Flair Airlines CEO apologies for flight cancellations, urges people not to blame Waterloo region's airport

The CEO of Flair Airlines says he wants to "apologize unreservedly" to customers who were affected by cancelled flights over the last week.

The airline had to cancel 27 flights into and out of the Region of Waterloo International Airport between Dec. 7 and Tuesday, Stephen Jones told reporters in a media call Tuesday afternoon.

The cancellations were maintenance related, he said. They had three planes out of service:

• One plane was the one that went off the runway at the Waterloo region airport on Nov. 25 and required repairs.
• One was out for scheduled maintenance.
• One was out of service while the airline awaited a part for replacement.

The airline has 19 planes. Losing three planes to maintenance meant scheduling problems.

"Our ability to cover for the aircraft that was out of service from the overrun was really hammered by the fact that we had two other issues going on at the same time," Jones said.

"Clearly these 27 flights have impacted a lot of our customers and particularly focused in Kitchener and I want to take this time to apologize to each and every one of them unreservedly. You are the lifeblood of our business."

Jones said he anticipated all flights would return to normal operations as of Wednesday afternoon.

Jones also said hedidn't want people to stop using the Region of Waterloo's airport because of the cancellations.

"I know we haven't done them any favours through these cancellations, but it's not their fault, it's ours," he said. "It's just a real shame that this has dented some confidence, but I believe that people will soon realize that Kitchener-Waterloo is a fabulous place to fly through and from."

Investigation underway after plane overruns runway

Jones said Flair Airlines is conducting an internal review into what happened when one of the airline's Boeing 737soverran the runway at the region's airport on Nov. 25. There were no physical injuries from the runway overrun.

Jones said Tuesday that he did not believe the length of the runway as a problem on Nov. 25.

"There's a definition of what constitutes a short runway and some different operating parameters made around those. This is not a short runway by that definition, it's a perfectly capable runway for the operations that we run," Jones said.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is also conducting an investigation. The results of that investigation are not anticipated for several months.