Flair Airlines delaying its third aircraft for Breslau

Flair Airlines has delayed for a year its plan to base a third jet at the expanding regional airport, while continuing to express confidence in the airport.

The discount airline announced in February that it was bringing another passenger jet plus 50 more jobs to its base at the Region of Waterloo International Airport.

But on Wednesday, the Edmonton-based airline said it had to reshuffle its network this summer and withdraw the third aircraft . The airline’s new plan is to base another jet in this region by next summer.

“Our growth has been really, really strong in Kitchener. It’s one of the best performing ports across the network,” airline president Stephen Jones said.

He cited delivery delays from aircraft manufacturer Boeing.

“We just had to make some tough decisions around allocation of capacity through the summer,” Jones said. “But there’s nothing wrong with Kitchener whatsoever.”

Flair operates six to eight daily departures at the regional airport which handled 172,000 passengers last year, its most ever. Airport passengers are forecast to surge to 500,000 this year.

“Just because the aircraft delivery was delayed, we really did our best to mitigate the flight count impact into Kitchener, because it really is a great market for us,” said Eric Tanner, a Flair vice-president for network planning.

He said some local flights that would have been operated by another jetliner based in Kitchener were instead operated by an aircraft based elsewhere.

“In terms of flight count, it really wasn’t that much of an impact,” Tanner said.

The expanding airline said it expects seat sales to increase 40 per cent out of Kitchener next year as it ramps up to 27 passenger jets across the country by next summer. The airline operates 19 passenger jets today.

Basing a third jetliner at the regional airport will bring more jobs to the community including pilots, cabin crew and customer service agents.

Waterloo regional government is spending $44 million on airport expansion in part to handle Flair passengers.