HALIFAX -- Cutbacks to Atlantic Canada’s airline industry are expected to have devastating effects on the region’s airports as fewer travellers fly out east, and interprovincial workers could see the brunt of those cuts this holiday season.
Effective Jan. 11, Air Canada is suspending all flights to Sydney, N.S., and Saint John, N.B., until further notice.
Airport CEO Mike Mackinnon said Air Canada’s decision will be a blow to Cape Breton’s J.A. Douglas McCurdy Sydney Airport. Atlantic airports are already struggling to make ends meet, and the move has only exacerbated the problem.
"Massive, catastrophe. Those are the words. The airport only makes, really, revenue from commercial passenger traffic," Mackinnon told CTV News.
Air Canada also announced, effective Jan. 11, it is suspending four routes in Charlottetown, Fredericton, Deer Lake, N.L., and Halifax until further notice.
The announcement comes less than two months after WestJet also suspended 80 per cent of its Atlantic Canada travel. An earlier announcement in June by Air Canada indefinitely suspended 11 routes in Atlantic Canada, along with closing stations in Bathurst, N.B. and Wabush, N.L.
The airline cuts leave rotational workers from Atlantic Canada in a precarious position as they rely on interprovincial flight services. With fewer flights it could be more difficult for those workers to head home for the holidays.
Josh Rambeau is a rotational worker who works in B.C. but lives in Cape Breton. What used to be a flight close to home is now a flight to Halifax, and then a long drive to Cape Breton.
The extra travel time mean he'll be losing time with his family this Christmas.
“What was, say, 12 days home has now turned into 10 or nine," said Rambeau.
"The time we do have home is very precious. So to take that time away certainly has an impact on my wife and kids.”
In the fall, Air Canada had already halted flight service between Sydney and Halifax, leaving the only flights out of Cape Breton to depart to Toronto. The airline will continue its service five days a week between the two cities until Jan 11.
Derrick Stanford, president of the Atlantic Canada Airports Association and CEO of Saint John Airport, called the situation “the worst-case scenario playing out here today.”
"This will have a huge impact on our region’s economy, on the ability of families to reconnect, on the movement of essential workers, and on airport employees and businesses,” Stanford said in a news release.
Travellers from outside the Atlantic provinces must quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in hopes of preventing the spread of the virus. Those rules also apply to travellers moving within the Atlantic bubble after several provinces pulled out of the arrangement.
Over the summer east coast residents were encouraged to travel with their bubble, resulting in some places seeing an increase in tourism within the bubble.
"We were actually well on our way to having our best year ever in 2020,” said Stanford.
Despite the increase in local tourism, it wasn’t not enough to sustain the air service.
In a statement, Air Canada said it continues to "experience significantly reduced traffic due to COVID-19, ongoing travel restrictions and quarantine rules, low seasonal demand and the termination of the travel bubble," leading up to the decision to suspend some services for Atlantic Canada.
A new poll by the Angus Reid Institute suggests that 10 per cent of people plan to travel outside their communities or province, despite health restrictions.
