Sydney soon to have airport with no flights
SYDNEY — Sydney is days away from having an airport with no flights.
“There is no change to the situation here,” said Mike MacKinnon, CEO of the J.A. Douglas McCurdy Sydney Airport. “Air Canada's last flight to Toronto will depart on Jan. 11 at 5:25 a.m. A sad day for our airport and our island.”
Air Canada has never publicly stated a return date for the Sydney airport but the airline has flights available to book online from Sydney to both Toronto and Halifax effective March 28, 2021.
MacKinnon said Air Canada flights have been available to book all along and were only removed from their booking system from Jan. 11 through March 27. He said that does not necessarily mean the airline will be back operating from Sydney by then if the advance booked loads are not strong enough.
“We expect Air Canada will evaluate the booking demand from late March onward at some point next month and then make their schedule decisions,” he added.
MacKinnon said it is business 101: if passenger bookings/demand are not there, it makes it very hard for services to be restored.
“We are hoping that people who need to fly after March 28 will start booking on flights out of Sydney now, or as early as possible," he said. “That will send a signal of support to the airlines and if they see strong advance booking demand, we could see flights resume in late March.”
As far as WestJet, services are suspended indefinitely. MacKinnon said both of their airline partners face the same issues they have faced since the pandemic started.
“Government support has been promised several times already, however, nothing has come forward as of yet and we are almost a year into the pandemic,” he said. “Passenger demand continues to be very weak due to the pandemic and government travel restrictions, which include our provincial requirement that arriving passengers isolate for 14 days.”
At this time, MacKinnon said it looks like vaccines are not really going to be rolled out fast enough to help travel much this year, so waiting for vaccines to save the day is not
the answer.
“We need government support for the industry and a plan to test at airports now,” he said. “With that, perhaps at some point when the science indicates it is okay to do so and more and more people are vaccinated, we can reduce the restrictions and hopefully will see passenger demand return.”
THE AIRLINES
On Dec. 8, Air Canada announced flights to Toronto and Halifax at the Sydney airport will be cut indefinitely effective Jan. 11, 2021, leaving the airport without any air service. WestJet had previously announced in October it will be suspending operations in Atlantic Canada indefinitely.
In an email response to questions, Pascale Dery, spokesperson for Air Canada, confirmed the last flight out of Sydney airport before services are completely suspended temporarily is still Jan. 11.
When asked about the current ability to book flights from Sydney to Halifax or Toronto and as of March 28, Dery said, “Demand continues to be stifled from COVID-19 and ongoing travel restrictions and Air Canada's schedule will be updated in the coming days.”
Morgan Bell, a spokesperson for WestJet, said it is their goal to return service to Sydney when it is economically viable to do so.
Bell said since the beginning of the pandemic they have safely operated more than 30,000 flights and carried more than 1.3 million guests with no reported cases of transmission onboard their aircraft.
“Both the Public Health Agency of Canada alongside our transport minister have stated that the risk of transmission onboard aircraft is low and extremely rare,” she said. “Our public safety minister has also made statements on the low percentage of COVID transmission from international travel.”
Meanwhile, Cape Breton stakeholders earlier sent an emotional video appeal to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to save the airline service at Sydney airport and have an online petition circulating that can be accessed by searching 'Sydney airport' at https://petitions.ourcommons.ca.