Image: Submitted.
UPDATE: 4:22 p.m.
Flair Airlines needs room to grow, which is why the low-fare airline will be moving its business headquarters from Kelowna to Edmonton over the next few months.
Flair executive chairman David Tait announced the move on Tuesday in Edmonton. It came on the heels of the airline making Edmonton its main transfer hub last September.
“It’s simply a matter of accommodating the kind of growth that we have in mind for the airline in the coming years,” Tait said in a telephone interview.
Kelowna has been Flair’s home since 2007. The airline started out as a charter company and last year introduced scheduled passenger flights. It hopes to double or triple its fleet size and the markets it serves, which beginning this winter will include U.S. destinations.
“Kelowna will be included in that,” Tait said. “Kelowna’s very much a part of our heritage, and we’re not going to walk away from that, but it’s simply a matter of scalability. In Kelowna we’d have trouble parking the fleet size that we’re intending to get to quite quickly.”
There are between 40 and 50 employees who work at Flair’s Kelowna headquarters, Tait said, and they will all have the option of moving with the company to Edmonton. Flair also has a Winnipeg group of employees whose positions will be uprooted and moved to Alberta.
“We’ll be progressively transitioning staff,” Tait said. “We know some staff are not going to want to come with us. We’ve been starting to talk to them today one on one. We’ll go out of our way to make sure that we do what’s best for them.”
ORIGINAL STORY: 2:31 p.m.
Flair Airlines is taking off from Kelowna, bound for Edmonton.
The low-fare airline announced today it is moving its headquarters from the Okanagan to the Alberta capital over the coming months. The move comes on the heels of the airline making Edmonton its main transfer hub last September.
“Just last week Flair doubled its frequency out of Edmonton and, as one of the fastest growing cities in the country, the community and the airport are uniquely positioned to support our ongoing growth,” Flair executive chairman David Tait said in a press release.
Flair, which offers nearly 200 flights per week, is also hoping to tap into “Edmonton’s professional talent pool as we progressively establish our headquarters here over the coming months,” Tait said.
All Biz Releases Stories
