New direct flight to Calgary could mean great news for Prince George’s economy

“A lot of what we do with resource management involves us connecting with headquarters that are not in our area. So Vancouver and Calgary are the primary places where the people you need to talk to are, and business is still very much a face to face practice, so you’ve got to get access to the decision makers. This could potentially open up significantly better access for companies in our area to do business more broadly in Western Canada,” said Charles Scott, a Senior Instructor at the University of Northern British Columbia’s School of Business.

Scott explained Prince George has a wide variety of specialized services that could provide services for Calgary and beyond, and an additional flight into Calgary could help local industries grow. These include, but aren’t limited to:

Mining
Agriculture
Engineering
Environmental services
Machinery

“Companies that are headquartered in Calgary need to buy solutions that we provide. We need to talk to them, and the more easily we can talk to them, the more readily we can form those relationships, the more business we will do, regardless of where the actual delivery address is,” Scott said.

Increased connectivity is the true benefit of another flight to Calgary. While the other benefits ranging from potential easier travel to international locations could definitely help many people out, Vancouver already acts as a travelling hub to get to further locations, so Scott believes the best thing to come out of this will be a boost to Prince George businesses.

“It’s less about the ability to get on a plane and more about the ability to connect with an ecosystem of people who have the information you need and make the decisions that you need to be considered for. That’s where the value will come. And the more access we have to a major hub that does a lot of what Vancouver does not, the broader ranges we can get at,” Scott said.

Scott gave the example of Rio Tinto’s modernization project in Kitimat to showcase the value of easy to access communication, as this project brought in international companies and decision makers across the entire country. He says Rio Tinto went above and beyond to communicate, but this isn’t the norm, so this additional flight is welcome.

“If you’re trying to engage with people who are doing things you need to do, that’s an exact kind of example of the conversations you need to have. But you’re the one who needs to be driving those commitments, and this helps that to happen,” he said.

Once the flights begin taking off on March 3, the Prince George airport said it will consistently at 3:45 p.m. and land in Calgary at 6:15 p.m. On the return flights, it will leave Calgary at 8:25 a.m. and land in Prince George at 9:05 p.m.

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by Tommy Osborne

New direct flight to Calgary could mean great news for Prince George’s economy

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