The West Kootenay Regional Airport’s streak of two months without a flight cancellation ended in August.
“It was a good run but we did suffer five cancellations due to smoke,” manager Maciej Habrych told city council last week.
That works out to an 84 per cent reliability rate for the month. The once-per-day Air Canada flights were 85 per cent full.
Habrych said a busy fire season also saw an overflow of water bombers at airport. While that’s not unusual, it was his first experience with it since becoming manager.
“We did some things to make sure the operation ran smoothly while providing capacity the fire centre needed,” he said.
Habrych said it provided some lessons and suggested places where they could appy for funding to support fire operations.