Halifax airport gets summer flights to Amsterdam as demand for European travel grows
WestJet will offer direct flights between Halifax and Amsterdam this summer as the travel industry in Canada sees an increasing demand for European destinations.
Halifax Stanfield International Airport said this week that the service to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol will operate up to six times a week, beginning May 29.
Amsterdam is the fifth direct flight to Europe WestJet is offering out of Halifax this summer. The other destinations are Dublin, Edinburgh, London-Gatwick and Paris.
Seasonal direct flights to Frankfurt, Zurich and Reykjavik are also available from Halifax. Flights to London-Heathrow and Saint-Pierre are available year-round.
Amra Durakovic, a spokesperson for Flight Centre, said Friday she is seeing more demand from Canadians to travel to Europe.
Durakovic said there are many factors driving the demand, but she said the Trump administration's tariff announcements and the weaker Canadian dollar are part of it.
'Not surprising Canadians are shifting their focus'
"I've spent a lot of this past month on our shop floors talking to our Flight Centre customers," she said. "The overall sentiment to me suggests there's a lot of caution amidst all this uncertainty with the U.S., so it's not surprising Canadians are shifting their focus to other destinations."
While Amsterdam has its own attractions, Durakovic noted that its proximity to other European destinations is another selling point. She said Denmark, France, Spain and the U.K. are also trending upwards as destinations for Canadian travellers.
Durakovic said 64 per cent of respondents prioritized cost when choosing their travel destination in a recent survey conducted by Flight Centre.
"With more frequent flights between Canada and Europe, it just makes sense, it makes it easier, it's more accessible and — depending on where you're going in Europe — you can make your dollar stretch," she said.
More tourism for N.S. this summer?
Anyone wanting to travel to Europe this summer should book soon, Durakovic said.
For people choosing to travel within Canada, she said the East Coast is becoming a more popular destination.
"So maybe for all those locals in Halifax, they might want to leave because we might have too many Canadians visiting you guys," she said.
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You know, revenue growth, profitability, any big investments or partnerships that have helped drive that performance for you? Glen: So, the company has experienced some decent growth. We're still a small business by definition, but our revenues in 2021 were basically $660,000 and 2024, a few years later, were $27 million, and we're targeting $50 million in 2025. We've pivoted a lot towards recurring revenue models where we're dealing with long-term contracts with oil and gas and power utilities versus the early days of individual one-off type contracts. Not to say that we don't still have a fair number of individual buildings or projects that we will inspect, but a lot of our focus now is on larger scale, bigger customers, bigger contracts basically. On the equipment sales side, we have about $12 million in unfulfilled demand in Canada alone for solution sales. So big opportunities there. 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And it gives us immediate scalable benefits and increased gross margins in intelligence, the remote sensing area and in the logistics business. And it's a significant support of many of the federal government's goals that were announced yesterday during their news conference. Lyndsay: You have so much going on, and even more so the big news that just dropped. So, with Canada's fast tracking military spending and prioritizing domestic vendors, is Volatus quietly positioning itself for an elephant sized defense contract? And if so, why aren't these prospective wins that you're speaking of not reflected in your baseline forecast? Glen: So, largely because they're elephants. The simple truth of the matter is many of these are very large scale opportunities, and if you forecast them in your model, they're big misses. If you don't forecast them, they're big wins. Right? And frankly, these are new opportunities if you think about it. Back in November, we knew that things were changing from a geopolitical standpoint, and in fact, Volatus engaged a full-time lobby firm, David Pratt & Associates in Ottawa to support us. But right after that, in January our previous Prime Minister stepped down from government, which basically put everything on hold until May 27th when the government effectively started to operate again. And of course, June 9th was a big day for the announcement of some of the policies that we've been expecting. So that's part of why, with an election and a new government, you really never know how much momentum is going to go in which direction. But we followed that pretty closely. And the big deal now is the federal mandate, or the government stated goals aligns with the defense and economic and security objectives that Volatus is well positioned to fulfill. We provide cost effective ISR and logistics for the border, for the Arctic. We can work on everything from security to public safety to sovereignty issues. It's a major opportunity for growth in defense contracts and domestic innovation, especially as the government attempts to repatriate that $0.75 of every dollar that we spend in the defense industry south of the border. Their goal is to become an energy superpower and that creates inspection and monitoring opportunities for Volatus. And of course, in the resource sectors, things like mining, like the Ring of Fire in Ontario and rare earths in British Columbia and Quebec. Those are all opportunities in every phase of the development, from the exploration to the development and management of the mine to the transportation infrastructure, roads and railways that are going to carry are all opportunities for Volatus. And that ties in also with the major acceleration in infrastructure programs and investment which align with our capabilities and mapping and inspection services. So, I think there's a significant opportunity, let's say it's more like a herd of elephants right now. I think we've got some good opportunities, not just for Volatus, but for the entire Canadian aerospace and RPAS industry. Lyndsay: Well, let's look ahead here then, Glen. What's next in terms of growth and innovation for Volatus and how do you plan to stay ahead in a space that's really moving as fast as drone tech? Glen: So, we'll continue to scale our drones as a service, particularly with the remote drone in a box or drone infrastructure type capabilities. We want to expand our US and international regulatory envelope so that we can achieve the same level of operations as we can in Canada. We'll be pursuing waivers to support larger drone operations as the regulations evolve. We've got a change in regulations in November. Volatus has already positioned itself to adapt and capitalize on those opportunities. But we've already started looking at saying, 'okay, now with the baseline or with the bar having been raised, now we will look to go one step beyond that into larger and more capable drones.' We have a real eye on industrial and logistics use cases with some of our partner technologies that are being enabled by these new regulations that are coming. And ultimately if you look at the objectives of the government in terms of targeting economic leadership on a global scale and achieving more security independence, those are all areas that Volatus will be very tightly focused on in the days, months and years ahead. Lyndsay: Well, Glen, I really appreciate you taking the time and giving us really a peek behind the curtain at what Volatus is really building. You can find Volatus Aerospace trading on the venture under the ticker symbol FLT, and on the OTCQB under the ticker symbol TAKOF. Check them out at for more information. Join the discussion: Find out what everybody's saying about this stock on the Volatus Aerospace investor discussion forum, and check out the rest of Stockhouse's stock forums and message boards. The material provided in this article is for information only and should not be treated as investment advice. For full disclaimer information, please click here
