File photo (Image Credit: Air Canada)

By James Peters

Toronto flight

Air Canada scales back Kamloops-to-Toronto flight for 2019

Apr 26, 2019 | 3:48 PM

KAMLOOPS — Air Canada has told the Kamloops Airport it is drastically scaling back its Kamloops-to-Toronto flight this summer.

Managing Director Ed Ratuski says it appears the flight will only be made nine times all season.

“The flight is operating weekly instead of three times weekly. It will be arriving and departing in Kamloops on Thursdays, starting July 4 and ending at the end of August.”

The July 4 start date is pushed back from its original start date of June 20, thanks to the Air Canada Rouge fleet schedule being thrown into disarray by the grounding of Boeing’s Max 8 aircraft.

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Ratuski says the reason Air Canada is scaling back has to do with where passengers were ultimately ending up.

“There were lots of passengers on the aircraft,” said Ratuski.

“The thing is, those passengers, many of them weren’t coming to Kamloops — they were actually connecting en route to Vancouver.

So, our understanding from Air Canada is that Thursday flight is when we were having the most origin and destination passengers coming to Kamloops to stay.”

Ratuski notes like most businesses, flight operates on a supply-and-demand basis, and if Kamloops residents want the flight to remain available, they should use it.

“We’re really encouraging the local market to take advantage of that, to ensure that Air Canada sees it as a viable route in the future as well.”