Looks like Barney planes (Tango) is going bye

[Guest Boarding Card]

Tango fares to become part of aircanada.com’s web fares.

Air Canada announced today that effective Oct. 1, Tango’s fleet of A320 aircraft will be redeployed within Air Canada’s regular operations, and to Air Canada Jetz. Tango’s popular fares will be available on routes throughout Air Canada’s domestic network, and eventually for travel to all of the carrier’s U.S. and international destinations. Although Tango will no longer operate its own fleet of dedicated aircraft, the Tango brand will be far more widely available to customers throughout the Air Canada network.

Tango, launched in 2001, offers no-frills, value-focused service to select destinations in Canada and the U.S. through a simplified fare structure offering over 80 per cent off full economy fares with minimum restrictions. Tango quickly established itself as an industry model in the growing low-fare travel sector and has led Air Canada’s move to simplify travel through one-way pricing, exclusively e-ticketing, online purchasing, paid advance seat selection, online itinerary changes and in-flight snacks for purchase, the precursor to Air Canada’s new onboard restaurant service.

“For the past two years the Tango brand has thrived well beyond our expectations and has come to represent exceptional value for customers,” said Montie Brewer, Executive Vice-President, Commercial. “Expanding the availability of Tango’s simple, low fares throughout the Air Canada network is the next logical step as we continue to lower our cost base through restructuring and build on strong consumer response to our permanently low domestic fares at aircanada.com.”

Tango’s fares will replace aircanada.com’s Flash fares, and will continue to offer up to 80 per cent off full economy fares for one-way travel with no advance booking and no minimum stay. Customers purchasing a Tango fare will be able to not only book online but also make changes to their reservations on eligible domestic routes.

The Tango fare expansion will take place in two phases:

August 15:

Tango’s low, one-way fares at flytango.com for travel starting October 1 will be available for 87 daily domestic flights, including new non-stop service between Vancouver-Montreal, Vancouver – Ottawa, Calgary – Montreal, Calgary – Ottawa, Edmonton – Montreal and Edmonton – Ottawa. Customers will continue to book and fly on Tango aircraft prior to Oct. 1. Flights after Oct. 1 will be on mainline aircraft.

October 1:

Tango fares will expand to most Air Canada domestic destinations online both at flytango.com and as a new permanent fare category at aircanada.com, replacing the FLASH fare. Customers with tickets booked at a Tango fare will travel on Air Canada aircraft. Later this fall, Tango’s fares will become available for travel to Air Canada’s U.S. and international destinations at flytango.com and aircanada.com.

An employee Question & Answer document is available on Aeronet.

Employee Communications, YULNNAC

[Guest ECB]

I love these guys, guess they finally noticed that except for the purple paint, the domestic mainline is identical to Tango. hence, from Flash;

"Air Canada announced today that effective Oct. 1, Tango’s fleet of A320 aircraft will be redeployed within Air Canada’s regular operations, and to Air Canada Jetz. Tango’s popular fares will be available on routes throughout Air Canada’s domestic network, and eventually for travel to all of the carrier’s U.S. and international destinations. Although Tango will no longer operate its own fleet of dedicated aircraft, the Tango brand will be far more widely available to customers throughout the Air Canada network."

What a great Spin, it wasn't a failure, it was a regular Soviet style success story! Forget the millions down the flusher every day, this is a fabulous acheievement, and to celebrate, all Tango planes will vanish!

Chairman Stalin's (oops, I mean Milton) plans are brilliant, everything since his rise to power has gone exactly as planned, heres to a glorious future, comrades.

I can't imagine how thrilled the shareholders, creditors and employees must be to hear this wonderful news.

[Moon The Loon]

Hi there E:

I can't imagine how thrilled the shareholders, creditors and employees must be to hear this wonderful news.

Gotta be more thrilled than the way Joe Stalin rewarded his supporters!

[Guest ECB]

Nice pic there B!

Good to see ya back at it. Cruisin' over Europe.

Where were you off to anyway? Some exotic location no doubt.

Next time over a beer I'll fill you in on our exotic layovers in Grande Prairie or Prince George. I'd better stop, don't want you getting all jelous (if your good I'll get you a post card from Ft. McMurray)

[Moon The Loon]

Ah, the Fort. Don't miss those days, specially the one east of High Prairie...

Roger, the ( s!

[Moon The Loon]

Ah, the Fort. Don't miss those days, specially the one east of High Level...

Roger, the ( s!

[zipped]

Tango, Smaingo.....I hope GDR doesn't read all the nasty stuff about RM. According to GDR ..rm can do no wrong.

[dagger]

I posted here a couple of times a few months ago that as soon as AC could get its costs down sufficiently to offer Tango-level fares on ALL its flights, there would be no need for Tango.

