It’s winter. It’s Canada. We all know what that means. But after a relatively easy stretch through November, December and the holiday season, winter’s bite has returned to disrupt the aviation industry.
Late last week and over the weekend, the biggest disruption was around Alberta flights. The province endured temperatures ranging from -35°C to -45°C, with wind chills between -45°C and -55°C.
How cold was it? On Saturday, WestJet said extremely low temperatures on the prairies “rendered de-icing fluid ineffective” in Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Kelowna, Kamloops, Fort McMurray, Prince George, Grande Prairie, Yellowknife and Fort St. John.
Frigid temperatures are disrupting flights in Western Canada. (Photo Credit: iStock/Getty Images Plus/uatp2)
With its strong Western Canada focus, WestJet operations bore the brunt of delays and cancellations. The airline was forced to cancel nearly 200 flights on Thursday and Friday, along with dozens more on Saturday.
Flexible change and cancel guidelines are in effect for people travelling to or from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba between January 11 and today.
“We sincerely thank our guests for their ongoing patience as our teams and partners on the ground, in the air and behind the scenes work tirelessly, battling frigid temperatures, to ensure a safe operation,” said David Powell, WestJet Vice-President, Airports, in a news release.
“Your travel plans are extremely important to us, and we are committed to providing timely and proactive communication as we work to restore our operations as the weather forecast evolves.”
With a smaller footprint in the worst-impacted regions, Air Canada’s problems weren’t as acute as WestJet’s but there were still a significant number of delays and cancellations over the weekend.
“Winter weather will affect markets across North America this weekend. Our teams are working hard to ensure your safety and run our operations as smoothly as possible,” Air Canada said in a post on X Friday.
As of this writing early Monday morning, Calgary was still experiencing temperatures below -30, but things are expected to slowly improve through the week.
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