Last international flight to Kelowna ends Thursday

Photo: Laura Brookes

YLW has been very empty over the past few weeks.

After Thursday, Kelowna will no longer be home to an international commercial airport, at least temporarily.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has hit every industry hard, the travel industry has been one of the most heavily impacted. As a result of Canadian travel restrictions that restrict all but Canadian citizens and others who are deemed “essential” from entering the country, international flights into Kelowna have dried up due to lack of demand.

The last international flight to the Okanagan, an Alaskan Airlines flight from Seattle, will make its last landing at YLW Thursday.

“The reality for us has been based on demand and of course we've seen consumer demand really go down as the virus has progressed,” said YLW director Sam Samaddar. Since the Seattle flight has been cut from three daily flights to one, they've only seen about five to 10 people arriving on each flight.

During her daily press conference Wednesday, Dr. Bonnie Henry said having all international flights come through Vancouver will make it easier to enforce new provincial regulations that aim to ensure returning travellers are self-isolating for 14 days.

Back in March, the federal government directed international flights to land only in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal, with the exception of those coming from the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. When those measures were announced, YLW had still had arriving flights from Phoenix, Las Vegas and Seattle, but airlines have since cancelled these.

“We had about 85 (commercial) flights a day, in February, early March, and we're down to 14 flights,” Samaddar said.

“We figure our passengers will be down about 85-90 per cent for April. An airport that handled two million passengers last year, and depending on how long this virus goes for, it's going to be a struggle in terms of even making 800,000 passengers this year.”

While airlines have been forced to lay off thousands of employees, YLW has managed to retain all of its staff for the time being, although they've downsized some contractor positions. Samaddar says they're waiting for details on the federal government's 75 per cent wage subsidy it announced almost two weeks ago.

“The airport is a very different place than what we are used to seeing,” he said. “We're used to processing about 6,000 passengers a day, and we're down to less than 500. It's been tough to see all that.

“I've been at the airport a long time ... to see all that traffic evaporate in about three weeks, it's a tough thing to see for all of us.”