First Air cuts service to Repulse Bay October 1

First Air is cutting one of its 33 commercial routes in the North.

The airline is discontinuing service to Repulse Bay, Nunavut, on October 1.

Bert van der Stege is the Commercial Vice President at the airline.

“We continue to assess route performance every day and we’re looking at costs as well as revenues for that,” he says.

“And when we ran the analysis on Repulse Bay, we saw that we just couldn’t make it work economically.”

First Air currently has four scheduled flights a week into Repulse Bay.

They have been serving the community since 2010.

But Van der Stege says the airline saw no sign of the route's performance improving.

He says Canada is one of the few developed countries that does not subsidize vital links to remote communities.

Calm Air, in partnership with Canadian North, continues to serve Repulse Bay.