New non-stop air service between St. Louis to major Canadian city starts Thursday

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A new non-stop direct flight at Lambert International Airport will officially start on Thursday, as flight goers will now be able to travel non-stop from St. Louis to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, home to the 24-time Stanley Cup Champions Montreal Canadiens and the site of Formula One's Canadian Grand Prix for all but four years since 1978.

"This is yet another connection for St. Louis and just as we saw with the direct flight to Frankfurt (Germany), the importance that this plays for tourism, business connectivity," said Tim Nowak, Executive Director of the World Trade Center of St. Louis on Total Information A.M. Wednesday.

To celebrate the new non-stop flight, local St. Louis leaders that include St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones and St. Louis County Executive Sam Page will depart to Montreal Thursday for a five-day trade mission.

"When Air Canada announced this new route, I reached out to (Lambert Airport Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge) and together we decided 'hey let's do a delegation and raise the awareness and celebrate this new connection." said Nowak.

Nowak says the importance of the trade mission is to help showcase the city to outside businesses and the investment of foreign businesses to the area can be crucial, especially in a country Canada.

"Canada is the largest trade and investment partner for St. Louis," said Nowak. "We need foreign companies to invest in St. Louis and we need trade. We need our companies to share their goods and services all throughout the globe."

The direct flight to Montreal will be Air Canada's second direct connection to a Canadian city from Lambert, with the airline already offering daily direct flights to Toronto.

Lambert International Airport has seen traffic return to the airport over the last 12 months after COVID-19 Pandemic affected the airport, with major non-stop flights that were lost because of the pandemic returning to Lambert's schedule .