Campbell River Airport is looking at offering direct flights to Alberta.
Susan Sinnott, chair of the Campbell River Airport Authority, told council Tuesday night that Campbell River is well-positioned to offer such a service.
“We see that Campbell River is well-suited to have direct flights to Alberta,” Sinnott said. “We have actually tried to approach one carrier to come in.
“We have to present a viability case, in other words, we have to have sufficient volumes.”
The difficulty is in trying to gather the data the airline wants from the airport, said Tyler Massee, airport manager, as ticket counts from each route cost $10,000 a piece.
“It’s quite a lengthy process and an expensive process to gather the data they require without first finding if they’re even interested in flying a new route into another community,” Massee said. “We’re in the preliminary stages of seeing if a new route to Campbell River would be a viable venture to them and if they are, then we’ll go back and pull the hard data they require.”
The airport is also looking at ways to increase business from private planes.
Sinnott said the Airport Authority has spoken to Rivercorp about a particular charter that flies in directly from Calgary and that the “charter operator is also very interested if there’s a case to (fly) directly to Fort McMurray.”
Sinnott said the bottom line is the city needs to promote Campbell River and that will likely translate to success at the airport.
“The focus is really on marketing the city and the surrounding area and that will improve Campbell River,” Sinnott said.