Oct 04, 2024 - 04:13
By cbc.ca

Canadian charter flights leaving Lebanon have hundreds of empty seats, Global Affairs says

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) says two flights chartered by the federal government to bring Canadians out of Lebanon left Beirut for Istanbul Thursday with just 275 passengers and 379 empty seats.

In Paris on Thursday for the Francophonie Summit, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told reporters there were 654 seats on those two flights.

«Please take the seats,» Joly said. «At this point, not all seats are taken by Canadians.»

Shortly after Joly's media availability, her department issued a press release saying those two flights collectively carried 275 passengers, not all of them Canadian. The department said the passengers included citizens of «like-minded countries» like Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and the U.S.

GAC officials said the exact number of Canadians flown out Thursday will be available Friday after the department reviews the flight manifests. Officials also confirmed the number of empty seats.

«Global Affairs Canada has increased its surge capacity at the Emergency Watch and Response Centre in Ottawa to ensure we contact all Canadians in Lebanon who have accepted our offer for seats on commercial flights,» the department said in its release.

«The team is working around the clock and has reached out to more than 2,300 individuals to offer flight options,» it added, an increase over the 1,700 people contacted as of Tuesday.

Earlier this week, GAC officials at a technical briefing told reporters that of those 1,700 people in Lebanon it had contacted at the time, only one-third of them had taken up the offered seats.

The department said there will be nearly 900 seats available between Friday and Sunday.