Spoke to a friend of mine who is a pilot at WestJet based out of Edmonton. Says that the long-term plan is to grow the base here by adding new flights and routes, but the growth in Edmonton isnt growing as fast as he expected when he was hired on by WestJet in Edmonton.
He has been flying once a month, yes one round trip per month, the past three months because they currently have these pilots sitting on reserve and havent/arent adding flights to staff them. WestJet can and will send these Edmonton pilots out to run flights from, say, Toronto and it is all on the company dime given they are based out of Edmonton. However, many (I dont know how many my friend was referring to) pilots are currently sitting idle in Edmonton with limited trips.