The fate of Vancouver’s most popular float-plane route and its 200,000 annual passengers remains up in the air on the eve of the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre’s (VHFC) May 25 opening. If Harbour Air doesn’t sign a tenancy agreement with VHFC or find another way to manoeuvre around its May 25 Coal Harbour lease expiry, the immediate questions become:
- how much Victoria-bound traffic will be willing to fly out of Harbour Air’s Richmond base; and
- how much are new VHFC tenants Seair Seaplanes and Tofino Air poised to pick up? The near-term answer to the latter appears to be: not much.
Of the two companies, Tofino is the closest to offering a scheduled Vancouver-to-Victoria route. Company president Chris Danroth said the company plans to operate three to four flights daily. On the company’s Beaver aircraft, that works out to just under 9,000 passengers annually; if the company can fill a 10- to 14-person Turbine Otter for every trip, that would represent just over 20,000 passengers annually.
Depending on how quickly negotiations can be firmed up with Victoria terminal operator Hyack Air, Danroth said Tofino hopes to be offering those flights within a week of the VHFC’s opening. Thus far, Danroth has secured a letter of understanding with Hyack. Seair has also laid groundwork with Hyack Air for a Vancouver-to-Victoria harbour-to-harbour service. Since Harbour Air acquired West Coast Air last year, Seair, a 31-year veteran in the local float-plane market, has become B.C.’s second largest float-plane operator.
Seair president Peter Clarke said he plans to roll out the Vancouver-to-Victoria service in late summer or early fall. He said he’s initially going to concentrate on launching 12 scheduled daily flights between Vancouver harbour and the company’s Nanaimo terminal. If Harbour Air manages to keep operating out of Vancouver harbour past May 25, the longer-term question becomes: how will new competition affect the lucrative Vancouver-to-Victoria market?
To hear VHFC chairman Graham Clarke tell it, the new terminal will break Harbour Air’s monopoly on that route and usher in a new era of competitive pricing for customers.
“There’s never been competition recently,” he said. “There was competition when Harbour Air didn’t own West Coast Air, but there’s a monopoly now and so, of course, monopolies drive up prices.”
Viewing the situation from across the Strait of Georgia, Hyack Air vice-president and co-founder Jim Allard also spoke about breaking a monopoly on the route.
“We – the Tofino Airs, the Seairs, the Klahanie Airs, all of us – were foreclosed out of the Vancouver-to-Victoria route for eight years,” he said, citing capacity problems in Vancouver harbour.
But he added that while the VHFC is opening up the Vancouver-harbour end of the route to new players, the Victoria end is uncertain. Allard said his float-plane terminal is currently the only competition to Harbour Air’s two adjoined terminals, one of which it absorbed in the West Coast Air acquisition.
And while he said that his terminal could, if necessary, accommodate all the Vancouver Harbour-Victoria market, he added that his terminal’s fate is uncertain.
“Harbour Air is trying to build a new single standalone float-plane terminal in Victoria and they’re trying to terminate my waterlot lease with the [Greater Victoria Harbour Authority],” he said, referring to a $3.5 million floating terminal project that would extend Harbour Air’s current docks and house Harbour Air’s operations with Hyack Air’s largest customer, Seattle-based Kenmore Air.
While that operator-funded project is in early stages, it’s being talked up by Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin and Tourism Victoria president Rob Galloreto as a way of creating a more efficient industry hub with fewer emissions, more green space and less impact on locals.
But Allard said that if the project proceeds, it will reduce total Victoria float-plane terminal capacity and likely restore Harbour Air’s monopoly on the route.
“The Seairs and the Tofinos and the Klahanies and the Pat Bays would never be able to get in there because Harbour Air right now doesn’t have the capacity for their own stuff.”