Flair Airlines has announced that it will begin offering service from the Waterloo International Airport to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in December.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Flair Airlines’ COO told reporters that the company was expecting to continue its expansion locally to new routes.
“We’re seeing a lot of demand for the sun destinations. And so as I mentioned, we will be increasing frequency, I think, on all our sun routes,” Garth Lund said.
“So Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Cancun, (will see extra flights) as well as adding in the new route to Puerto Vallarta for the upcoming winter season.”
He said the company may look to add more options from YKF to southern destinations in the coming months.
“We are continuing to look at new routes beyond just what’s announced today,” Lund explained.
“So I’d say there’s nothing concrete at this point, but watch this space and there may be more routes, particularly, again, down to the sunshine destinations.”
The company also recently announced that it will begin flying from Waterloo airport to Abbotsford, B.C., in May while also suspending service from Waterloo Region to Montreal.
Lund said it is unlikely that the service to Montreal will resume, at least any time soon.
“We didn’t get the demand that we anticipated for the market,” he said.
The airline will finally be bringing a third airplane to the airport in June, a move that was announced and delayed previously.
While the company has had a couple of bumps and stumbles while flying out of Kitchener – a plane went off a runway last year and there were cancellations when it was short of planes earlier this year – the bosses seem fairly satisfied with its working relationship locally.
President Stephen Jones praised local officials for how they cultivated relationships with airlines before they began expansion.
“The relationship with YKF airport is, to us, the model for how we can partner with the airports around the country,” he said.
“Even before Flair came, they have been actively sort of working to bring connectivity to this city because they know the value of connectivity.
“And so they’ve worked their way through attractively to the market and then have gone through quite a thoughtful expansion of the airport as it stands today.”
He noted that beyond connectivity, the expansion has brought economic value to the region as well.
“I think the total cost of that expansion was roughly $44 million and when you stick that up against the $61 million of economic benefit that’s generated, straight away you can see the payback for the community.”
Lund praised the region for keeping costs down while also levelling the airport up.
“I think the expansion the airport has undergone to increase its capacity has been done in a smart way,” he said.
“It’s not some palatial infrastructure. It’s really focused on a low-cost model. It’s very functional. It gets the job done. And the airport can still operate with a reasonable cost structure and then offer reasonable fees to airlines.”
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