How's this for investor confidence?

When Yukon's Air North needed $5 million to buy new planes recently, it put out an equity offering. It sold out in three days without any advertising or news releases, and had a long waiting list.

That's in a territory with only 30,000 people.

"It was a remarkable show of confidence in our airline," president Joe Sparling says.

The airline's investors, which include the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, didn't have profit as the main motive. They simply wanted to make sure there was an alternative to Air Canada and that reliable service would continue to the remote communities, said Sparling, in Edmonton for the annual Yukon Expo.

Yukon's investor tax credit makes it more attractive to invest in local companies, and easier for Air North to stay private, he said.

Competition has brought air fares down 25 per cent despite record fuel prices, and the 30-year-old airline continues to grow, he added.

Passenger numbers are increasing on the flights between Whitehorse, Edmonton and Calgary, and Sparling's planning to replace the two Boeing 737-200s with newer, more fuel-efficient versions, and switch the four Hawker Siddeley 780s to Dash 8s.