Four flights, over 600 customers affected at YKF airport over weekend: Flair Airlines

The CEO of Flair Airlines believes the four aircraft seized at three airports Saturday was a planned action.

One jetliner was seized at the Region of Waterloo International Airport, one in Edmonton and two in Toronto. 

Stephen Jones said Tuesday 628 customers were affected and four flights were cancelled locally. Approximately 1,900 customers across the three airports were affected with twelve flights being cancelled.

“A New York based hedge fund and our current lessor took what we believe is very wrongful and outrageous actions in the middle of the night coming in and terminating our leases and seizing our aircraft,” he said, “we think it was a planned action. The fact that it was right at the time when we had peak travel demand and maximum customer disruption, we think this was planned.”

Jones said that the hedge fund has badly underestimated the company.

“We are really fighting back now, our team is working hard around the clock to make sure that the customers are all taken care of and we're now well and truly on our way with it but also to make sure we deliver on our promise to all Canadians on affordable travel.”

Jones added the goal after Saturday's “unusual actions” were to get the customers affected to their destinations.

“Sunday, we had already brought back into action three spare aircraft that we had prepared for the summer. We flew our full schedule Sunday, Monday and Tuesday,” he said. 

He said because this all happened very quickly and overnight, Flair Airlines could not get to every customer right away.

“We have gone out of our way to try and do what we think is right, rather than just stick to the minimum requirements therein so the team is still working through that. We have made arrangements with most people but we still haven't gotten to everyone yet.”

Jones said there were three aircraft that were spare being held in Calgary waiting for the summer season which got into play right away.

“That's three out of four aircraft already replaced, and we leased another aircraft on short notice to make up the fourth aircraft. All of our lines of flying are now covered, so we are very comfortable with the fact there won't be any more customer disruptions as a consequence of this action in the near future.” 

Jones touched on the relationship with the Region of Waterloo International Airport. He said their relationship has been “deep” and “productive”.

“We reinforced our commitment to the region,” he said, “we are responsible for 86 per cent of the seats that are coming in and out of YKF, and from YKF we serve ten destinations across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. We really look forward to continue to grow our operations,” he said.