DEER LAKE — Humber Direct Air, a local group of business owners and residents in the Humber Valley area, say it has gotten what it asked for in the recent announcement from the provincial department of business Wednesday concerning a long-term air transportation strategy.
The group had lobbied to maintain direct charter connection from the United Kingdom to western Newfoundland and the Humber Valley area in 2008. Two charter flights between Deer Lake and Gatwick airports were discontinued that year due to the dependence on a subsidy from Humber Valley Resort.
Now, however, Humber Direct Air sees the province’s initial $5 million strategy as a push for the right kind of marketing that could potentially bring the cross-Atlantic connection back.
“The group has not been that active but we’ve remained plugged into what was happening with this new strategy that the department of business has adopted,” said chairperson Ken Brown.
“From our point of view, the input that we made was basically answered. It gives the individual airport authorities the ability to do some target marketing … It’s basically what we had asked the provincial government to participate in years ago when there was an existing direct link to the UK,” he said.
The strategy is committed to improve air access to the province by promoting Newfoundland and Labrador to the airline industry, financially assisting airlines in promoting new routes and pushing new marketing ventures for businesses and tourism in the province.
Brown said the group felt there was a possibility of having consistent, direct access provided between the two destinations and all that was needed was additional funds for marketing.
“This allows for that and I think that this will do well for Deer Lake Airport and the Humber Valley area by giving the individual airports the autonomy to do marketing efforts and in our case, we’re looking at the UK and Ireland,” said Brown.
“We have a proven product here. We know our product is attractive to people in the UK,” he said.
As much as I appaud the government's initiative to stimulate competition and open markets, putting government money into this very traget market specific that benefits nobody except Humber Valley Resort residents is dead wrong. Humber Valley Resorts is a very specific target market; if owners can afford to buy units there they can afford to fly over on their own dime. Its already been tried and failed miserably. If an area the size of St. John's can not support (according to Air Canada) a direct link to the UK it is highly unlikely a Deer Lake route can't. At best a link to the UK appears (according to the passenger numbers) a summertime route that Air Canada can operate. As air travellers we need comeptition to an Air Canada on existing and potentially new routes but not something that is virtually guranteed to fail like Humber Direct Air. Let's try for routes a little closer to home where passenger traffic is actually higher. As an example look at the summer charters like a Sun Wing that are full with each trip in and out and where rates are signicantly lower. Why not support a proven year round operation such as this; or more and new connector routes to hubs like Halifax, Montreal and Toronto.