 why can't each city have their own nonstop to Toronto ? Operating tag flights seems very 1970's when deep Latin America was the king of tags, RIO-EZE-SCL was very common. IT sounds like AC wishes it had picked up the options on those extra 787-9 instead of flying more to India or Dubai. Some route choices at AC are questionable, does Montreal need a nonstop to Tokyo ?

AC tried and I think they did not get the performance they were expecting. I guess it has been one year since this flight was split.

5th freedom flights are still very common in Latin America.

I wonder if the crew will overnight in EZE or have two SCL overnights with an EZE turn in between.

They will overnight in SCL.

They simply don’t have enough frames to keep this route up, with the addition of VIE and increases elsewhere across the network.

Summer is slow season in demand in Southern Hemisphere comparing to Northern Hemisphere.
They are just adjusting seasonal capacity. Bet they'll fly non-stop to EZE again in Winter if Argentina economy don't collapse until then (hopefully it won't).

I wonder if the fact that this is the start of winter in the southern hemisphere has anything to do with it..

Question: for passengers at EZE bound for SCL, and passengers at SCL on their way to YYZ, do they need to deplane and go through a passport check, or are they allowed to remain onboard?

jfk777 wrote:

Why such long waits from the arrivals in Santiago to departures, 2 hours seems very long. In these times of 787 why can't each city have their own nonstop to Toronto ? Operating tag flights seems very 1970's when deep Latin America was the king of tags, RIO-EZE-SCL was very common. IT sounds like AC wishes it had picked up the options on those extra 787-9 instead of flying more to India or Dubai. Some route choices at AC are questionable, does Montreal need a nonstop to Tokyo ?

The answer is yes Montreal does need a nonstop to Tokyo.
Questionable routes is why did AC go and split them in the first place. The separate flights will have lasted a total of 11 months.

YYZ is busting at the seams these days and YUL right now seem to be alternative

PSAatSAN4Ever wrote:

Question: for passengers at EZE bound for SCL, and passengers at SCL on their way to YYZ, do they need to deplane and go through a passport check, or are they allowed to remain onboard?

Both ways passengers have to exit the aircraft and go through a security check but no passport control. The crew changes and they do a full cleaning of the a/c. For the short hop, they don't put pillows/blankets/headphones in the seats as well.

Decoupling SCL from EZE was a good idea, however the return schedule to YYZ is awful, with a daytime return from EZE that gets to YYZ too late for any meaningful connecting opportunities. AC must be tight with its 789 fleet as the flight is pretty often late arriving at EZE and they have scheduled around 90 minutes to turn it around, so delays snowball and the return is late most of the time.

SCL has experienced a deep drop in passengers carried by AC, -19% YTD and -40% on September alone, (Data JAC Chile). EZE at only 3x w flights was at around 80% LF but with such little connecting traffic, and Argentina-Canada traffic not being the strongest out there, I would imagine the airline has better places where to send those 2 789s. Combining the two flights into one seems sensible.

jfk777 wrote:

Why such long waits from the arrivals in Santiago to departures, 2 hours seems very long. In these times of 787 why can't each city have their own nonstop to Toronto ? Operating tag flights seems very 1970's when deep Latin America was the king of tags, RIO-EZE-SCL was very common. IT sounds like AC wishes it had picked up the options on those extra 787-9 instead of flying more to India or Dubai. Some route choices at AC are questionable, does Montreal need a nonstop to Tokyo ?

What is questionable here is the fact that you haven't listened to AC's feedback. On today's analyst call they clearly mentioned how the Tokyo-Montreal/Haneda-Toronto routes are exceeding expectations and that all new routes started in 2019 have met/exceeded expectations. If AC couldn't be profitable on EZE-YYZ/SCL-YYZ stand-alone with 787s (the aircraft you mentioned AC wishes they had more of, which makes little sense btw), then how is this a testament to questionable route choices?

Kind of funny their official doc calls the bird 787-900.

Couldn't they do YYZ-SCL-EZE-YYZ instead? At least keep one of the legs nonstop each way?

gatibosgru wrote:

Couldn't they do YYZ-SCL-EZE-YYZ instead? At least keep one of the legs nonstop each way?

That was the case for quite some time. I remember when I took a flight EZE-SCL on their 77W, that the schedule was alternating YYZ-EZE-SCL-YYZ one day and YYZ-SCL-EZE-YYZ the other. Not sure which day it was left out, thought.

gatibosgru wrote:

Kind of funny their official doc calls the bird 787-900.

Couldn't they do YYZ-SCL-EZE-YYZ instead? At least keep one of the legs nonstop each way?

AC (and KL) do good business with 5th freedom rights over the Argentina-Chile route. same as TK, ET, QR and EK over Argentina-Brazil routes. The chance to fly on a widebody with a more decent on board service over the ubiquitous AR/LA/G3 737/A320 and almost nonexistent on board service wins more customers every day.

