I would not drive 5 hours for a flight. Kinda defeats the purpose of flying... drive 5 hours to be there 2 hours early, leave an extra hour for the boarder.... My max is 2-3 if the savings warrants.
US Carriers can only fly one stop Canadian Itineraries at this point, until a TRUE open skies agreement is executed.
Hamilton would canabalize their BUF business, of which is estimated to be 1/4-1/3 Canadian PAX. Airport and Taxes at YYZ would not allow them to execute as a LCC as we have seen with WestJet and thier rising $$$, in many cases in the same price range as AC. London is getting a little far West to capture the GTA PAX, and their are not really any airports to the East until Kingston that would be in the position to accomodate JetBlue or convenience for the Golden Horseshoe population.
Again, I may be a bit biased, but to draw from a HUGE population base of the GTA, Golden Horseshoe and Southern Ontario, without overly canabalizing their OWN BUF traffic/business, Kitchener is looking pretty good. Another board made the suggestion of moving a few of the BUF flights (JFK, BOS and maybe MCO) to Southern Ontario and introduce a few new destination from BUF as an offset.
This is still a year+ away, but it will be interesting to see how it all plays out!
If folks don't like driving and have the extra income, why not fly local.
Looked into flying out of
Toronto, $2200 for the four of us.
We all flew out of
Pittsburgh in '06 for $489 Canadian.
Yes, we spent a 5 hours driving, paid to park, we also shopped at
Grove City, PA on the way back no sales tax on clothing.
This year we flew out of
Detroit $511 Canadian. 4 hour Drive.
Lets do the math
If we had flown out of
Pearson both times total $4400.
Total for flights out of the states $900.
Let's say additional expenses of $300 for gas, parking and pocket money. Total $1200 Canadian
$4400
-
$1200
$3200
Saving of $3200 for 18 hours a of driving. That's $177.77 a hour of savings.
The above numbers don't include more savings of flying out of Pittsburgh Aug '05 or driving down to WDW Mar '06
Thanks to my DW brilliant trip planning abilities we've been to WDW 4 times in a little over 2 years and taken a
Disney Cruise.
So.. we will continue to save money and visit Disney often.
If someone can hook us up out of Toronto for $700 when we want to fly let me know. We usually see what dates we have free, book accomodations,then get the flights.
I think some airline in Canada had $29 fares recently, can't remember who though.
. It was noted in a US paper that Jetblue did think that Pearson was too expensive but their target market would be Toronto. It probably wont happen for a few years but I do think they will begin in southern Ontario.
