Airfare sky high in Canada
Canada is long overdue for a revolution, and I don’t mean the French variety.
As a regular visitor to family and friends living in different parts of the country, and especially during the holiday seasons, I’m unhappily surprised by the high cost of air travel in Canada.
With the second largest land mass in the world and sadly underdeveloped land transportation options, Canadians are highly dependent on air transport.
They are being taken for a ride, metaphorically and literally, while having their pockets picked by every level of government and by whomever else has influence over air transport infrastructure.
As in other critical areas of daily life, it seems to me that a characteristic passivity keeps the Canadian public from demanding basic services that are both effective and affordable. Getting from one place to another in one’s own country at reasonable cost should be one of those services.
The Canadian economy, and I daresay Canadian unity need and deserve it, so that, if for no other reason, provinces don’t seem like foreign countries to each other.
This is certainly not a new issue and is often addressed in the media, but as with other matters that are relevant to the day-to-day lives of many Canadians, no critical and continuous mass of public indignation develops demanding change, and inertia is enshrined.
Lack of ongoing pressure on the government, and for that matter on the airlines, leaves them with no incentive to treat the traveling public as anything more than a cash cow.
Simple, random and non-scientific comparisons between domestic airfares in Canada, the United States and Israel show how disadvantaged Canadian air passengers are.
Take for example a mid-week return flight between cities that are about four hours flying time from each other — Calgary to Toronto in Canada, and Phoenix to Newark in the United States.
The websites of Air Canada and WestJet quote the cheapest fare for January 12, 2015 as $526, taxes and charges included. A passenger flying that same day from Phoenix to Newark with U.S. Air would have to shell out the equivalent of $313 (Canadian) under the current rate of exchange.
This is just one example of many if not all comparisons between the two countries. If compared to flights within the European Union, with its plethora of low-cost airlines, the picture is even worse.
Let’s compare short hop flights — Calgary to Vancouver and Tel Aviv to Eilat. Air Canada and WestJet charge the same (surprise, surprise) $348. The Israeli airline Arkia offers innumerable permutations within the general scope of $100 - 200 (Canadian).
Israel is also undergoing an ‘open skies’ revolution that is drastically lowering the cost of international flights.
The whole area of airfare is extremely arcane and opaque to most customers, but the bottom line is that Canadian air travellers are being milked by the government and badly served by lack of any serious competition between two quasi-monopolistic national airlines.
Canada’s skies need to be drastically opened up in ways that allow new and hungry players to enter the fray and compete for passenger dollars. Lessons on this can be learned from other countries that are gradually adopting open sky policies for domestic and international travel.
At the same time, the government needs to be cured of its addiction to using Canadian air travellers' wallets as easily available sources for cash fixes.
Zev Cohen was raised in Winnipeg and now lives in Israel.
