FILE PHOTO - Kelowna International Airport
(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)
June 12, 2022 - 6:01 PM
Airport traffic has spiked past 2019 levels but the challenge remains to fill positions at the Kelowna International Airport.
The airport is holding a hiring fair June 22 in an attempt to fill vacant positions. The airport tweeted this morning, June 12, warning passengers of delays and to arrive early.
“The number of seats we have on the marketplace is actually ahead of 2019 and during the day there are big peaks in the morning,” airport director Sam Samaddar said.
Domestic flights remain popular to Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton but passengers remain hesitant regarding international travel, he said.
In the summer months, Ottawa, Waterloo, Toronto and Winnipeg flights are being added, continuing to drive traffic. If passengers book far in advance, flights can remain cheaper than travelling on the ground, Samaddar said.
Competition on popular routes among the nine airlines also keeps prices lower, he said.
Gas prices have reached record levels across the country due to the war in Ukraine.
Earlier this week, Flair Airlines, announced it was scaling back its service between Kelowna and Vancouver.
“There’s definitely workforce issues and there’s also very strict regulations on crew time so if you get off schedule you can really leave passengers stranded… because you don’t have the capacity for other crews to take over,” he said.
Airlines, like Flair Airlines, also have a schedule of delivery for airplanes but delays with airplane deliveries mean that flights booked well in advance are being cancelled.
“That’s kind of the two-edge sword of getting your schedule out in advance and relying on delivery of aircraft and crews and you don’t get those when you expect them,” Samaddar said.
He expects job challenges to continue throughout the summer so the job fair will attempt to build the airport’s capacity so “we can kind of weather the storm" with more summer airport traffic, Samaddar said.
“Based on the number of companies that have shown interest, we have a lot of vacancies available,” he said, adding customer services agents, ground crews, pre-board screening, airline customer service agents and car rental agencies are all in need of more staff.
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