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Canadian Pacific Airlines

<tr><th colspan="2">Hubs</th><td>Vancouver, Toronto</td></tr><tr><th colspan="2">Focus cities / secondary hubs</th><td>Amsterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, Lima</td></tr>
Canadian Pacific Airlines
IATA
CP		ICAO
CPC		Callsign
Empress
Founded1942
Fleet size?
Destinations
HeadquartersVancouver International Airport
Key peopleDonald J. Carty CEO 1985-1987
Website: {{{website}}}

Canadian Pacific Airlines, also called CP Air, was a Canadian airline that operated from 1942 to 1987. Based at Vancouver International Airport, it served Canadian and international routes until it was purchased and absorbed into Canadian Airlines.


Contents

Inception

In the early 1940s, Canadian Pacific purchased ten bush airlines in a short time span, finishing with the purchase of Western Canadian Airlines in 1942, to form Canadian Pacific Airlines. While CP had a conservative railroad heritage, this collection of airlines brought some unique personalities to CP Air. These were largely bush flying pioneers. The president was Grant McConachie, Punch Dickins became a general superintendent and later a vice-president, and Wop May was a repair depot manager for CP Air at Calgary.

Battle with TCA

CP Air battled with the government owned Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA) for international and trans-continental routes for much of its history. Despite early attempt to merge into one national carrier, CP Air continued to operate routes based on its previous bush flying heritage.

The federal government established limits on domestic market share and through international agreements limits over which countries CP Air could fly to. This barred CP Air from the traditional routes such as London and Paris and limited their access to major Canadian routes such as Vancouver-Toronto and Toronto-New York. CP was forced to develop other overseas routes.

Overseas Routes

The development of the great circle or polar route to the Far East from its Vancouver base would become one of the cornerstones of the airline. Grant McConachie managed to secure flights to Amsterdam, Australia and Hong Kong which helped grow the airline's revenue from $3 million in 1942 to $61 million by 1964.

Open skies

By the late 1970s, many of the routes CP Air had pioneered such as Vancouver-Tokyo were now very lucrative and the previous distribution of routes was considered unfair. In 1979, the federal government eliminated the fixed market share of trans-continental flights for Air Canada (the successor to TCA). While this was a condition that was pressed by CP Air for a long time, it now scrambled to upgrade its fleet to expand on newly available routes and prepare for increased competition from Air Canada in its traditional territory. This required massive fleet renewal and an associated debt of $1 billion.

This debt load, the increased competition, and the economic downturn in Asia would all work against CP Air's future.

Sale

In 1987, due to sporadic profits in the 1980s, CP decided to sell its airline to Pacific Western Airlines for $300 million and assume the airline's debt of $600 million. In April of 1987, PWA announced the new name of the merged airlines: Canadian Airlines International. In 2000 Canadian Airlines merged into Air Canada.

Historical fleet

List is incomplete and uses data primarily from the Boeing Sales Database [10].

Accidents

In addition, on June 23, 1985 a piece of luggage that had come from CP Air 3 exploded as it was being transferred to Air India Flight 301; the explosion killed two baggage handlers (Hideo Asano and Hideharu Koda) in Narita and injured four other people.

References


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Defunct airlines of Canada | 1942 establishments

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