I am proved right. Spin aside, this is not good news for Air Canada's competitors. It means AC now has hundreds more flights with fares competitive with your lowest, or go even lower. On some routes, consumers now will have a choice of six, eight, 10, 12 flights a day with these fares, instead of the two or three Tango flights.

We are one step closer to seeing the post-CCAA Air Canada. And for consumers, this is great, especially for the spread of Tango fares to transborder and intl routes.

[Guest ECB]

Good responce Dagger. Yes, if the costs are down, then they should now make a profit.

From a competetive POV, it will put all the carriers on a more level playing field. Service should now be a more deciding factor.

On a simple level, the old fares were twice the Tango fares and they lost money, so unless you've cut costs by 50% they won't make any now. You can play with numbers all day but its really that simple.

The point of my post was the Spin. Its quite a piece. It really was a Soviet style work of art.

[Guest M. McRae]

Not an expert but I suspect the real gain would be in the possible increase in load factor with the Tango product being rolled in.

[Guest cabo]

If it is replacing the "flash" fare, is it introducing new low fares on more flights or is it their way of hiding tango's non success by renaming it to a fare already in place?

[dagger]

I'm not sure what you mean by "old fares". The econo fares they replace are tantamount to roundtrip seat sale fares. Only now, they are bookable one-way without Saturday stayover. And it remains to be seen where the whole industry price structure sits post-CCAA. I expect an upward trend across the board, eliminating some of the distress pricing of the past few months. In the case of Tango on Air Canada, as opposed to Tango by Air Canada, remember that this will be inventory controlled, so that a portion of the flight will be allocated to Tango, a portion available to the so-called Fun fares, which are a little higher but operate basically like discount fares. Then come the more expensive Latitude and Freedom, the latter two analogous to full fare economy. When Tango is sold out, people default to Fun. When the inventory of Fun seats are sold out, most price-conscious leisure flyers will deem Latitutde and Freedom too expensive. They may look at WJ, CJ or JG or they may not travel at all, depending on whether they provide competing service on that route and what price they are offering.

In the WJ computer, there is a regular fare and a more expensive flexible fare. When the supply of regular fares is used up, they show the flex fare. So the effect is pretty well the same. The earlier you book, the more likely you will find a Tango-like fare available, and if you are ready to live with the conditions, like no refund and no standby privileges, that's what you'll do. Otherwise, you pay more for more flexible fares with standby privileges.

In other words, there is a limited ability per flight, or per route, to lose money if these fares are indeed lower and that could be offset by higher loads. Also, keep in mind that lower costs apply throughout the aircraft, so that the profit margin rises on higher priced tickets.

Not being privy to any of the financial details, or the capacity allocated per fare type, I can't say whether any AC fare will be profitable or unprofitable post-CCAA, although the lowering of costs will tend to lower the breakeven point for each and every seat on the aircraft.

For me, putting Tango on every single flight is a plus, because it will make it somewhat easier to construct same day returns that make good sense schedule-wise. For example, I am flying Tango next week to Ottawa, but have to basically be on the ground for 12 hours in Ottawa because Tango has only three flights back to YYZ, and only one after 9:20 in the morning. Jetsgo is in the identical situation, almost to the minute. So if I could get a flight back to Toronto on AC at say, 3p, instead of 6p, because Tango fares are integrated into AC's schedule, then, in future, I will have a much friendlier schedule for the day tripper who can grab a Tango fare early enough, and that will be a competitive advantage over Jetsgo. In that scenario, Jetsgo has to add flights or chop fares, and I would submit to you that its fares cannot go any lower.

However, as a consumer I am most excited by the application of Tango fares to transborder routes, especially those situations where you don't go for long enough to justify a Saturday night stayover on a discount fare. That should be very stimulative for traffic. If one can contemplate a cheap weekday day or overnight trip to Boston, or NY, or SFO. skipping the two or three-night hotel stayover routine, it should be stimulative to the airline and to the economy. That's what I love about the announcement, "Stalinist"

spin and all. It improves the lot of the traveller in at least two ways.

[dagger]

Flash fares were round trip discount fares requiring the mandatory, hated, Saturday night stayover. I was told before the lights went out that there will still be roundtrip seat sale fares. Tango fares are on-way fares which can be used for mid-week returns, even same-day returns. Pricewise, they will be a few dollars more than seat-sale fares, and a bit less than FUN fares. FUN fares will have essentially the same rules as Tango, so when Tango is sold out, people will book FUN.

On transborder routes, there is nothing like Tango or FUN right now, so this will be something new. Internationally, too, however, internationally we tend to go for longer and seat sale fares don't seem so restrictive when you have to go for a week or more anyway.

