A new direct flight from Kamloops to Edmonton will operate twice a week instead of the previously announced three times a week.

Flair Airlines is set to begin the service on June 18, with flights on Wednesday and Sunday instead of Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday

“We’ve had to adjust our schedule, but the schedule is done being adjusted, so it has absolutely no impact on the Kamloops flights,” Flair’s Vice-President of Network Planning, Eric Tanner, said when asked if the change in schedule was due to the March seizure of four of Flair’s aircraft by the lessor.

“That was a pretty unique situation. It is not every day that you end up suing a lessor and that’s what we’ve done. Not going to comment too much on the case as it works its way through the courts but needless to say, it was fairly unprecedented. I’ve had time in the airline industry both on the airline side and on the aircraft lessor side. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. I don’t think anyone has.”

Tanner went on say that he feels Canadians have “responded to Flair in a way that they never have before.”

“Our flights in April flew at a 90 per cent load factor, so that means we sold 90 per cent of our seats and in May, we’re going to beat that again” he said.

“So, the episodes of March are very much in our rear view mirror.”

Flair will use Boeing 737s that seat 189 passengers on the Kamloops to Edmonton route. It’s more than double the capacity of the 78-seat Q400 planes used by WestJet and Air Canada to service Kamloops.

“When you keep fares low you can stimulate new demand. We fly 189-seat, 737 aircraft. That allows us to bring a lot of seats into the market,” Tanner said, noting the airline’s low-cost business model depends on planes flying at capacity owing to Flair’s reliance on optional fees and charges for things like baggage, seat selection, and priority boarding.

“We really don’t need to charge that much per seat to be a profitable carrier.”

He also said presales for the new flight, which was announced in February, were “solid” and that the forecasted passenger counts were “good.”

“Kamloops really fits in our strategy of taking people to where they want to go without a connection. We’ve gone up to multiple flights a day in Edmonton [to] Kelowna, and I think Kamloops has a very similar profile,” Tanner said.

“It has unparalleled outdoors. It’s got the skiing, it’s got the golf, it’s got the water sports, it really kind of has it all.”

When it does take off, this will be the first direct Kamloops to Edmonton flight since 2016 when WestJet cancelled its flights between the two cities.

WestJet did announce plans for a direct Kamloops to Edmonton flight which began service in July of 2021. Airport Manager, Ed Ratuski, told RadioNL it was cancelled a month later as it did not perform as expected due to the lack of available flight crews as well as a lack of passengers due to the pandemic and the summer wildfire season.

Back in Dec. 2019, Swoop – WestJet’s ultra low-cost carrier – announced plans for a direct Kamloops to Edmonton flight which was to begin in April 2020. That flight never took off because of COVID-19.

“You can never make promises on a route. That said, the fundamentals are here. This is a market that we know can work really well,” Tanner added.

“It’s always a little bit slower at the start of a route because you have to get traffic flowing in each direction.”