Increased flight options for Regina and Saskatoon creating optimism

The arrival of more flight options for travellers in Regina and Saskatoon this summer is getting a favourable greeting from people in those cities.

WestJet said it will increase seat capacity on flights to and from Regina by 65 per cent. For flights to and from Saskatoon, the Calgary-based airline plans to increase capacity by 46 per cent.

“What they’re comparing is essentially year-over-year increases to their peak summer schedule,” James Bogusz, the president and CEO of the Regina Airport Authority, told Gormley on Thursday.

“What this means is seven flights a day up to a place like Calgary, basically a flight per day direct — not through Calgary, but direct — to places like Toronto and Vancouver. And in fact, we’ve got twice-daily service to major city centres like Edmonton just with WestJet alone.”

Bogusz said it’s important to remember this is not the total capacity for the airport; Air Canada is in the mix as well.

“They are the carrier who’s going to be offering three flights a day to Toronto, three flights a day to Vancouver, plus daily service into Montreal,” Bogusz said.

“So when you add it all up, you actually have some fairly significant capacity coming back to the Queen City, which really does serve all of southern Saskatchewan, not just our capital here.”

Saskatoon, which generally has more flights than Regina, is expected to see the return of the flights to and from Minneapolis.

“When that flight eventually was cancelled, we heard an outcry immediately from a lot of folks in our business community who came to really rely on that direct flight to (the) U.S. hub,” Jason Aebig, the CEO of the Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce, told Gormley.

“(It’s huge) to be able to connect to customers and markets all over the U.S. and, by extension, have those same U.S. business and leisure travellers come back this way.”

Aebig said the return of the Minneapolis flight was extremely positive.

“Pre-pandemic, just to give you a bit of a frame on this, a third of the fishing licences sold in this province were sold to U.S. leisure travellers,” Aebig said.

“Twenty-five per cent of our hunting licences went to U.S. leisure travellers, and all of them usually were headed up to the northern part of the province. And so it’s huge for us to be able to boast about a one-stop connection to the U.S., not only for our business folks going that direction (but) enticing and inviting people back up this way.”

Aebig said the WestJet route to Minneapolis will be reminiscent of Delta Air Lines — which is in partnership with WestJet — and its old route to and from the midwestern city.

Bogusz said the Regina airport has been in talks with WestJet to have flights to and from Minneapolis brought to the Queen City.

“Much like what Jason was speaking to, this is really the No. 1 air service priority for our community,” Bogusz said.

“But what we’ve really been focusing on is to restore daily non-stop service to a major U.S. hub like Minneapolis or Denver or Chicago and we’ve been having conversations with both Canadian and U.S. airlines.”

However, Bogusz said getting Canadian airlines to commit to a route has been a challenge.

“As we saw, it took a significant subsidy (from the provincial government for the Minneapolis flight) simply because they don’t have ownership of that customer’s dollar through their whole travel,” Bogusz said.

“An organization like Delta or United, for example, when you buy tickets from them, they carry you right to the end destination, meaning they essentially keep the entire fare.”

Bogusz said it’s also been difficult to get U.S. airlines to come back to Canada.

He said pilot and airline shortages are part of the problem and that even larger U.S. airlines like United are having trouble meeting domestic demand as is.

“We’re talking with American (and) talking with United. We certainly feel confident that in the future, we’re going to start seeing the return,” Bogusz said. “But in our view, we’re really focused on a daily service.”

Bogusz said the Regina airport would love it even if WestJet offered a few U.S. flights per week, but ultimately the “golden goose” in his eyes is a daily U.S. flight to and from YQR with an American carrier.