Vancouver snow chaos spills over to Kelowna airport

Chaos caused by snowfall across B.C.’s Lower Mainland is spilling into the Okanagan.

Heavy snow slowed traffic and closed schools and Vancouver International Airport grounded 50 flights by Tuesday morning, and the latter issue is creating issues in Kelowna.

With YVR cancelling and delaying dozens of inbound and outgoing flights, airport traffic in the Southern Interior is suffering from reverberations.

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“We’ve had nine flight cancellations, two were from overnight yesterday and we had some of our head starts going to Vancouver overnight not go this morning,” Sam Samaddar, airport director at YLW, said.

Samaddar said there’s one Air Canada flight scheduled for Wednesday to pick up the slack from Tuesday, but that could change.

Vancouver airport is still operating, with priority being given to inbound international flights, which he said is the protocol, but whether there will be further cancellations remains to be seen.

Flight passengers are being reminded to check in ahead of time to assess whether their flight is a go.

Meanwhile, in Vancouver, YVR officials said crews are fully staffed keeping runways and taxiways clear, however, because of low visibility and the heavy rate of snowfall, and with safety top of mind, both arrivals and departures are extremely limited at this time.

The warning is in place for Metro Vancouver from West Vancouver to Richmond, including Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, Surrey, Langley and Delta.

Between five and 10 centimetres of snow is expected to fall on the region Tuesday morning and into the afternoon.