A newly appointed Seattle representative of Vancouver airport is launching a campaign to encourage more travelers from the region to use the Canadian airport for international flights, getting them to go north instead of through SFO or LAX.
The number of passengers from Seattle connecting through Vancouver to Asia soared 40 percent from 2004 to 2005, according to the report in the Puget Sound Business Journal. Seattle passengers account for about 5 percent of all YVR traffic to Asia.
And no wonder. Vancouver has 117 weekly flights to 8 Asian cities and 75 weekly flights to 11 European cities, according to the report. Seattle has 36 flights a week to three Asian cities and 24 flights to three European ones. Some of that is because Vancouver is Canada's West coast metropolis.
The development manager at Sea-Tac is quoted as hoping that near-capacity flights from SEA will attract more carriers. But the airport has lost fllights to Tokyo, Osaka and China in recent years.