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Trio of Kamloops councillors in Victoria to promote new Pacific Coastal Airlines flight

Victor Kaisar
Oct 18, 2023 | 11:27 AM


Trio of Kamloops councillors in Victoria to promote new Pacific Coastal Airlines flight

Tkemlups Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir and Kamloops Councillor Bill Sarai inaugurate the new Pacific Coastal Airlines flight to Victoria on Oct. 17. (Photo via Mike O'Reilly)

A trio of Kamloops city councillors are in Victoria today to try and drum up support for the new Pacific Coastal Airlines flight that began service this week.

Mike O’Reilly, Stephen Karpuk, and Bill Sarai were all on the inaugural flight to the B.C. capital on Tuesday afternoon.

Sarai, who also serves as the Kamloops Airport Society President, says they hope to meet with Victoria City Councillors as well as provincial MLAs and sell them on what makes Kamloops great.

“To let them know if they don’t already to too our horn that Kamloops is an hour away,” Sarai said, on NL Newsday. “Come visit us, we got everything here that you could possibly want to do in four seasons.”

“We have never as council or the society been in the marketing part of the airline business. I think its time that we got more involved and got hands on with marketing our city that we are voted to represent.”

Sarai also says he hopes to avoid a similar disappointment like what happened with Flair Airlines flight to Edmonton earlier this year. Flair grounded its direct Kamloops to Edmonton flight in early September, less than three months after it began operations.

“We didn’t promote it, myself included, and so a lot of people didn’t even know that we had flights going,” Sarai said.

“On this one, Pacific Coastal is doing their part by lowering the price to get us on it to see if it something that our residents want to do. Now its up to us to promote it and make sure that everybody is aware that this is an option.”

Flight Extended to Year-Round Service

Ahead of Tuesday’s inaugural flight, Pacific Coastal also announced that its Kamloops to Victoria service would now operate around the year, instead of seasonal through April as first planned.

Pacific Coastal said in a statement that the extension came about after “strong demand” and “positive feedback” since its announcement in June.

“Our team is proud to offer the only non-stop flight option between Victoria and Kamloops, reducing travel time to only be one hour,” Johnathan Richardson, the airline’s vice-president of customer and commercial, said in a statement.

“YYJ is excited about Pacific Coastal’s announcement that the new Victoria -Kamloops service will be year-round,” added Rod Hunchak, Victoria Airport Authority Director, Business Development and Community Relations.

“This new direct service has been well received by travellers, providing convenient connectivity between southern Vancouver Island and the BC Interior.”

Pacific Coastal will operate the flight six times a week – from Sunday to Friday – using a 19-seater Beechcraft 1900 aircraft instead of the 189 seat Boeing 737s MAX 8s used by Flair.

Flights are scheduled to leave Victoria around 3:40 p.m., arriving in Kamloops around 4:40 p.m. It will then leave Kamloops at 5:05 p.m. and arrive back for Victoria at 6:05 p.m.