Air Canada cuts flights to Calgary from Saskatchewan

Starting in mid-January Air Canada will no longer be offering direct flights to and from Calgary for the province's two biggest airports.

Travelers at the Saskatoon Airport were not happy with the announcement.

“I want them to continue. There are many people in Saskatoon that go to Calgary,” said Josephine Regan.

“Who wants to go to Vancouver and then fly back again,” said Anne McDonald.

Air Canada passengers will now have to catch a connecting flight through Vancouver, more than tripling the time it takes to reach Calgary with a direct flight.

“It was a surprise, we were not aware that this decision was going to be made,” said Vice-President of Business Development for Skyxe Airport CJ Dushinski.

“It's obviously disappointing anytime a carrier decides to cease service from a market, especially when we're talking about a market like Calgary which is one of our largest markets out of Saskatoon."

Saskatoon and Regina both see approximately two in-bound and out-bound flights to Calgary daily.

“We know loyal Air Canada customers will be disappointed. It provides a few less options for connections through a variety of places,” said Manager of Customer Experience for Regina Airport Authority Justin Reves.

In a statement to CTV News the airline provider said “Air Canada has made some changes to its flights to/from Calgary. We are continuing to rebuild our business in a prudent and disciplined way and that means looking at every aspect of our network and deploying our resources where they will be most productive. After careful review, we've decided that we must continue to strategically focus on rebuilding our main hubs of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to suspend a number of regional routes from Calgary effective Jan. 2023.”

Sandy Levinton who operates Marlin Travel Agency says the direct flight suspensions will force her company to switch up some flights for customers.

“We have to find alternate routes for them,” she said. “The airlines have to streamline their operations whenever they can. They're seeing that flights are not filling up and they're just going start pulling those or suspending them.”

In the wake of the suspension Levinton says WestJet Airlines has already added more direct flights to Calgary.

Air Canada says it does “review opportunities to add services,” which could have the company add the flights back to the province's two major airports, however it provided no timetable for when that could happen.