Ben Mutzabaugh

USA TODAY

What did it take for a city the size of Buffalo to land its only nonstop route to California? A bunch of Canadians and cheap jet fuel.

JetBlue announced last week that it would add non-stop service starting this June between Buffalo and Los Angeles, giving Buffalo its only regularly scheduled flight to the West Coast.

One key to making it work, JetBlue says, is to lure Canadians across the border.

It’s already happening on other flights at the airport. Bargain-seeking Canadian fliers accounted for at least a third of all passengers last year at Buffalo/Niagara International Airport, where fares can be dramatically cheaper than on flights for the same routes from Toronto – only about 100 miles away.

JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were on hand at a Buffalo airport press conference to announce the new flights last week , and each made a sales pitch to Canadian travelers. But it was Schumer, who frequently champions aviation in the state, who offered the most-direct plea.

Canadians are key as JetBlue tries Buffalo-LAX nonstops

“We are telling Canada residents, when you want to fly to California, don’t do it out of Toronto," Schumer said. "Get in your car, take the short drive and fly here."

Relying on customers from another country may sound unusual, but that’s how it works for Buffalo and other U.S. airports along the border with Canada.

“That’s not a surprise,” Douglas Hartmayer, spokesman for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority that operates both the Buffalo/Niagara and nearby Niagara Falls International airports, said about JetBlue's plan to help fill its L.A. flights with passengers from north of the border. “Canadians have been patronizing our airport for many years in great numbers."

“The idea of Canadians driving across the border for cheaper flights is nothing new,” adds Seth Kaplan, editor of the Airline Weekly trade publication. “What has really changed in recent years is that you really have a number of airlines optimizing to capture those customers.”

That’s tended to work out for Buffalo, where the metro area's population – currently at about 1.1 million – has been in slow decline since the 1970s, according U.S. Census data.

Despite that, Kaplan says Buffalo “has always out-punched its weight as an airport relative to what you would get if you had the same local population base for Buffalo somewhere else in the country.”

“Certainly, airlines with a large presence in Buffalo – like JetBlue and Southwest – have benefited from that,” he says. "And because of how cheap fuel is, an airline like JetBlue can take chance on a non-stop route like Los Angeles" that would have been riskier financially a few years back when fuel prices were higher.

But Buffalo is not the only place where airlines are trying routes that depend on the Canadian market.

From Bellingham, Wash., to Bangor, Maine, passenger counts at many U.S. airports along the border are bolstered by Canadians looking for cheaper fares and non-stop flights to popular U.S. destinations.

How else to explain non-stop flights to places such as Hawaii, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Palm Springs from the small market of Bellingham, Wash.? The city has only about 80,000 residents, but its airport sits just 60 miles from downtown Vancouver – Canada’s third-largest metro.

Bellingham International Airport doesn’t keep a precise count but estimates about 65% of its customers come from Canada.

“We do know a significant number of Canadian passengers utilize our airport to take advantage of cheap parking and low cost flights to 10 different non-stop locations,” Director of Aviation Sunil Harman says in an email.

In the East, it’s the airport serving tiny Plattsburgh, N.Y., that’s perhaps the most upfront in its efforts to draw Canadians. The English and French-language website for Plattsburgh International proudly displays its motto, “Montreal’s U.S. airport.”

Plattsburgh has only about 20,000 residents, but offers non-stop flights to destinations like Fort Lauderdale; Myrtle Beach, S.C. and St. Petersburg, Fla.. They're kept afloat in large part with Canadians from Montreal, Canada's second-largest city that's just 70 miles away on Interstate-quality highways.

Tiny Minot, N.D. – population 46,000 – has service to big airline hubs such as Minneapolis and Denver. But the city’s service to Las Vegas and Mesa, Ariz., on leisure carrier Allegiant is buoyed by Minot’s proximity to Canada, just 60 miles to the north. It’s a similar set-up for Grand Forks, N.D., located about 80 miles south of the border. It too has service to traditional airline hubs, but Allegiant’s nonstop service to Las Vegas, Mesa and Orlando is made possible by demand from Canadians.

