First Air dumps Yellowknife-Montreal flights

Want to travel from Yellowknife’s airport to Montreal’s Pierre Trudeau airport in a single day? You can’t do it on First Air anymore. The airline stopped its 13-hour flights on Feb. 7. The flights ran on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

First Air quietly quit its 13-hour marathon milk-run flights from Yellowknife to Montreal Feb. 7 and has reverted to its former schedule.

This means travellers may no longer fly from Yellowknife to Montreal in one day.

It also means that flights from Kuujjuaq to Montreal on Monday, Wednesday or Friday now arrive two hours earlier, at 7:15 p.m..

The defunct First Air schedule — said to be cost-saving measure — had gone into effect May 31, 2010, changing schedules for travellers from Yellowknife to Montreal.

Under the schedule, two 737s made long loops between Montreal and Yellowknife on Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday, stopping in Rankin Inlet, Iqaluit and Kuujjuaq along the way.

One flight left Yellowknife at 9:45 a.m. and arrived at 8:45 p.m. in Montreal. The other departed Montreal at 8:30 a.m. and arrived in Yellowknife at 3:41 p.m..

Before the May 31 change, one jet did the round-trip from Yellowknife to Iqaluit and another aircraft flew from Montreal to Iqaluit and back.

After that change, the flights’ later arrival at Montreal’s Pierre Trudeau airport caused many passengers from Kuujjuaq to miss connections.

That change affected passengers out of Iqaluit, as well, because their flights left Iqaluit bound for Rankin Inlet and Yellowknife about three hours earlier than before — at 1:30 p.m.

Now they’ll leave Iqaluit at 3:20 p.m. for Yellowknife, and depart from Yellowknife back to Iqaluit via Rankin Inlet a bit later, at 10:15 a.m..

On Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, passengers between Kuujjuaq and Montreal will see their scheduled flights in place. On these days, flights depart Montreal at 10 a.m. and return from Kuujjuaq at 4:55 p.m..