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Airport talking to carriers

Red Deer Regional Airport officials are talking to a pair of air carriers about adding connections to Lethbridge and Kelowna.

Red Deer Regional Airport officials are talking to a pair of air carriers about adding connections to Lethbridge and Kelowna.

RJ Steenstra, airport CEO, stressed that the talks are “very preliminary” with Northwestern Air Lease, which is looking at whether a link to Kelowna makes sense. Integra Air, which lands in Lethbridge, Edmonton and Cranbrook, B.C., is also reviewing whether a stop in Red Deer would work.

“There’s a lot of things and pieces that have to come together,” said Steenstra, following a quarterly update to Red Deer County council on Tuesday.

Transport Canada requirements on the types of planes used and flight routes out of Kelowna are among the issues that must be hashed out by Northwestern Air.

The Fort Smith, N.W.T.-based airline offers scheduled flights to Edmonton, Fort McMurray, Fort Smith, Hay River, Fort Chipewyan and Yellowknife.

Northwestern flew out of Red Deer until last July, when the airline pulled out because of the downturn in the economy.

One scheduled carrier, Swanberg Air, and four charter services fly out of the regional airport at Springbrook.

The loss of Northwestern means scheduled passenger counts are down a little from last year, but the airport is working with Swanberg to improve those numbers.

The numbers of scheduled passengers is important because the airport must hit 1,000 to qualify for federal funding under the Airports Capital Assistance Program (ACAP).

Steenstra said charter traffic is also down slightly from last year’s pace, but an improving economy is expected to boost numbers through the summer and into the fall.

“We have 20 charter flights coming in over the summer with 100 cadets on each flight and those are 737-200s that are coming in all summer,” he said. “So the numbers significantly spike over the summer time with charter traffic.

“But general charter traffic is also starting to grow. And we’re seeing more interest in the airport in terms of a starting point for charter carriers to be able to move people in and out of the oilfields in Fort McMurray or Fort St. John.”

Meanwhile, the airport continues to look at ways to improve the infrastructure.

An application for $1.9 million in ACAP funding to upgrade a pair of taxiways and the main apron was turned down this year because the work wasn’t urgent enough.

Steenstra said engineers will look at the pavement again to see if they are in poor enough shape to be eligible for funding. If so, another application will be submitted next year so the pavement overlay work could happen in 2013.

The airport is also interested in lining up about $1.2 million in funding to improve one of the runways. But to be eligible, that runway must be used by a scheduled carrier, which is not happening right now.

pcowley@www.reddeeradvocate.com