HERE is how to make our airport work best.
All flights to cities other than Vancouver and Seattle, just carry on as now. All through flights booked, say Victoria > Vancouver > Dawson Creek on AC, stays the same.
BUT, we need to position the airport as the ultimate easy, flexible connector airport to Vancouver and Seattle.
At a minimum, we need the airlines to commit to these flights to be available daily, 7 days per week:
Vancouver - DAILY at least one flight per hour 6am to last flight
6am
7am
8am
9am
10am
11am
12noon
1pm
2pm
3pm
4pm
5pm
6pm
7pm
8pm
9pm
10pm
11pm
12 midnight
Seattle - DAILY at least one flight every two hours, scheduled for as close as possible to the even hours 6am to last flight.
6am
8am
10am
12noon
2pm
4pm
6pm
8pm
10pm
12 midnight
You can book these flights via the airlines normal procedures, OR you can go to YYJSHUTTLE.com and with a very easy interface and minimum registration, book with a non-refundable $10 deposit, with the balance paid when you take the flight. If you miss the flight, you just lose $10. Or just show up at the airport and use the kiosk right in the airport lobby, book your flight. Airlines will try to keep the prices not wavering all over the place. In a perfect world, the price will be the same for every flight every day, but we know that to manage demand they will need to have some premiums/discounts.
The pre-registering gives the airlines some idea of the loads to expect but there is almost always room to just roll up and fly on the next flight or two.
We need to make it more like a bus or a ferry, than an airport, just on these two shuttle routes. Frequent, reliable, predictable, somewhat flexible.
I don't want to hear why we can't do this. Comment with some ideas of how to get this to work.
Edited by Victoria Watcher, 10 February 2023 - 01:10 PM.