Allegiant is one of the most aggressive carriers in adding border-city flights that rely on travelers from Canada. The company flies to nine cities where Canadian customers represent a significant portion of its customer base.

That may sound unconventional, "except if you're one of the people up in those towns” along the border, says Lukas Johnson, Allegiant’s Vice President of Planning. “If you’re in Bellingham or Plattsburgh, you’re pretty well aware that Canadians have been coming over for decades.”

Johnson says that in both U.S. and Canadian border communities, “there are a number of things people will cross the border” to buy if the price is right – and that includes flights. “We’re just capitalizing on that,” he says of Allegiant’s presence in places such as Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Minot, N.D.

Canadians tend to pay more than their American counterparts for flights of comparable distances. And they can shave even more off fares to the U.S. by driving across the border since domestic flights are not subject to international taxes that apply to trans-border flights.

Price differences can vary by market or time of year, but significant savings can be found. A Feb. 18-21 itinerary from Vancouver to Palm Springs, for example, costs $392 with a connection or $609 for a non-stop, according to a Feb. 5 search on Kayak.com. From Bellingham, Allegiant was selling non-stops for the same dates for $144 – a saving of $248 over the connecting Vancouver itinerary. A family of four would save nearly $1,000 by making the 60-mile drive to Bellingham.

The differences aren’t always as stark, however. A search on Feb. 5 for a March 5-12 itinerary to Fort Lauderdale returned $154 non-stops from Niagara Falls, which compared to a $219 non-stop from Buffalo or a $240 non-stop from Toronto.

In Buffalo, the influx of Canadians has been enough for service to flourish at two airports in the metro area. By contrast, cities much bigger than Buffalo – such as Atlanta, Denver and Las Vegas – are served by just one airport for commercial airline service.

Traffic at Niagara Falls International Airport – only 20 miles from much-bigger Buffalo/Niagara – is booming on the strength of Canadian customers. Flights on discounters Spirit and Allegiant propelled the Niagara Falls airport to an all-time passenger record in 2015, with Canadians accounting for four out of every five of the 233,302 passengers.

Still, JetBlue’s new Buffalo and Los Angeles flight was viewed as something of a surprise among most industry observers. Neither city is a hub for JetBlue, meaning the route’s success will hinge on finding enough passengers specifically seeking to fly between L.A. and Buffalo. Since JetBlue flies only a handful of routes from each city, it will not be able to rely on connecting fliers to help fill its planes between Buffalo and LAX.

"We carry a lot of Canadians on our Buffalo-Fort Lauderdale and Buffalo-Orlando service today. So we know they’re willing to drive across the border and take JetBlue. We expect the same will happen on an even longer trip out to L.A.," says Dave Clark, JetBlue's VP of Network Planning.

Like JetBlue, Southwest's Buffalo operation also draws from north of the border.

"We have a significant number of Canadian customers who fly out of Buffalo Niagara International Airport and interest in leisure travel for all Customers remains strong," Dave Doty, Southwest's senior manager, Network Planning, says in an e-mail to Today in the Sky. "In fact, we recently announced seasonal low-fare nonstop service between Buffalo and Denver and look forward to other ways to keep our offering robust going forward."

Even with the strength that the Canadian market adds to Buffalo, JetBlue's Clark says it's important to remember both sides of the border.

"But I don’t want to overlook the Buffalo part of it, too," he adds, saying he thinks JetBlue "will stimulate the Buffalo market significantly also."

Beyond that, JetBlue, Southwest and others must hope that the trend of Canadian customers continues, even as a strong U.S. dollar has made flying from the USA significantly more expensive for Canadians during the past year.

“There’s a little concern on our part,” acknowledges Hartmayer, spokesman for the Buffalo-area airports.

For now, however, optimism remains that the Los Angeles flights will be a success – both for JetBlue and for Buffalo’s airport.

“We’re looking forward to having these flights full when they depart the airport come June,” Hartmayer says.