Triangular flights can also bring along more expenses, besides being somewhat customer unfriendly. Consider hotel layover expenses. By doing a triangular flight, AC would have to contract a hotel both in Santiago and Buenos Aires. By doing it the way they do, crews stay at Santiago only and do a quick return return day trip to EZE. These hotel expenses add up and can make or break a flight that may not be a cash cow.

What about something like YYZ-EZE-SCL-YVR-SCL-EZE-YYZ? Have they tried something similar before?

OlafW wrote:

gatibosgru wrote:

Couldn't they do YYZ-SCL-EZE-YYZ instead? At least keep one of the legs nonstop each way?

That was the case for quite some time. I remember when I took a flight EZE-SCL on their 77W, that the schedule was alternating YYZ-EZE-SCL-YYZ one day and YYZ-SCL-EZE-YYZ the other. Not sure which day it was left out, thought.

When I lived in Chile and it was on a 763 (mid-00s), it went YYZ-SCL-EZE-YYZ four days and YYZ-EZE-SCL-YYZ three. I can't recall the consecutive days that it went to SCL first, but I think it was mid-week (something like SCL first Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday).

c933103 wrote:

What about something like YYZ-EZE-SCL-YVR-SCL-EZE-YYZ? Have they tried something similar before?

There is almost no P2P traffic between deep South America and YVR; an YVR flight would cannibalize the YYZ flight, taking away all the Asia connections, that, traditionally, have been an important part of the CP/AC business in South America. In any case, AC did a good job of chasing these away with the non stop schedules, as the return flights arrive at YYZ in the evening, too late for any connections to Asia.

CP used to have flights from YVR to LIM and then the flight would go on to SCL and LIM with the DC-8 back in the 70s.

dcajet wrote:

c933103 wrote:

What about something like YYZ-EZE-SCL-YVR-SCL-EZE-YYZ? Have they tried something similar before?

There is almost no P2P traffic between deep South America and YVR; an YVR flight would cannibalize the YYZ flight, taking away all the Asia connections, that, traditionally, have been an important part of the CP/AC business in South America. In any case, AC did a good job of chasing these away with the non stop schedules, as the return flights arrive at YYZ in the evening, too late for any connections to Asia.

CP used to have flights from YVR to LIM and then the flight would go on to SCL and LIM with the DC-8 back in the 70s.

Probably the biggest challenge to YVR-EZE is that it’s a r-e-a-l-l-y long flight. YVR-EZE is only about 250 nm shorter than YVR-SGN.

Cubsrule wrote:

dcajet wrote:

c933103 wrote:

What about something like YYZ-EZE-SCL-YVR-SCL-EZE-YYZ? Have they tried something similar before?

There is almost no P2P traffic between deep South America and YVR; an YVR flight would cannibalize the YYZ flight, taking away all the Asia connections, that, traditionally, have been an important part of the CP/AC business in South America. In any case, AC did a good job of chasing these away with the non stop schedules, as the return flights arrive at YYZ in the evening, too late for any connections to Asia.

CP used to have flights from YVR to LIM and then the flight would go on to SCL and LIM with the DC-8 back in the 70s.

Probably the biggest challenge to YVR-EZE is that it’s a r-e-a-l-l-y long flight. YVR-EZE is only about 250 nm shorter than YVR-SGN.

Indeed it is: at 7,011 miles is almost one hundred miles further than an EZE-FCO. And for very little traffic absent any connections to Asia. If P2P California-Argentina is a hard sell, can't imagine this one! The only folks I know that travel frequently between Vancouver and Buenos Aires are Michael Buble and his family, as they have residences in both cities!!! They sure would welcome such a flight.

dcajet wrote:

c933103 wrote:

What about something like YYZ-EZE-SCL-YVR-SCL-EZE-YYZ? Have they tried something similar before?

There is almost no P2P traffic between deep South America and YVR; an YVR flight would cannibalize the YYZ flight, taking away all the Asia connections, that, traditionally, have been an important part of the CP/AC business in South America. In any case, AC did a good job of chasing these away with the non stop schedules, as the return flights arrive at YYZ in the evening, too late for any connections to Asia.

CP used to have flights from YVR to LIM and then the flight would go on to SCL and LIM with the DC-8 back in the 70s.

But with YYZ-EZE-SCL-YVR, it can sell one stop connection to Argentina via YYZ and one stop connection to Chile via YVR. It won't influence connecting traffic of YYZ-EZE because under this proposal only SCL would be non-stop from YVR. And Chile have much less non-stop intercontinental flight which also make it have considerably less competition in the "one stop to Asia" market, while it us still a considerably larger market in term of both population and economy than like Peru.