Harbour Air and Kenmore Air have confirmed that the two airlines will operate direct flights, starting April 26, between the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre in Coal Harbour and Seattle’s Lake Union. The trips, which will start at being two round-trips per weekday, are expected to take an hour.
Harbour Air president Randy Wright told Business in Vancouver that he expects flight frequency to increase to being twice per day on weekends as well as on weekdays starting in late May.
Harbour Air will use Cessna EX Caravan planes that can seat nine people, although some trips could be on single Otter planes that can seat 10 people, Wright said.
Kenmore Air chief pilot Chuck Perry told BIV that his airline will operate de Havilland DHC-3T aircraft, which can seat 10 passengers, on the route.
Harbour Air has yet to be authorized by U.S. officials to fly into Lake Union so Kenmore Air will initially operate all flights, Perry said. Those flights will be two round-trip flights per weekday. If Harbour Air gets its authorization to fly into the U.S. by late May, as Wright expects, then Harbour Air will start flying twice per day on weekends. Harbour Air would also at that time take over flying one of the daily weekday flights that Kenmore Air would have been flying.
Kenmore Air has been selling one-way tickets for US$285 and Harbour Air plans to sell tickets for $370. Passengers will be able to buy tickets directly from the airline so it is possible that they could select their airline based on currency exchange.
BIV reported April 2 that an announcement on these flights was imminent.
Canada Border Services Agency told BIV in an April 5 email that it has committed to operate a customs clearance facility at Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre until March 2019. Wright said that he is confident that the success of the flights will convince the CBSA to extend that commitment.
The CBSA said that its customs facility would be "a building or an office" that will process travellers and goods entering Canada, so it will not simply be customs officers standing on a dock.
The flights' terminus at Lake Union will be near Amazon.com Inc.'s headquarters. While Amazon (Nasdaq:AMZN) declined to comment for this story, the company has been increasing the size of its Vancouver office. BIV reported in November that the Seattle e-commerce giant planned to add 1,000 Vancouver employees to its then Vancouver staff count of about 1,800 employees.
“This association between two historic Pacific Northwest companies [Vancouver’s Harbour Air and Seattle’s Kenmore Air] will accelerate cross-border business and collaboration for the entire region,” said Brad Smith, who is president of Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT), in a release.
BIV reported in 2011 that the sticking point has long been whether the CBSA would have a customs facility at the Coal Harbour flight centre and whether the CBSA would charge high fees. A customs facility at Seattle’s Lake Union terminal has been in operation for a while.
The announcement of non-stop flights follows an announcement in March that the B.C. government is contributing $300,000 toward a business-case analysis of whether a high-speed land link between Vancouver and Seattle is feasible.
