At the Aug. 23 Thompson Chamber of Commerce meeting, special guests Gary Bell and Nick Vodden spent about an hour updating local business owners about the status of their respective airlines and the challenges they’ve had to overcome throughout the last couple years.
Bell started out by saying he has dealt with plenty of obstacles since he took over as president of Calm Air in 2011, two years after the Exchange Income Corporation purchased the company from its original founders, the Morberg family.
While the company is in a much better spot right now, Bell said their decision to go in a new direction, combined with economic factors beyond their control, left them in a state of “financial distress” that affected the quality of their service.
“I do have to apologize to all of you who have flown on Calm Air the last few years,” he said. “As we’ve gone through this transition we have been short aircrafts sometimes, we have been short flight crews sometimes, we have been short, it seems like, on almost everything on any given basis.”
The Calm Air president also said that their on-time performance has suffered as a result of this transition period, revealing that, in the past, their flights have only arrived on schedule 55 per cent of the time.
“We are at about 70–75 per cent right now,” he said. “With a couple other changes that we have going we expect to be in the 90 per cent plus by the end of the year.”
Regardless of these challenges, Bell said that Calm Air is still committed to maintaining their headquarters in Thompson. They currently employ around 60 to 65 locals, which include members of flight crews, customer service agents, and administrative staff.
Vodden said that his company, Perimeter Aviation, is similarly committed to maintaining their presence in the Hub of the North.
“Our business in Thompson has been on the upward trend lately,” he said. “We’re up to about 65 full-time employees in Thompson now, and we’re doing roughly 30,000 passengers each way, so 60,000 a year under the Thompson airport. That’s kind of the trajectory we’re on this year.”
After this round of updates was over, Bell and Vodden fielded questions from Chamber members. Eventually, the topic of conversation steered towards the price of airport improvement fees (AIFs), which recently shot up from $20 to $30 in early June.
While Bell recognizes that tickets are already expensive, he said that AIFs are necessary to maintain their day-to-day operations.
“Whatever you’re doing, there has to be revenue to support infrastructure,” he said. “That’s important to us, not only from the apron, to the runways, to all the other infrastructure in question.”
In terms of what the future holds, Vodden and Bell said they’re both looking into implementing “electronic solutions” like mobile check-in capabilities, which will make booking flights a lot easier.
In the meantime, Bell believes that business is going to pick-up this year, especially now that the rail line to Churchill is unusable for the foreseeable future.
“I wouldn’t suspect that the rail is going to be back any time soon. So, at least for this interim period, whether it’s us or North Star [Air] flying, that will be done out of Thompson as well.”
The next Thompson Chamber of Commerce meeting is scheduled to take place on Sept. 6 at the Meridian Hotel.
