Saskatoon Airport Authority hoping to have direct Minneapolis flights reinstated by 2023

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Saskatoon was “well-served” with four direct U.S. flights including Las Vegas, Orlando, Phoenix and Minneapolis.

During the pandemic, all but one of those flights were discontinued or suspended, according to C.J. Dushinski, the business development president for the Saskatoon Airport Authority.

On Monday, Dushinski made a presentation to Chamber of Commerce members on the feasibility of one U.S. air carrier, Delta Airlines, potentially reinstating its Minneapolis-to-Saskatoon flight.

“In a pre-pandemic state, we were very well-served for a market of our size,” said Dushinski. “We had 13 domestic non-stop destinations in Canada, we had four to the United States and we had 12 in Mexico either non-stop or a stopover routing.”

Dushinski told Chamber members that in 2019, around 400 people were travelling to and from the U.S. from Saskatoon each day, and around 30 per cent of that — or 128 people — were heading to Minneapolis. Nearly 20 per cent of those were staying in Minneapolis and about 80 per cent would catch connecting flights to other destinations.

She’s hoping that with the travel industry starting to recover, and more people taking commercial flights again, the airport authority can convince Delta Airlines to make a return to Saskatoon. However, cities like Edmonton and Ottawa that also lost their Delta Airlines flights haven’t had them reinstated yet either.

“It’s certainly not ideal that they haven’t re-engaged in the Edmonton market,” Dushinski said. “They are a much larger market than us, so it’s not ideal. It’s difficult as a business case to kind of talk to (Delta officials) about restarting Saskatoon before they restart Edmonton.

“But they have told us anecdotally that Winnipeg is really our metric, so we’re looking towards how the Winnipeg flight is performing to evaluate at what point in time it might make sense for them to come back into Saskatoon.”

There are a host of other factors that also have to be taken into consideration, she added, including the type of plane that would be used for the Saskatoon market.

“The E-175 aircraft … is the aircraft that is proposed. It is the right fit for our market … Delta has 71 in their fleet right now and 16 on order,” she explained.

Those 16 planes are set to replace other airplanes, and other Canadian markets are also fighting for the same type of aircraft.

There are also pilot staffing challenges, the average “occupied plane load” that Delta is looking for (which is now 81 per cent), and there are still COVID-19 testing requirements for passengers entering the U.S.

So when could Delta Airlines potentially reinstate the direct Minneapolis flight?

“The earliest possible is this fall for a start, but to be quite honest, likely into 2023 as we’re dealing with all of these fleet challenges (and) pilot shortages. There just isn’t a lot of availability for them to trigger things very quickly,” said Dushinski. “But we’re certainly going to keep pushing for this fall.”

Airport authority staff are set to meet with Delta Airlines on June 14.