There is a new, low-cost option for passengers flying out of Calgary International Airport that offers a-la-carte options to help making the flying experience more comfortable.
Flair Airlines, based in Kelowna, offers direct, ultra low-cost flights from Calgary to Vancouver, Kelowna and Winnipeg.
“We’re serving two flights a day to Vancouver and then we have Kelowna and Winnipeg and from Winnipeg we have connecting service to Hamilton,” said David Tait, executive chairman of Flair Airlines.
In addition to cheap seats, the company also offers passengers the ability to add different perks to their tickets, including more legroom, priority boarding and printed boarding passes.
Tait, who helped found Virgin Airlines with Sir Richard Branson, says the service periodically offers a number of deals on tickets too.
“If you buy a ticket today to go to Kelowna, you’ll pay $49; to Vancouver it’s a whopping $79. So I’m not saying that those fares will be there every day but that’s our intent, to keep our fares as low as possible on a regular basis.”
He adds that there is a strong desire to have another air carrier in Canada, but it shouldn’t be another Air Canada or WestJet.
“We like to see ourselves as stepping into the void that WestJet left behind when it decided that it was going to become all things to all people with four aircraft types and Boeing International and so forth,” he says.
“We think competition is great. Canada needs more competition. The more competition there is out there, the lower the airfares will be and the better the service will get.”
Another one of the similarities that Flair shares with many other Canadian airlines is charging for carry-on baggage and Tait says that’s one of the most sensible things they can do.
“When a carrier charges for checked baggage and not for carry-on, it’s creating an incentive to carry that chest on wheels on board and trying to cram it into an overhead. We charge less money to check a bag than we do to carry it on so we are creating an incentive to check the bag.”
Officials welcome the new airline, saying that it will help provide options for the 17M passengers expected to use Calgary’s airport in 2018.
Robert Sartor, president and CEO of the Calgary Airport Authority, says the addition of Flair is good for the city too.
“As far as competition goes, the aviation industry is already very competitive and this just adds to that competition. What it does it is gives Calgarians more choice and choice is always a good thing.”
Sartor says that low-cost airlines like Flair can dramatically stimulate demand.
“So somebody who, for example, was think ‘oh, I can’t afford to fly to Kelowna’, maybe they will look at it at go, ‘yeah, maybe we can go now’.”
Low-cost airlines began in Europe, where prices are so low that passengers don’t think twice about flying from London to Spain for the long weekend.
Sartor says the challenge faced in Canada is that the population is spread out over a much, much wider distance.
“Whether it’s on easyJet or Ryanair or any of these other [European] carriers, they have such a population concentration, so much flight availability. That’s why the uptick in Canada has been slower for these carriers because you need to fill those planes.”
One of Flair’s first Calgary passengers, Bill Best, said that while the first day had its bumps, he thinks the airline will level itself out quickly.
“For people who can’t afford a lot of money for flights, this can be the way to go.”
The service that got its start by chartering flights to and from the oilpatch currently has seven planes in its fleet.
You can book a flight and find more information about Flair by going to the official website.
