Nova Scotia-Bermuda ties going back two centuries are key to BermudAir's new Halifax route

Why Halifax?

That was the question at HBB after BermudAir, a privately owned start-up airline, said this week it will begin operating a weekly flight between Halifax and Bermuda. Halifax will be by far the smallest of the seven metro areas served by the carrier when the flights commence in May.

The new route should not surprise anyone, said Pat Phillip-Fairn, BermudAir’s head of public relations and corporate affairs. Halifax and Bermuda, a self-governing British territory 1,400 kilometers south of Nova Scotia's capital, have had business ties for two centuries, and there is a tradition of Bermudian parents sending children to the province for their education.

“There are longstanding links between Bermuda and Halifax from the perspective of schools and colleges,” Phillip-Fairn said via email. "Many Bermudian students attend university in Nova Scotia in particular, as well as boarding school. BermudAir re-establishing direct service has been very well-received by local (Bermuda) families in this regard."

Bermuda, a 54-square-kilometer island with just 64,000 residents, ranked 17th of 130 countries that sent students to Dalhousie University in the 2019-2020 academic year. The 42 students with Bermudian citizenship were more than the 37 U.K.-passported students who attended the Halifax school that year. King's-Edgehill School of Windsor, Nova Scotia, whose founding in 1788 makes it Canada's oldest boarding school, has sent recruiters to Bermuda.

Butterfield in Halifax

Among financial companies with back offices in Halifax is Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Ltd., Bermuda's biggest local bank. Butterfield, based in the capital, Hamilton, set up shop in Halifax in 2006, at which time the Globe and Mail newspaper reported the bank would hire 400 people over seven years. As of last year, the number of Butterfield employees in Halifax did not exceed 364, which was the total number of the bank's employees listed as working outside Bermuda, the U.K. and the Cayman Islands. The 2023 annual report said Butterfield, which has downtown offices on Hollis Street, continues to expand its presence in the city.

Other historical Halifax-Bermuda connections include the first communications cable to Bermuda, which was laid in 1890 and originated in Halifax, and shipping services established by the Canadian government between Halifax and Bermuda in the 1920s. A pilgrimage for some Canadian visitors is the gravesite of a Halifax surgeon who died at the age of 32 on a ship off Bermuda's northern coast in 1846, and, as recently as four years ago, Haligonians anxious to satisfy a donair craving apparently could get the classic Halifax meat sandwich in Bermuda.

BermudAir's service from Halifax Stanfield International Airport will begin May 25 and be flown Saturdays on Embraer 175 aircraft with 14 business seats and 52 economy seats. BermudAir, based at L.F. Wade International Airport, already serves Boston; Baltimore; Fort Lauderdale; Westchester County, New York; and Orlando. Bermudair will also offer flights to Toronto beginning in May.

The ownership group behind BermudAir includes "many of Bermuda’s leading business people and U.S.-based investors with significant ties to Bermuda," Phillip-Fairn said, declining to be more specific. The company is led by Chief Executive Adam Scott, a Toronto native and former Goldman Sachs banker. A previous Scott venture, the London-based premium-class carrier called Odyssey Airlines, was founded about a decade ago but never got off the ground. BermudAir was also conceived as an all business-class airline, but the idea was shelved six weeks after starting operations.

Air Canada flew between Halifax and Bermuda but discontinued the route in 2013, Phillip-Fairn said.

Halifax earned a mention after millions of documents released in 2017 linked the city to worldwide efforts to help wealthy people evade billions of dollars in taxes.

--HBB

Halifax Airport to build new international connections facility by fall 2025, gets $8.4 million in federal money for the project

Halifax Stanfield International Airport will construct a new international connections facility by the fall of next year to make Atlantic Canada's air-travel hub a more attractive destination for flights from abroad.

The airport, which will offer passenger flights to about 20 destinations outside Canada next year, has received $8.4 million (US$6.2 million) in funding from the federal government for the project. The grant was made to the Halifax International Airport Authority (HIAA), the federally backed agency that operates the airport.

"The facility will improve the connections process for air passengers arriving into Canada on international flights as well as to connecting to domestic destinations," the federal government's National Trade Corridors Fund said in a statement. "The additional cargo capacity will also support the movement of goods between Nova Scotia and international markets."

No details were provided about the total cost of the project or its impact on the airport's current capacity and operations.

An official for Transport Canada said an "announcement is scheduled in the coming weeks," declining to elaborate. An HIAA official declined to comment.

Halifax Stanfield, Canada's eighth-busiest airport, has scheduled year-round flights to London and Boston, and summer services to Frankfurt, Philadelphia and Washington. Flights to Reykjavik, Iceland, Edinburgh and Dublin will begin this summer. Winter flights go to warm-weather destinations in Cuba, Mexico and Florida.

HIAA says in a summary of its 2041 master plan: "In the near-to-medium term, an expanded International-To-Domestic Connections facility will be developed on a newly constructed floor above the International Arrivals Hall, to provide additional capacity for processing passengers arriving on international flights and connecting to an onward domestic flight."

The HIAA master plan forecasts that the airport will serve 6.6 million passengers by 2041, up from 3.6 million in 2023. Passenger traffic was 4.2 million in 2019, the year before the pandemic. Passenger figures are not broken out under the domestic and international categories. A total of $700 million has been invested in the airport since 2000, according to the master plan.

Halifax Stanfield is among Canada's 10 busiest cargo airports, according to the airport.

--HBB

St. John's airport traffic rose 14.7% in 2023; Regina International records 28.5% gain

Airports in St. John's and Regina, Saskatchewan, recorded double-digit gains in passenger traffic for 2023, extending rebounds from the depths of the pandemic. Traffic at both airports remained below pre-pandemic levels.

Passenger traffic at St. John's International Airport rose to 1.26 million in 2023, said Ryan Howell, the airport's marketing and communications advisor. That was up 14.7% from 1.10 million in 2022. At Regina International Airport, the 2023 number was 981,845, said Justin Reeves, the airport's director of revenue development, public relations and customer experience. That was up 28.5% from 764,128 in 2022.

St. John's International is Canada's 13th-busiest airport, while Regina International ranks 16th and is the second-busiest airport in Saskatchewan after Saskatoon. In 2019, St. John's recorded 1.48 million passengers and Regina 1.18 million.

-HBB