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I was excited to hear that Icelandair is set to resume seasonal service starting in May. The Icelandic carrier says it will resume passenger flights to Halifax in the spring more than five years after scrapping the route.
In a recent release the airline stated that it plans to offer 3 flights a week from Keflavik, Reykjavik’s airport. However the service will only be offered from May to September.
Icelandair stopped passenger flights between Reykjavik and Halifax in October 2001, citing Ottawa’s refusal to allow daily service, a downturn in the economy and high fuel prices. Many felt that this was a political move to help the bloated Air Canada retain its dominance over air prices. Air Canada had recently swallowed Canadian Airlines, giving Canadians the choice of one airline – take it or leave it. The departure of Icelandair was just another shoe dropping on badly-beaten-up Nova Scotia tourism.
Icelandair sales and marketing executive Gunnar Mar Sigurfinnsson said in an offical release. “In the past, due to restrictions on the number of flights to Canada, we’ve not been able to build up our services to Canada. It now appears the Canadian authorities have a more positive attitude towards our needs and we have therefore, decided to add Halifax again to our destination network following a hiatus of a few years.”
You think? Maybe it’s because the former government screwed the pooch and couldn’t admit that a small island in the Atlantic could run an airline better than a Canadian-government sponsored carrier.
Here is the official Canadian stance:
Jadrino Huot, a spokesman for the Canadian Transportation Agency, which helps negotiate and implement international air agreements, said the agreement between Canada and Iceland hasn’t changed. It allows Icelandair to operate two flights per week between Iceland and Halifax, Montreal, and either St. John’s, N.L., or Winnipeg. The airline is allowed up to three additional flights per week to and from Halifax under certain conditions.
Can’t blame the Liberals on this one. It’s the same bureaucratic mish-mash. Sigurfinnsson said Halifax was popular with Icelanders and wanted daily flights. But when the ball began to roll in Halifax’s favor the Feds cried foul.
The point is that Nova Scotia tour operators and government people worked like dogs to get Icelandair in here. And with so many other things hitting us in the teeth – demise of the ferry service, the high Canadian dollar, etc. – let us at least have a level playing field.
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[...] others like Tom Waitt. In February 1998 I attended the Mid-Atlantic Tourism Conference sponsored by Icelandair and one of the bands playing after the banquet was a finnish cello quartet called Apocalyptica. [...]
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[...] Flies Back to Halifax for 2009 By kim A year ago I was pretty excited that Icelandair was coming back to Halifax, albeit on a part-time basis. This seasonal service worked out very well [...]