Residents of Osoyoos will soon be able to book flights and travel from Kelowna International Airport to destinations across Canada at greatly discounted rates.

NewLeaf Travel, the Winnipeg-based discount travel company announced last week that it will begin offering flights to customers across Canada effective July 25.

The company initially offered rock-bottom tickets between seven smaller Canadian airports such as Hamilton, Abbotsford, B.C., Halifax and Saskatoon. It said it planned to sell tickets on flights set to take off this past February, a few weeks after the original launch date of Jan. 6, 2016.

But shortly after launch, the company cancelled its scheduled flights and refunded tickets, amid a Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) review of the operating licences for indirect air service carriers such as NewLeaf.

NewLeaf’s original business plan was to be a ticket reseller, offering seats on charter flights operated by Kelowna-based Flair Air and its subcontractor Enerjet, which owns the planes and operates the actual flights.

That got NewLeaf around CTA rules that would require the company to hold its own operating license as an airline.

The CTA signed off on NewLeaf’s business model in March, and now the company says it is ready for takeoff. So starting now the company is now selling tickets for flights starting July 25 between 12 Canadian cities:

  • Halifax, N.S.
  • Moncton, N.B.
  • Hamilton, Ont.
  • Winnipeg, Man.
  • Regina, Sask.
  • Saskatoon, Sask.
  • Edmonton, Alta.
  • Kelowna, B.C.
  • Kamloops, B.C.
  • ​Fort St. John, B.C.
  • Abbotsford, B.C.
  • Victoria, B.C.

Dean Dacko, NewLeaf’s Chief Commercial Officer, said the company is thrilled that all administrative hurdles have now been cleared and the company can finally start flying customers across Canada.

“We’re really looking forward to the opportunity of finally getting the business underway,” he said.

Adding major cities like Edmonton and Victoria to the previously announced cities is exciting news for the company, he said.

“In Edmonton, we saw some of our competitors had left us an opportunity to go into this major centre and we’re very excited about that … same thing in Victoria,” he said.

Flights travelling from such destinations in B.C. such as Kelowna, Abbotsford and Victoria will stop in Winnipeg before moving to destinations in Ontario and Eastern Canada, he said.

Flair Air will be using its 737-400 series jet and will lease three of them to NewLeaf effective July 25, with the plan to add another jet in August and one or two more in September, he said.

“The three jets we will be using when we launch will be stationed in Edmonton, Kelowna and Hamilton,” he said. “When we add the fourth jet in August, it will be stationed out of Winnipeg.

While the basic rates to fly from Kelowna to Winnipeg will be between $79 and $89, there will be additional fees for baggage, food and other ancillary costs that have become the norm in the air travel industry, he said.

“Our additional charges will be very similar to the ones charged by our competitors with Air Canada and WestJet,” he said.

NewLeaf is confident that millions of Canadians who could not previously afford to fly in Canada will now be able to do so.

“The reality is the majority of Canadians simply can’t afford to fly,” he said. “The lack of competition has resulted in the two major Canadian airlines being allowed to charge basically whatever they wanted for travel within Canada.

“We think we’re going to have great appeal for people who previously couldn’t afford to fly … they’re now going to want to visit friends and family realizing they can make that trip at a very reasonable price. We’re going to greatly expand the market for people who couldn’t afford to fly before.”

Ticket sales following last week’s announcement were astronomical, said Dacko.

“We thought it best to have very modest projections, but those projections were more than 300 per cent of what we projected,” he said. “We will start our service in the peak of the summer travel season, which really helps, but never in our wildest dreams did we think we would get this kind of overwhelming support right off the bat.”

NewLeaf will be selling tickets on Flair Airlines, said Dacko.

“Flair is 100 per cent licensed. All the protection, the insurance, the coverage that every licensed airline has to have to operate, they have,” he said. “They have the exact same sense of assurance they have with Air Canada, WestJet, anyone that is licensed.”

KEITH LACEY

Osoyoos Times