Poor weather in other cities still impacting travel at YLW

Photo: YLW

Rolling delays continue at Kelowna International Airport today because of bad weather in other cities.

Senior manager of airport operations Phillip Elchitz tells Castanet that airline operations are still being impacted by poor weather in Vancouver.

"With this cold weather that's going to continue for the next three or four days, we're kind of expecting the same trend... rolling delays and some cancellations. Anybody travelling should make sure they double check before they head out," says Elchitz.

Airplane de-icing can slow down air travel and eventually cause delays.

Elchitz says YLW is located in a valley with mountains on all four sides, so the approaches into the runways at YLW have higher minimums than airports on the prairies or airports where it's flatter.

"Because of that, you do see more cancellations or delays when there's weather, but really, the majority of the delays that we're seeing right now are coming from other bases, city-pairings.

"It takes longer to arrive and depart an aircraft out of a base where it's snowing. For example, when aircraft have to be de-iced they're going to be delayed. If that aircraft goes to three or four cities that it's snowing... that aircraft continues to be delayed. It becomes a rolling delay," Elchitz says.

Typically if a flight is delayed for de-icing multiple times it will cause larger delays down the road.

"For example, last night we had some aircraft arriving after midnight that should have been arriving around 10 or 11 o'clock. So the later the day goes, the more the rolling delay becomes (a problem) and we're seeing that here," Elchitz says.

Elchitz reminds travellers to check the arrival and departure before heading to the airport and to check with the airline they are flying with to confirm there are no delays or to make new flight arrangements.