Canadian North says changes to flight schedules involved 'difficult choices'
CBC
The president of Canadian North says plans to reduce flight service to some Nunavut and N.W.T. communities is all about "right-sizing" the airline's schedule to meet demand and cover costs.
"We had to make some difficult choices on where we're going to put the aircraft, and where we were going to serve the communities best," said Michael Rodyniuk, president and CEO of Canadian North.
"And there's a number of communities across our network that were underserved, and some that were overserved. So what we really did was just sort of re-balance the network."
The airline announced its new summer schedule on Friday, a week after the federal government approved updated terms for the airline's 2019 merger with First Air.
The new terms allow the company — now with a virtual monopoly on commercial air travel across a vast swath of the North — to reduce service to northern communities to as little as one flight per week, and also open the door for rate hikes up to 25 per cent per year for passengers and cargo. Under the previous merger conditions, fares were locked in for seven years beyond those related to operating costs.
In a news release, Canadian North spelled out the schedule changes in terms of seat availability to different communities, rather than the frequency of flights. Some communities will see an increase in seat availability, while others will see a decrease.
"We wanted to make certain that we were accurately portraying what was happening in the community," Rodyniuk said, explaining the figures.
He said the previous schedule saw more "milk-run" routes, where an aircraft might touch down in several communities, picking up or dropping off passengers and cargo along the way. That meant certain communities only had so many seats available on a given flight.
The new schedule is designed to offer more direct service between communities and the hubs of Yellowknife and Iqaluit, Rodyniuk said — so it's not just about the number of flights to any community.
"In some cases, it's about the same or a little less, but there's more seats because it's a dedicated point-to-point service," Rodyniuk said.
According to the company's news release, the biggest change will be in the number of seats available for jet service from Inuvik, N.W.T., to Yellowknife, which is slated to increase by 140 per cent. The number of seats available going back to Inuvik from the capital will go up by 101 per cent.
Other significant increases include seats available for turbo-prop service to Sanirajak, Nunavut (42 per cent), Ulukhaktok, N.W.T., and Gjoa Haven, Nunavut (both 36 per cent), and jet service between Montreal and Kuujjuaq (32 per cent).
Norman Wells, N.W.T., will see the biggest reduction (50 to 54 per cent) in the number of seats available on flights between that community and both Inuvik and Yellowknife.
Hay River and Fort Simpson, N.W.T., as well as Cambridge Bay, Clyde River and Arctic Bay, Nunavut, will also see slight reductions.