Expert: Matthew Smith - 8/21/2010

Question
i live in vancouver, canada and all the travel agency details for trip planning with thier airline ticket costs always show connecting routes thru the US like LAX or phoenix or phily...do you know much about airline routes in north america? is something from canada always routed thru the states? I was hoping for a more direct route to europe...

Answer
Any time you book a flight on a US carrier out of Canada, you will end up getting routed through the US because all of the US carriers hubs are in the US.  The other reason is availability.  I didn't know where and when you plan to go to Europe, so I checked some random dates and destinations.  Some dates were simply not available on non-US carriers.

There may be flights on Air Canada from Toronto to your desired destinations, but it is likely to have limited availability and to be cost prohibitive from Vancouver to Toronto to Europe.  Just a guess since I don't know anything about Air Canada's schedule and pricing.

I suspect that because of where and when you want to go, US Airways has the best (meaning a combo of the most frequent and most affordable) service, and therefore you end up getting routed through their hubs in PHX and PHL when ever your agent searches for flights.

Based on what you said, I can easily envision a YVR-->PHX-->PHL-->Europe route because that would be--believe it or not--the most efficient way to carry you from Vancouver to Europe.