UPDATE: It’s catch-up day at Kelowna International Airport after another blast of winter-like weather forced the cancellation of 44 flights Thursday.
“The runway is clear and visibility is good,” airport spokesperson Jasmine Patrick told Global News Friday morning.
With a backlog of hundreds of stranded passengers, the airport was gearing up for a very busy day.
“It will be a busy day as lots of recovery flights are scheduled to get passengers out who had flights cancelled last night,” Patrick said.
With a busy day ahead, airport officials are advising all passengers to get to to the airport early. For domestic flights, travelers should be at the airport at least 90 minutes prior to their flight. Passengers flying international are told to arrive a minimum of two hours early.
Kelowna International Airport is prepared for snow but when visibility drops during a storm, crews are helpless to keep flights moving.
On Thursday, the snow began falling at 5:30 a.m. and, at times, produced white-out conditions on the YLW runway.
Low visibility prompted the cancellation of 44 flights, 22 inbound and 22 outbound.
“At times, we dropped a quarter mile of visibility and as low as 300-400 feet and that’s a game changer for all pilots coming in,” YLW Emergency Operations Manager Sean Parker told Global News Thursday night.
The minimum visibility for planes to land is a half mile to three quarters of mile, Parker said.
And with between 70-150 passengers on each flight, Parker said thousands of people were affected, causing frustration for travelers.
“With that many people trying to re-book flights, it was very busy here plus the roadways in and out of the terminal as well,” he said.
Rhys Herzberg was planning to fly to Calgary to visit her family for the weekend, but was forced to wait another day for a flight out of Kelowna.
“Three hours after cancelling my flight they finally let me know that I was re-booked,” Herzberg said.
Some Friday morning flights have already been cancelled because those planes couldn’t fly into YLW Thursday night.
“What ends up happening is, typically, the aircraft that leave here in the morning arrive the night before,” Parker said. “They remain at our airport overnight and they would be our head start flights in the morning. So, that’s a trickle-down effect from what happened today.”
“However, the airlines are compensating for this. They’re bringing extra aircraft tomorrow, particularly WestJet, to hopefully fill the gap of all the passengers that missed their flights today.”
YLW crews began working on keeping the runway clear first thing in the morning, Parker said.
“Our airport operations specialists have literally been working nonstop since 5:30 this morning,” he said. “The equipment has been going constantly. The only reason that this airport typically does not close this runway is the folks that work on this facility.”
YLW was running two sweepers, two plow-sweeper trucks, and a large tractor to push snow.
Parker said the airport received upwards of 20 cm of snow.
Temperatures are expected to rise into Friday and the skies are forecast to clear.