Originally Posted by
tusphotog
Near border? The Anaheim Ducks and LA Kings used Air Canada Jetz. Not really sure a team based in SoCal counts as a "near border" team (unless we're talking about Mexico). That being said, the dust up about Air Canada doing NHL charter work has been resolved since 2009.
The issue was that under normal rules AC, as a foreign airline, couldn't carry passengers between two US points without also carrying that same passenger to or from a foreign point, that being Canada in this case. Now there were some sort of exemptions that allowed multiple stops over multiple days over a road trip before this had to happen BUT the complication with sports teams is that players get injured, new players join during a road trip, certain non-playing staff may not make the whole trip, technically violating cabotage rules. A deal was reached after it was made an issue between the Canadian PM and US President at a White House meeting. The spat threatened both NHL and NBA schedules but probably cost some AC Jetz contracts while the dispute was unresolved during the off-season.
Of course, since there are no Canadian NFL teams, AC Jetz would never have regular series of flights going transborder and it wouldn't have been allowed. And AC Jetz is now history, probably due to the NHL lockout in 2013, which forced AC to reconfigure Jetz to normal configurations and then not put them back once the season resumed and several teams cancelled their charters due to not having all "first class" seating.