Northeast News

 By Kyla Corpuz

FORT ST. JOHN - In the wake of West Jet’s interest in serving Fort St. John, Calgary-based airline Enerjet also seems to be on board.

Enerjet CEO Tim Morgan heard testimonies from travel agents, accounting firms, oil and gas representatives and the school district for the need for a new airline.

Morgan said if he could sell the idea to the rest of Enerjet’s board of directors the North Peace Regional Airport may see a Boeing 737 as early as summer.

The room echoed with reasons why current airfares and destinations, by Air Canada, are not feasible for business and leisure travel, as well as recruiting skilled workers—making it necessary for competition to land on the runway.

“Air transportation has been a huge issue in this community for a long time so having some choices would be a blessing to all of us,” said Mayor Lori Ackerman. 

It costs anywhere from $850 to $1,000 to fly to or from Fort St. John. Ackerman added that that has become a huge turnoff to recruiting young professionals in the area.

Sandra Woodward, from Archer CRM, can attest to that. “It’s difficult enough to attract those professionals to this town because they get stuck here, that’s why they don’t want to come or stay.”

“If they’re looking at moving to Fort St. John, they’re looking for an outlet … if they have an ability to get out, it’s more likely you can attract them to the job,” said Scott Wisdahl, accountant at MNP.

Morgan said with a larger aircraft that would seat between 135 to 150 people, prices would drop.

“I know what I paid to get up here was … $1,700, for the two of us [his colleague and him], so we want to target half that or less.” Fares would be based on the lowest price offered in Prince George, he added. “If we can come and we start doing what we’re doing, the fares will generally lower and airfares will come down.”

However speculation rose that if prices started to plummet, Air Canada would either follow suit, threatening to drive Enerjet out—or vice versa. 

“These are money makers for them [Air Canada], they’re making tones of money,” said Energy Services BC representative David Wallace. “We bring another carrier in, or the community gets one, they [Air Canada] will lower their fares and try to run you out of business.”

“We know what the airline business is like, they come and go,” Morgan said. “That’s one of the things that’s a challenge for us to stay away from that kind of stigma. We want to be here for the long term not the short term and travel agents are one of the ways we’re going to sell this to the community.”

However, travel agent Krista Kerpan, showed some skepticism to the idea. “The only concern is coming in, are you going to take the cream of the crop flights, so to speak, and then Air Canada throws theirs out—and they no longer need to service the area and we lose flights again?”

Aware of the competition, Morgan said Enerjet’s agenda is not to take away from Central Mountain Air or Air Canada but likely to add to it. “We believe what we’re going to do is enhance their services and stimulate the market.”

Affordable prices are not the only thing missing from the current air services in town. Frequent flights to more destinations are another reason why welcoming a new aircraft would benefit the community.

 “You will get the business travel if you make it convenient. Right now the first flight leaves at 10 a.m., and that’s not convenient for a business traveller who has a meeting,” said Kerpan.

Starting out, frequent flights would not be on the table for Enerjet.

“The flight that leaves at 8 a.m. and arrives at 9 a.m. is probably not what we’re going to do to start off,” said Morgan. “We would like to be somewhere in the ballpark, but I don’t think we can be the ultimate service that says: “I’ll have a jet in here 3 times a day at 8, 12 and 4.” But we’ll have a jet at least three times a week—certainly twice a week.”

However he did add if flights could not be done in the same day, working with Central Mountain Air is an option. Fly to Calgary with Enerjet and back with CMA.

“That’s where we would like to work with them. We enhance their business, they enhance ours.”

Though the idea of introducing a new aircraft seems favourable by many, Morgan made aware the issues of bringing one in. 

“This is no small endeavour, it takes money to do this. I’m going to guesstimate out on the whim that its going to cost $1.2 million to $1.5 million to set this up. So we need to ensure that what we’re going to do will be supported by the community,” he said. “We’re glad to provide that service, we also don’t want to fall on our face.  It’s not cheap running those airplanes and all it takes is a few empty legs.”

Enerjet currently flies workforce of larger companies to and from Fort St. John with a 149-seat Boeing 737. Following up with Morgan, he said Enerjet is investigating to expand its services to include travellers from small and medium business, but has not committed to any specifics. “This expanded service, if launched, could also be made available to the traveling public,” wrote Morgan in an email.

Enerjet is a fairly new airline that aims to servicunderserved routes. Morgan was one of the founders of West Jet.

Air Canada was contacted by the Northeast News for a comment on their airfares, but did not receive a response in time for press.