[Guest manwest]

Your absolutly right...its great for consumers. But if you had to choose a similar fare on a similar plane type, on a similar route, why would you pick Air Canada over a competitor.......would if be the customer service?

[dagger]

The fact is, each of us will make independent decisions for any number of reasons. Schedule/frequency/convenience are very much a part of the decision. As I posted below, if I can do a sameday return in six hours on one airline instead of 10 hours on another, I will choose the six-hour turnaround. In some cases, Air Canada may have the only service at this price, especially on transborder and some intl routes. AC might offer a nonstop instead of a connection. For example, AC offers year-round daily nonstops on Montreal-Vancouver and is the only carrier to do so. Tango fares on that route were only available on a connection. Flight attendants can smile and tell jokes until the cows come home, but if I want jokes, I tune into the Comedy Network. I always go with the most convenient schedule and routing. All I ask is that the flight attendant not be rude. If I don't notice them, regardless of demeanor, that's my kind of trip.

[Guest Simcoe]

So Tango, the brand with "limitless growth potential" less than a year ago is now just another "permanent" fare class. Just like econo fares, flex fares and goodness knows how many other "permanent" fares AC has introduced in the past 8 years to combat the competition that are quietly withdrawn a few months later after revenue accounting sees the impact to the bottomline and says "Holy crap, they are killing us!".

The only real cost saving on Tango was adding 27 more seats to a A320 configuration. 20% more capacity, 20% unit cost reduction. Coincidence? No. Now they've eliminated that on non-Tango configured flights.

On all competitive routes, AC has always offered heavily discounted one way pricing. It was so successful, they bankrupted them selves doing it because no matter what AC does, the competitions costs are lower, ie WJA was 11 cents per ASM in 2Q and they hinted it'd drop further, even without a fuel hedge in 3Q, even adjusted for stage length. Check out US Airs pre/post chapter 11 casm. It didn't get them anywhere close to SWA, Air Tran or Jetblue. AC is in the same pickle.

So they expand cheap fares to formerly high fare/yield long haul niche routes like YEG-YOW. It's no different than when they cut YEG-YVR and all WJA's western routes by 80% 8 years ago.

That worked so well, WJA grew from 3 to 40+ aircraft, and was profitable every step of the way. If they cut walkup fares by 80%, I hope they've cut costs about the same.

So what? What's different? They had to because JG and WJA are heavily transcon. WJA now or will shortly operate YVR-YUL, YVR-YYZ, YEG-YYZ, YEG-YOW, YYC-YYZ, YYC-YOW, YYC-YUL. In a few months, they'll have live TV, and look what that's done for jetblue and Frontier. Winglets will enhance the economics and range, allowing some potentially interesting ETOPS ops. HUDS, which are already installed in all the -700's according to my pilot buddy, will allow WJA to operate when AC can't. Leather seats throughout the aircraft. Airmiles. Huge overhead bins. The best customer care in the business, the best relationship with the travel trade, the lowest costs, tons of cash, adding about a plane a month to the fleet and I'd have to say it is AC who're freaking out. Add Leblanc's expansion and it gets worse, though I doubt Leblanc's op is profitable.

AC customers, and their accountants will be thrilled. "You paid $1,500 one way for YVR-YYZ when on the same plane, same time, same flight you could have taken a Tango fare for $250? Don't pull that stunt again, Jones".

I always buy 90 cent a litre Petro Can gas even when Sunoco has a litre of the same product for 80 cents. Not. It's no different for 95% of air travellers. Consumers will always migrate to the lowest priced commodity product. If you're like Dagger and want to pay $15 lb for potatoes, be my guest, but virtually everyone else is happy paying $5 a pound.

Have you ever noticed Dagger has mentioned that he's flown everyone but WJA, but is quick to point out WJA's supposed shortcomings. I'll bet Dagger has never actually flown WJA.

[bm330]

Not too many competitors will be very worried about AC as long as they post 1/2 billion dollar losses in a single quarter. Oh ya ... they're doing better, only $400,000 a day during the peak summer travel period. See you at the bank.

[Mitch Cronin]

Errr, ahh, 'scuse me Simcoe, but there's some small print under that banner inviting people to badmouth AC, which reads:

"Only if you own another airline, work for any news media company, or are yourself employed by AC." So, which are you?

...all others will be fair game for being right trompled upon (sometimes with very heavy wallompers!). And no, that's not a typo, I did say "trompled"... if you don't know what it means, I humbly submit that you probably wouldn't like to... others have run away screaming while quoting The Satanic Verses, line for line, verbatim. (well, I haven't actually heard their screams, but I heard that from a friend who once was a mole and nearly got a hit put out on him by Salmon Rushdie for trashing his words so terribly - The poor sod was only repeating what he thought he'd heard by screaming passersby)