Private aircraft from abroad landing at smaller Canadian airports despite federal pandemic rules

Hundreds of private flights from international destinations have landed at airports across Canada despite federal rules directing commercial and business air travellers to four main cities where a quarantine hotel system is in place.

A CBC News analysis of data from Feb. 22 to April 26 provided by flight tracking company FlightAware reveals 884 private flights from international destinations to a random sampling of nine airports that don't have quarantine hotels, including in Hamilton, Ottawa, London, Ont., Kelowna, B.C., St. John's and Edmonton.

The aircraft captured in the data include luxury and executive private jets, recreational aircraft and helicopters. That data does not contain any information about passengers, including the number of people on board.

Under rules introduced by the federal government on Feb. 22, all incoming international air travel is supposed to be directed through Toronto, Calgary, Montreal or Vancouver. The measure was put in place to control the spread of variants of the novel coronavirus.

"If you're going to have a system in place that necessitates quarantining upon return from travel, it can't be sort of a two-tier system where some individuals get to bypass that system by virtue of whatever means of travel they're taking," said Dr. Leighanne Parkes, an infectious diseases specialist and medical microbiologist at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal.