AirCanada now has a home in the Ocean State’s biggest airport. T.F. Green will offer direct flights to Toronto this spring.
AirCanada’s partnership with T.F. Green to offer daily flights to Toronto will begin in May. The flights will only last through October to start, though officials hope to expand.
Airport President Iftikhar Amhad calls Toronto, a major metropolis, a strategic hub for Rhode Island, as it works to attract companies and new workers.
“I think it proves that T.F. Green is on the rise, that Rhode Island is on the rise,” Amhad said. “And adding AirCanada, that can give us connectivity deeper into Canada from Toronto, and the rest of the world, that’s just wonderful.”
The AirCanada deal comes after a much touted completion of the T.F. Green Runway expansion, which can accommodate larger planes for longer flights.
As T.F. Green continues to expand international service, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has also expanded its footprint at the airport.
Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Patrol maintains a site at T.F. Green Airport, and it’s growing. That’s because the Warwick airport has been adding more international service, starting with Frankfurt, Germany in 2015. Since then, the airport has added destinations including Dublin and the Carribean
Airport President Iftikhar Ahmad said the new flights required the expansion of space used to house federal Customs and Border patrol workers.
“We did that between April and June, that was more than 20,000 square feet of expansion at about $8.5 million,” said Ahmad.
Ahmad declined to say just how many federal homeland security workers are currently employed at the airport. Some passengers go through customs before flying boarding flights to T.F. Green. Others go through the process on arrival.