File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By James Peters

B.C. Restart

Kamloops Airport officials, travellers anxiously await Phase 3 of restart plan

Jun 18, 2021 | 2:25 PM

KAMLOOPS — July 1 will be Canada Day, but it may feel more like Christmas morning for Kamloops Airport Manager Ed Ratuski.

That’s the date B.C. is anticipated to move to Phase 3 in its lifting of COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions, including allowing travel across Canada.

Ratuski says all four passenger airlines serving Kamloops — Air Canada, Central Mountain Air, Pacific Coastal and WestJet — are ramping up flight service.

“What that means is more frequencies to Vancouver, additional frequencies to Calgary, as well as that new service to Edmonton that was announced earlier this year,” Ratuski told CFJC Today.

Travel restrictions associated with the pandemic cut passenger traffic through Fulton Field by as much as 90 per cent, but Ratuski says reservations show Canadians are more than ready to take off.

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“What we’re seeing from our discussions with the airlines, the further-out bookings later in the year are definitely improving quite a bit,” he said. “I think the confidence will start to build once we get the go-ahead from the health authorities that will lead us to [Phase] 3.”

Even as Canadians clamour to see family elsewhere in the country or book a well-deserved holiday, business travel may not recover so quickly.

Ratuski notes many companies got used to operating more remotely through the pandemic, and those newly-acquired practices may have taken permanent hold.

“It’s definitely going to take longer to recover. There will still, obviously, be a requirement for business travel; it’s just going to depend on the various industries and how they respond to it – how working remotely or working virtually actually performs for them in the long run.

“We do have a heavy component associated with resource travel, which we consider business travellers; they’re travelling for work,” he added. “We’ve seen those numbers sustained through COVID and we’ll probably see those increase.”

“What the industry is seeing is, it’s going to be probably late 2023 — in the Canadian environment, anyway — before we get back to 2019 levels.”

Ratuski reminds passengers that, even when travel restrictions are lifted, many safety measures such as mask-wearing and distancing will remain in place in the airport.