The pressure was large on the Prince George Airport Authority to convince an airline to fly directly to Calgary. This will become a reality thanks to Central Mountain Air, starting June 3.
The number of stakeholders who stand to benefit from the service is large and, in some cases, surprising. An obvious one was the oil and gas industry. Most petroleum companies are based in Calgary and have activities in the B.C. northeast. Prince George is a natural service centre, and it is also connected by air to those smaller communities where the exploration and extraction is happening.
Mining companies and other natural resources interests are active in the northwest region and these flights with Calgary also include a stop in Terrace. With Prince George in the middle, the city is truly behaving as the northern capital it claims to be, said some of these interests upon hearing of the new service.
"Any time you have the ability to increase mobility of labour, it is a benefit to the central community," said Chamber of Commerce president Derek Dougherty, senior manager with Canadian Western Bank. "Prince George has been situated as a hub for some time now, and this helps greatly."
"It opens up an important market for Prince George at both ends of this route," said Tourism Prince George CEO Aidan Kelly. "There are a lot of connecting flight possibilities at each stop along the way, so this is not just about the ability to get quickly from Prince George to Terrace or to Calgary, it is all the other locations serviced from each of those airports. When I first took this job, the No. 1 thing I wanted to see out of the Prince George Airport was direct flights to Calgary, and now we have that and more."
Kelly said the rubber tire traffic into Prince George was expected to increase, thanks to this new route, which would drive up hotel stays, meals, and other tourist services. Because of the flights' departure and arrival times, it created opportunities for people from surrounding communities to stay overnight here as part of their journey to/from Calgary and Terrace.
Kelly also envisioned Prince George's fortunes getting better for hosting major conferences, sports events and cultural activities since direct connections to major airports had just been doubled (Vancouver and Calgary).
Less intuitive was the gain of UNBC with this new route. According to university officials, a significant number of qualified applicants to Calgary-area learning institutions are not accepted, making it a perfect region to recruit in for our post-secondary institutions. UNBC also provides programs in many of the natural resource-based disciplines encouraged by Calgary-area firms.
"We want to work with the other partners to ensure these flights are a success," said UNBC's development manager Kathy Scouten. She added that even on the surface levels, this service would help. Recruitment officers would have a better time simply getting to and from Calgary. Deeper factors included the better potential for the university to partner with the industrial companies that would be passing through the area doing their work in the field, better connections to their Terrace satellite campus, easier access for Calgary and Terrace families to come see their loved ones attending UNBC, and especially beneficial would be for those industrial officials to place their children at UNBC in order to visit them more often as they passed through on business.
Even the highest ranking Calgarian was welcome to come visit, said Prince George mayor Shari Green.
"Mayor [Naheed] Nenshi is a great leader in his community. I look forward to seeing him visit Prince George on a direct flight," said Green. "We [city council] did not lobby for this service, but it was an obvious wish of the business community. Our ability to go to and from Calgary in a single day still isn't there, but the natural resources sector, especially, is wanting to get to us and these flights will be great news for them, which represents a lot of benefits for Prince George."
