I went on an AirCanada adventure on Friday. I climbed on a plane at 8am EST on June 22nd in Toronto, landed in Edmonton 4-hours later, waited 2-hours, then climbed on a connecting flight to Fort McMurray at 12pm MST.

I landed in Fort McMurray at 1:45pm MST which gave me 45-minutes to get to the company where I was going to present on podcasting. I did a 2-hour presentation, had dinner with the attendees, sampled Albertan steak (yummy), then returned to the Fort McMurray airport to catch an 8pm MST flight to Calgary. I arrived in Calgary at 9:10pm MST, then waited 3-1/2 hours for the connecting flight to Toronto. Four hours later, I landed in Toronto at 6:05am EST. Spent my entire Saturday sleeping.

Which brings me to my gripe about air carriers in Canada. There is only 1 direct flight from Toronto to Fort McMurray and it’s on AirCanada. It leaves Toronto at 10am EST daily and arrives in Fort McMurray at 12pm MST. The return flight to Toronto leaves 50-minutes after it lands in Fort McMurray. In essence, the same plane that flew there is the same plane that returns to Toronto minutes later. If you want to fly to Toronto from Fort McMurray anytime after that 1 direct flight leaves, you have to take a connecting flight via Edmonton or Calgary.

This has to do with podcasting, I promise. Read on.

I couldn’t get on the AirCanada direct flight because it was already sold out when I tried to book my travel. So, I went to the website of the other major air carrier in Canada, WestJet. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fly direct from Toronto to Fort McMurray. It does fly into Fort McMurray, but one has to take a connecting flight from Calgary or Edmonton.

So, I started to compare prices and arrival times between the 2 airlines. I was continually frustrated that WestJet’s prices were more expensive than AirCanada. Not just that, but the arrival times didn’t fare any better. WestJet flew into Fort McMurray 10 or 15-minutes before AirCanada.

I shook my head in disbelief. Here’s an opportunity for WestJet to excel in an area where AirCanada is weak and instead, WestJet is falling short. I couldn’t help but think about S.W.O.T., a term I heard while writing my business plan a year ago. It stands for:

• [S] = Strength
• [W] = Weakness
• [O] = Opportunity
• [T] = Threat

When thinking about your business, one is encouraged to list their S.W.O.T. In the case of WestJet, they missed out on the O, the opportunity to offer flights that AirCanada fails to offer. All WestJet had to do is offer a direct flight between Toronto and Fort McMurray first thing in the morning. Looking at WestJet’s S.W.O.T., here’s what I come up with:

• [S] = Strength – Customer service. I swear its check-in counter employees are on something more than caffeine. The last time I took WestJet was in 2004. I checked in at 6:00am and they were way too happy for that time in the morning.
• [W] = Weakness – WestJet doesn’t fly everywhere AirCanada flies.
• [O] = Opportunity – Offer domestic flights at different times than AirCanada. For example, offer a direct flight from Toronto to Fort McMurray twice a day, once in the morning and another in the evening.
• [T] = Threat – AirCanada (or another small carrier) could step up and start offering more flights to more Canadian cities.

This reminds me of podcasting. How many of you have applied S.W.O.T. to your podcasting strategy? What is it and how can you evaluate your S.W.O.T. so that you’re unique, different and offer something that makes people want to consume your podcast?