Okay.
While we're talking about local economic development, in the past, most northern communities, using the territorial capitals as an example—in our market, Whitehorse—served as northern outposts at the end of a typical hub-and-spoke route network. In a hub-and-spoke network, the cash flows from the spoke into the hub. In our operation, we've been able to turn that around by making Whitehorse a hub. That's produced significant local economic benefits, the most significant of which is employment. We employ between 12 and 14 full-time equivalent northerners per 100 scheduled service departures. Our mainline competitors employ one to two, so the employment payback is about tenfold.
By making Whitehorse a hub, we share overhead costs between our regional routes that go north of Whitehorse and our gateway routes that go south of Whitehorse. As I mentioned in my paper, we estimate that this has allowed us to keep regional airfares about 20% lower than they otherwise would be.
The other observation is price-stimulated travel. I think that providing affordable airfares to Yukoners to travel in and out of the territory makes the Yukon a better place to live and work. The year before we started our jet service, the total market size was about 100,000 emplanements and deplanements. Last year, it was better than 400,000. Airfares were over $300 before we started. They were closer to $200 per sector last year.
Using our own kids as an example, for sports travel, it used to be a bus trip up or down the Alaska Highway in the middle of winter. Now we see Yukon kids every weekend going south— Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Kelowna—to play hockey. We have one Yukon kid in the NHL, and we have more Yukon kids going to university because they can come back and forth affordably. All of these things add up to make the northern communities better places to live and work, and I think that affordable air travel is a big piece of that.