ST. LOUIS — Air Canada will begin daily nonstop service from ºüÀêÊÓƵ to Montreal next Thursday.
The direct flight to Montreal will be seasonal at first, with one daily flight available through at least October.
The new flight will be the second direct connection to a Canadian city from ºüÀêÊÓƵ Lambert International Airport.
Air Canada already offers two daily direct flights to Toronto.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ Mayor Tishaura O. Jones and ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Executive Sam Page plan to be on the inaugural flight as part of a trade mission to Montreal and Ottawa, the Canadian capital.
“With Canada being the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region’s largest trade and investment market, it is critical to our economy,†said Tim Nowak, executive director at the World Trade Center ºüÀêÊÓƵ, which is hosting the trip.
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The Montreal service will join Lambert’s modest number of direct international connections, which have been growing and now include a thrice-weekly Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany as well as tourism destinations such as Cancun and Los Cabos Mexico and seasonal flights to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
A Lambert spokesman also confirmed that United Airlines will add back two daily nonstop flights to San Francisco beginning Aug. 19. Those flights are in addition to a daily flight to the California city from Southwest Airlines that just began last month.
Direct flights from Lambert to San Francisco took among the longest to return after airlines canceled them during the COVID-19 pandemic. ºüÀêÊÓƵ was without a direct connection to San Francisco International Airport for nearly four years.
Southwest only announced last summer that it would resume a daily flight to that airport. It also has flights to other airports in the Bay area — Oakland and San Jose.
United uses San Francisco to connect to Asian airports, and that traffic was slower to recover post-COVID, said Will Becker, a Lambert spokesman.
Lambert traffic has been recovering since the pandemic. It recorded 14.9 million passengers last year, a 9% jump from 2022 but still about 1 million shy of its pre-pandemic level.