REGINA — Regina International Airport pulled out all the stops in welcoming its newest carrier Swoop to the city.
The airport gave a full water-cannon salute on the tarmac as Swoop Flight 582, in its signature pink and white colours, made its arrival from Edmonton at 8:01 a.m. Thursday, June 16.
The historic first appearance of the Swoop Boeing 737-800 at the Regina airport was a brief one. As quickly as the arrivals from Edmonton deplaned, the aircraft boarded its first Regina passengers for the flight to Winnipeg which departed a half hour later.
It has been an exciting week of firsts for Swoop as it launched officially into Saskatchewan. The Calgary-based ultra-low-cost airline, which is a subsidiary of WestJet, had already started service at the Saskatoon airport on Tuesday.
The airline is offering six flights a week out of each of the Regina and Saskatoon airports, with two flights a week to Edmonton, Winnipeg, and starting next week, to Toronto. The fares promise to be ultra-cheap, with starting fares as low as $49 all-in.
For Saskatchewan travellers, Swoop will offer a low-cost alternative to major carriers WestJet and Air Canada at a time when affordability is a major issue.
“We see it as our mission to make travel much more affordable and as a result we are expanding fast,” said Bert van der Stege, head of Commercial and Finance for Swoop.
Van der Stege pointed to good timing, with the announcement this week of the lifting of domestic COVID-19 mandates as well as a high demand for travel in general. He believes the low fares will greatly assist in the recovery of the tourism sector and hospitality business.
“There is tremendous pent-up demand to reconnect with family and friends, explore the country and start travelling again.”
Van der Stege said that to keep ticket prices low, their airline keeps things "very, very simple. We remove a lot of the complexity of more traditional carriers, network carriers. It helps us be more efficient and helps us to reduce our cost, and that in turn leads to low fares.”
The airline saw Regina as a good fit within the existing Swoop network of routes.
“We are always looking for new opportunities and adding Regina to our network, combining Regina with three destinations we already serve, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Toronto, we think is a great fit and hopefully make a very big impact.”
Importance for Regina Airport
For the Regina airport, the arrival of a new airline marks a significant boost after a long period of struggles due to COVID-19 restrictions. The airport is now back to 85 per cent of its pre-pandemic traffic.
James Bogusz, president and CEO of the Regina Airport Authority, noted the arrival of Swoop was important.
“For YQR and really all of southern Saskatchewan, this represents over 1,100 departing seats per week with two flights per week to Edmonton, two to Winnipeg and two to Toronto. And when we talk about seats, we’re referring to the capacity for the airport, which directly translates into GDP for our entire region. Just to give you a sense of scale, this is tens of millions of dollars of GDP for us here in the city, and it also create jobs.”
He noted Swoop was an ultra low-cost carrier offering a competitive product to WestJet and Air Canada. “We all know with the price of travel going up, now is the time to have more competition in the market.”
Bogusz said the Swoop routes will offer additional capacity on popular routes that people were already travelling, and offer a competitive price and choice and a different product for customers.
He believes the airport offered a number of competitive advantages that interested the new carrier. Bogusz noted that the airport has kept their fees and charges to the airlines low, with a $20 airport improvement fee per departing passenger, and landing costs that are less expensive than most major airports in the country.
“It attracts them. They want to try our market, rather than more expensive markets, especially when you’re selling less expensive fares.”
The most immediate priority for the airport has been getting back to where they were pre-pandemic. Bogusz said the change to the vaccine mandate to allow domestic travel was massive, as the restrictions were discouraging upwards of 20 per cent of travellers from getting on a plane.
He said more work was still needed, particularly the mandates at the border, which requires full vaccination to enter the country.
“Toronto Pearson is incredibly backed up and busy, Canada Border Services’ ArriveCAN app, all of these pieces together are delaying peoples’ border entry, which then means you might miss your connection home to Regina. That’s a problem we need to see solved.”
With the vaccine mandates for domestic and outbound international travel being removed as of June 20, Bogusz said they expect a big uptick in travel. “So, the timing of these domestic flights, absolutely perfect.”
It also is good timing after the suspension of Flair Airlines service at the Regina airport earlier this month. Flair had offered two flights a week to Toronto, and Swoop’s arrival will fill that void.
The airport would be interested in having even more airlines come to the airport in the near future.
“The reality is up until really the last few months, our airport was in a critical state with low passenger volumes, massive COVID mandates discouraging travel," said Bogusz. "So just now is the opportunity to get back out there, really make sure we pitch the business case for Regina, and that’s exactly what we’re doing."
