The Managing Director at Kamloops Airport says there will be some impacts to WestJet flights in Kamloops after the airline announced it is cutting 160 weekly flights across Canada.

Ed Ratuski says there will be two fewer flights from Kamloops to Calgary each week for the next two months.

“Currently, they were operating most days two flights daily a week and they’ll reduce the frequency on Sunday and Thursday, I believe,” he told NL News. “So its two flights a day Monday, Tuesday, and Friday and then one flight a day on the remaining days on the week.”

Prior to these cuts, Ratuski says there was one flight a day scheduled on Wednesday and Saturday from Kamloops to Calgary.

With non-essential travel restricted for the time-being, he says most of the travellers at Kamloops airport these days are resource workers going to and from work.

“These cuts do put some pressure on the availability of connections,” Ratuski added. “It does reduce some of the options available for them when they’re travelling on essential travel even to get out of the city.”

WestJet notified the airport about the changes yesterday, with Ratuski saying traffic at YKA is down significantly because of COVID-19 travel restrictions.

In addition to the reduction in flights, the Calgary-based airline is putting about 1,000 employees on leave because of new travel rules put in place by the federal government.

CEO Ed Sims says the federal government’s COVID-19 testing policy led to unprecedented travel cancellations, leaving the company with no option but to place a large number of employees on leave. Last week, the federal government said passengers heading to Canada would have to provide a negative COVID-19 test result before boarding their flight.

As it stands, Air Canada continues to operate daily flights from Kamloops to Vancouver, while Central Mountain Air has flights three times a week to Prince George.