WestJet outlines growth plan with Regina International Airport

With people booking flights to warmer locations, there aren’t always great direct flights out of Regina.

On Wednesday, WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech made a rare appearance in Regina, with an announcement about the airport’s air services.

Most of the announcement centred around flights to popular winter destinations such as Las Vegas and Phoenix.

“I heard loud and clear that there’s some desire to increase connectivity trans-border, to maybe add something more to the countries south of the border. That’s certainly something that we will take away and see what opportunities arise,” von Hoensbroech said.

With the acquisition of Sunwing Vacations and Sunwing Airlines earlier this year, WestJet announced it will provide six non-stop routes from Regina to sunny destinations this winter, including Varadero, Cuba, Mazatlan, Mexico and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

Regina Airport Authority CEO James Bogusz said he never had an airline CEO visit his community in two decades of working in airports. He said WestJet is the main airline out of Regina.

“Sixty per cent of our total capacity is with that airline and this is not even including the Sunwing airline they recently acquired,” he said.

While the Regina airport may offer increased international flights, many people in Saskatchewan have complained about the domestic travel options over the course of the last few years.

There are many times travellers looking to head east must fly to Calgary or Edmonton before heading to Toronto, Montreal or the Maritimes.

Global News asked von Hoensbroech about domestic flights to and from the province. He said it is difficult to offer a lot more direct flights, due to the lack of people living here.

“The underlying demand wouldn’t be sufficient to justify (more) direct flights,” he said. “That’s why we operate our hub out of Calgary, so we can connect all those flights through Calgary.”

Chris Lane, Economic Development Regina CEO, believes the airline has done a good job matching the output.

“Quite honestly, WestJet has done an excellent job coming out of the pandemic of matching service with demand and so as Regina becomes one of the fastest-growing economies in the country over the next few years, we see an opportunity for more services to more places,” Lane said.

WestJet said they will continue to work with the Regina Airport Authority on direct flights domestic and international in the future.

“We have to be cautious because we also know it’s very expensive to operate a direct flight,” von Hoensbroech said.

“We have to be relatively sure that this will be a viable, available connection… In the long run, I’m pretty confident because Regina is a strongly-growing community … we will see more and more people living here and this will create more and more people travelling.”