By Ethan Ready

Exposure Event

Airport Authority still considers YXS safe for travellers despite COVID-19 exposure event

Aug 30, 2020 | 2:24 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – According to Prince George Airport Authority CEO Gordon Duke, travellers are still safe when coming through the terminal at YXS.

The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) published a public exposure on a flight from Prince George to Vancouver.

The flight listed is Air Canada flight number 8212, which flew out of Prince George on August 21, arriving in Vancouver that same day.

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“We’ve done many proactive, taken many proactive actions to ensure the safety of the travelling public,” explained Duke. “Everybody has decisions to make about whether they feel good with air travel. I think our job as an airport is to be ready and able to ensure that safe and secure travel. We have taken all of the required steps, plus some additional steps, that we feel puts us in a really good position when people decide they would like to travel again.”

Duke explained that the airport received notification of the exposure at the same time that public health would have been notified.

The exposure involving the Air Canada flight is not the first exposure event linked to the Prince George airport. According to Duke, the first came back in March and involved a group of American men who had been heli-skiing in Northern British Columbia. The Airport Authority was notified weeks after the pair had returned home to their residence in the United States that they had since tested positive for COVID-19.

Duke says at that point the process and procedures were not as well developed as they are now.

“In any incidence like this, we’ll look back and see if there’s something that we could have done better,” said Duke. “We’re reasonably confident that we followed all of the directives of the public health, as well as layered in some of our own initiatives to enhance the safety of the travelling public.”

The BCCDC’s website says that the rows affected stretch from rows 6 through 12. Passengers on a flight with a COVID-19 case should self-monitor for symptoms for 14 days.