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Alberta’s soft economy and the drop in the Canadian dollar are being blamed for a decision by United Airlines to cut its daily direct flights to San Francisco and Chicago from Edmonton.

“They really have worked hard to make these flights work, but they weren’t performing the way United wanted,” Edmonton International Airport spokeswoman Heather Hamilton said Thursday.

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“Obviously, the big impact is the price of the dollar … It’s seriously affecting U.S. travel.”

The move, which takes effect next Wednesday, is part of a drop in trips to the United States that has led United to remove regional flights in other parts of the country as travel to our southern neighbour has gone down at five of Canada’s eight largest airports, Hamilton said.

Edmonton has been particularly hard hit. So far this year, the number of people flying to the United States is down 23 per cent, after a 10.5-per-cent drop to 1.2 million passengers in 2015 followed an 8.5-per-cent increase in 2014.