Airport officials await funding approval for air service.

• Author: GOULIQUER, DIANNE

Officials at the Elliot Lake Airport say the city's plan to reinstate scheduled air passenger service to Toronto may become a reality in the very near future.

Reintroduction of flight service, which was initially delayed due to scheduling conflicts with the air carrier originally selected to provide the service, may begin by early May, says Bert Rapp, airport supervisor.

"(The airport) is working with a carrier, and it's a totally new carrier," Rapp says. 'We're coming up to speed with them, and there are a few things that we still have to iron out, but things look pretty good."

The Elliot Lake Airport Advisory Committee had originally planned to have passenger service running from Elliot Lake, Gore Bay and Manitoulin Island to Toronto by March 31. The committee learned just two weeks before the first plane was slated for takeoff, however, that an agreement with Georgian Airways - which had agreed to fly the route - had fallen through because the airline could not supply a plane for the agreed-upon schedule.

"We were at the point with Georgian where the contract was signed by Elliot Lake and was starting to make the rounds to nail this thing down when we found out that they couldn't accommodate us for that time period; they could not give us the schedule we wanted," Rapp says.

"That's when we pulled the plug and we were looking for options. We talked to other (carriers) that were interested, but they didn't fit into our scheme."

Adding to the problem was a deadline on the recovery of an air service subsidy from the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC).

"We had to get our ONTC funding from the air service subsidy," Rapp says. "When NorOntair was closed down, they gave each of the (affected) communities that wasn't taken over by another carrier $75,000 under a two-year program, which got extended (for another year). We still have money, $56,250, in that, and so does Gore Bay. But there was a time limit on it. We had to be flying by March 31.

"Now we've found a carrier, and that carrier...