by by Jeff Colbourne
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 14/98) - Air Tindi, a small, Western Arctic airline based in Yellowknife, said its efforts to fly residents from Dogrib communities to Yellowknife before Christmas to shop was not as successful as they had hoped.

"There was good and there was bad, said John Seagrave, scheduled services manager for the airline.

"(But) the downtown merchants did very well," he added.

Air Tindi set up charters along with regular flights before Christmas to meet a shopping demand in remote communities brought on by the Canada Postal strike.

"It was OK. There were a few bugs in it."

Seagrave said their flights were very popular at first but once a little snow fell, shoppers hopped on their snowmachines and made the less expensive trip over land to the capital.

"We had to scale down drastically what we were going to do."

Next year, Seagrave said Air Tindi plans to reach out to further distant communities in the West and fly customers into Yellowknife earlier for their Christmas shopping.

They also plan to approach the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce and see if they are interested in sponsoring a bus to transport passengers from their hangar to the downtown.

The Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce was approached to sponsor a bus in 1997 but showed no interest.

Cheryl Best, executive director of the chamber, said if they helped Air Tindi they would have to help other airlines.

Frontier Coachlines did manage, however, to provide bus service at discount rates to Air Tindi, while Yellowknife businessman John Dalton made available vehicles from his cab company for individual passengers.