Flair’s flying

Flair Airlines is sporting new red, white and blue paint jobs on its jets, sharp lettering and a stylized blue-and-red bird on the tail.

The Kelowna-based ultra-low-cost airline started to fly non-stop between Kelowna and Vancouver and Edmonton earlier this month.

The plane continues from Edmonton to Toronto, so the airline is touting same-plane service from Kelowna to Toronto. Flair is and isn’t a new airline. It’s been around for years flying workers to their oil and gas jobs up north and operating charters, mostly from cities in Eastern Canada to sun destinations.

Flair also supplied the planes and crews for the short-lived ticket reseller NewLeaf, which had routes within Canada and from some Canadian cities to Arizona and Florida.

When NewLeaf faltered, Flair took over and retooled to also become a scheduledservice airline.

Besides flying between Kelowna and Vancouver four times a week and Kelowna and Edmonton three times a week, it also flies between Vancouver, Abbotsbord, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hamilton and Toronto.

Flair currently has seven 156-seat Boeing 737-400 jets and two more will be delivered in 2018.

By then end of 2019, Flair will have added four more jets, for a total of 13, and predicts it will be flying 1.5 million passengers a year.

Flair has also made deals so its flights can be sold through travel agents as well as on its FlairAirlines.com website.