Now that the southern camera crews have filed their footage and long since departed the icy streets of Canada’s newest territorial capital city, Iqaluit, the real business of building this vast territory begins in earnest.

In the newly created Nunavut, a land mass one-fifth the size of Canada populated by a mere 25,000 people living mostly in isolated communities sometimes thousands of kilometres apart, progress is frequently measured by the obstacles overcome.

The challenges are as numerous as they are severe. But there is no focal point where the issues are more complex – and the need to address them more urgent for the future of this region – than in transportation.

So it comes as no surprise that Jim Ballingall, the new vice-president of marketing and sales for First Air, the main carrier and, arguably, the lifeline of this region, confesses: ‘We are a huge stakeholder in the North. The North is changing and we have a lot riding on it.’

Ballingall, a veteran of the airline industry who joined First Air last December after 18 years with Air Canada and a brief stint with the fledgling Greyhound Canada Transportation Corporation, arrived at First Air as part of a broad-based reorganization of the airline’s senior management. It began with the arrival of a new president, Bob Davis, just over a year ago. Davis has since built a new team with a mandate to rejuvenate and refocus the airline.

After 53 years of service, First Air is now entering a new era of head-to-head competition. The airline is responding by looking inward to redefine the way it does business.

First Air is the largest northern air carrier, providing regularly scheduled flights to 32 communities in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta and across the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Greenland. The northern destinations are serviced through southern air traffic ‘hubs’ in Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

The airline has a fleet of 34 aircraft, consisting of jets that can handle the long trans-territorial flights, and smaller craft such as the gritty Twin Otter that can negotiate flights into remote locations. It is an expensive fleet to maintain in any case, but especially when so much of the traffic is one way. It is not uncommon for a 727 jet to fly to Iqaluit full of passenger and cargo, only to return with its cargo bay empty.

Ballingall, however, finds himself with an even greater challenge on his hands. Air NorTerra, the Inuit-owned airline that is First Air’s biggest competitor in the northwestern region, is going head-to-head against First Air in the relatively lucrative Ottawa-to-Iqaluit corridor. NorTerra has hooked up with Canadian Airlines and will be using the airline’s aircraft to expand into Nunavut.

Norterra has been flying from Yellowknife to Iqaluit for years and in April expanded its service with three flights a week from Iqaluit to Ottawa. In the fall, NorTerra plans to increase that frequency. The NorTerra/Canadian operation is marketed under the brand name Canadian North.

(First Air is owned by the Inuit Makivik Corporation of Kuujjuaq, Que.)

The entry of NorTerra and Canadian, which are both looking for new areas of growth, is bound to force prices downward in both cargo and passenger sales.

The northern airline market has a fairly even split between cargo and passenger business. It is estimated that First Air’s annual sales are between $175 million and $150 million a year. Of that, about half is in passenger traffic. The rest is split between cargo and charter sales.

Ballingall has two immediate priorities.

First, he must lock up some of the major contracts – from mining and other resource industries, government departments and local services – that are the foundation of northern air service.

Second, he must shift the thinking of his organization away from its bush pilot roots toward that of a modern company with clear goals and objectives and sophisticated marketing and sales. All the while, he must be careful to not alienate either of the two publics that make up the airline’s staff and customer base: the Southern Canadians, who are mostly white and professional; and the Inuit and other rugged Northerners who predominate on all the flights north of Iqaluit.

‘We are working on a positioning statement and a whole new branding of the airline,’ says Ballingall. ‘If I were to describe it now, I would say we are the true airline of the new north. We’ve been here for 53 years, through thick and thin. We have helped build the North, we are its largest private-sector employer, and as we go, so goes the North.

‘But first, we need to change perceptions, and that begins internally among our own employees.’

Among the first initiatives that the new First Air management team undertook was to hire an outside consultant to help get an honest read on employee opinion.

‘Our core business is our schedule, and that gives us a strong point of differentiation,’ says Ballingall. ‘And yet, while this scheduled service sets us apart, I still believe that our strongest advantage is our workforce.’

The consultants did a focus group involving some 250 staff.

‘We found that the staff have a strong sense of pride in the airline, and they appreciate the uniqueness and the heritage of First Air. But at the same time, they felt there was no clear sense of direction coming from the senior management. What seemed to have broken down, over the years, was the skill to both establish and communicate a clear corporate vision to the employees.’

Once First Air has mapped out its strategy for change, the consultants will take that plan back to an even larger employee group of 350 for feedback and approval, says Ballingall.

‘I view every employee of this airline as a sales person. Whether you are an inflight attendant, or you’re handling the baggage or grooming the airplane you need to share in the same sense of mission and have some passion for your company and your job,’ says Ballingall.

The next phase in First Air’s marketing plan will be to continue to work co-operatively with territorial and federal tourism authorities in promoting Nunavut as a tourist destination. An estimated 73,377 tourists are forecast to visit Canada’s north this year, representing some $76 million in spending.

As with so much else in the North, the questions surrounding the development of tourism amount to a series of challenges. The prime tourist activities, such as hiking over barren tundra and kayaking through fiords, is limited mostly to July and August. And the infrastructure to service this industry is still relatively primitive.

But Ballingall says that part of his marketing plan is to search out new growth areas such as the expanding ecotourism market. He says First Air has plans to develop ecotourism package tours with hotel operators and to market them throughout North America and Europe.