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Pacific Coastal forgoing third flight to Trail

Trail's airline plans to keep business as usual through the airport's changes in the coming months.

Though changes for the city’s newly acquired facility are on the horizon, the airline that services the Trail Regional Airport plans to keep business as usual.

For the past two years, Pacific Coastal Airlines has added an extra flight to its roster during the spring/summer months but there are no plans as of yet to do the same this year, according to Spencer Smith, vice president of commercial services.

“We will continue to operate two flights daily throughout the summer and beyond (so far),” he confirmed via email. “With the morning flight being the 1900 (19-seater) and the afternoon flight being the SAAB (30-seater).

As daylight has allowed, Pacific Coastal recently moved its afternoon departure from Trail to 4:55 p.m.

The company is restricted to operations within daylight hours and since Trail does not have runway lights, the last flight to Vancouver between November and February was no later than 4 p.m.

The additional flight during the former spring/summer schedule was designed to provide Greater Trail residents more travel options and greater convenience, offering the latest departure time (6:20 p.m.), from Trail by any airline in the region.

“Last summer we operated three flights daily with our 19-seat Beech 1900,” added Smith. “We just didn’t have the summer demand that supported that much capacity so this year we’ve decided to reduce the schedule to two flights a day, but operate one of the two flights with our 30-passenger Saab. “Overall, it’s a 14 per cent reduction in the seat availability to the market.”