WestJet to Ground P.G. – Calgary Flights
Prince George, B.C. – WestJet is making some changes to its flights, and Prince George will be impacted.
When the direct flight between P.G. and Calgary was launched nearly two years ago, the Prince George airport had promoted it with a display of cowboy hats-( image at right, 250News archive)
As of March 5th, the airline is cancelling it’s daily service between Prince George and Calgary. The move, one of many, that has the airline boosting service in Eastern Canada and adding more service out of Vancouver to sun destinations.
The loss of the daily flight will have an impact on the Prince George Airport as those landing fees will be lost.
YXS had just recorded a record year for passenger traffic, but had noticed business passengers were down in the last quarter, and with the downturn in the commodity markets, slowdowns in resource development, the demand for direct flights between Calgary and Prince George was waning.
Prince George’s loss will be Eastern Canada’s gain as WestJet says it is “enhancing” flight schedules for business travellers, adding flights from Toronto to Ottawa, Montreal and Fredericton as well as between Ottawa and Halifax.
In a release issued today, the company says that as of June 15th, “flights between Toronto and Ottawa as well as Toronto and Montreal will operate 12 times each daily. Toronto and Fredericton will have a total of three daily flights as of March 5, 2016. Three daily flights between Toronto and Boston will begin March 15. With additional service between Ottawa and Halifax there will be a total of three daily flights between the cities as of March 5, 2016.”
Last fall, Central Mountain Air discontinued it’s direct Prince George to Calgary flight saying “this service never quite reached our passenger load or revenue growth expectations.”
Comments
Get CMA back on that route
I think that it is about time that Westjet gave back the fuel surcharge they added when the price of fuel was high. I suspect that it just got rolled into the total cost of airfares. Just another cash grab like the temparary income tax to pay for the war.
Wish Westjet would change up its direct flights to Puerto Vallarta from here, would really like to have other options for direct flights to sun destinations.
People still fly to Mexico? Oh that’s right, we keep hearing about their bodies being discovered.
That was the case with several German tourists who were frequenting the Miami area of Florida about 20 years ago. The German government put out warnings about travelling to Florida. As the linked article said, it was really no worse there than in New York City.
articles.latimes.com/1993-04-07/news/mn-20203_1_florida-tourism
I wonder which countries are more dangerous for tourists.
howsafeismexico.com/compare_mexico_us_cities.html
Island bound.. Yes lots do..and live..actually 99.999999% do.. More die at home driving to and from work.. Guess we should all stop driving in your world.
As for the stoppage of flights to calgary, again the oil price drop impacts expands.
Even though PG was impacted and it sucks it was not unexpected however PG weathered it better than places like Kelowna and Kamloops who both heavily rely on chartered flights and Kelowna has lost almost 45% of their chartered flights to and from Fort Mcmurray and will be losing more before March of this year
Hopefully CMA revisits it. They got screwed when WestJet decided to jump on that route after CMA opened it up. CMA + WestJet = too much capacity. CMA planes have much smaller capacity than the WestJet Q400s.
well with the price of oil, I can see business into Calgary being a bit light these days.
One of the reasons flights to Calgary are down is because the Rio Tinto Expansion at Kitimat ended last year. There were 2500+ construction workers in Kitimat and they have all left, some of these workers were from Calgary, Edmonton, etc;
Furthermore the LNG thing around Kitimat, Prince Rupert, has kind of died down at the moment. Throw in the closure of Endako Mines, and a few others, plus lumber mills shutting down, and you begin to see the trend.
This year was a big year for the PG Airport insofar as passenger numbers go, because of the winter games etc, going forward it will be pretty hard to beat the 2015 numbers.
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