IQALUIT - An Air Canada announcement this week to offer non-stop flights to Iqaluit from Ottawa has Northern carriers up in arms.

Starting March 28, 2010, Air Canada Jazz will offer daily flights from Ottawa with same-flight connection to Montreal, which has Tracy Medve, president of Canadian North enraged. She said Air Canada is cherry picking the routes they want to use and saturating an already full market.

"You're not going to see them expending dollars in the North and you're not going to see them providing sponsorship or support to any communities," Medve said.

"It's very self serving what they are doing. They could achieve the same thing by working with us than against us.

"We're not really happy to hear this. There is certainly no upside to Canadian North on the announcement and quite a bit of downside for the airline and the people we serve."

Medve is also concerned about the capacity of the Iqaluit airport to handle an additional daily flight, something she says is serious.

"It's a very small airport and it's absolutely at capacity now," Medve said. "There (is) no spare counter space and one single security line and we experience delays at the security line all the time

Medve said Canadian North has also invested a lot of time and money to develop a plan to solve a ramp congestion problem at the Iqaluit airport.

"There is very serious concern to adding another flight into the mix."

At the Nunavut Association of Municipalities (NAM) annual meeting in August, Iqaluit mayor and NAM president Elisapee Sheutiapik, said southern airlines entering the market in the territory is not supported by the association."NAM supports both the current long-term major air carriers and current regional carriers that are well established in the North," she said.

Chris Ferris, vice president of marketing and sales for First Air, sees it as an extra hand in a pot that hasn't gotten any bigger.

"It's additional service into a market that already had excess capacity," he said. "It's a very thin market. You've got a community of 7,500 people ... it's a curious announcement by Air Canada."

Ferris said with the flights it currently operates, which include a daily flight from Iqaluit to Ottawa and a three -day-a-week flight from Kuujjuaq to Montreal, First Air could take care of the market on its own.

"In theory we could carry the entire market on those flights, never mind the other competitor we have in the market," he said. "It has the potential to have a negative impact on us. It's not the market is going to be stimulated and grow with a new entrant into the market place. It's not like we're going to see low-cost carrier prices on this market. All it's going to do is divide the market between three when it used to be two."

Medve said she fears the addition of Air Canada into the already flooded market could lead to price increases in other parts of their flight network.

"Iqaluit is our Northern hub and Ottawa is our southern gateway and (when) you have revenue erosion on that network it has to give somewhere in the system," she said.

"We have higher fix costs because we operate in the North and we don't have a huge network to defer those costs like Air Canada does.

"This kind of congestion will impact people travelling into the communities."

Air Canada's Iqaluit flights will use a Bombardier CRJ 705 jet aircraft.

Calls to Air Canada representatives were not returned by press time.