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YLW fastest recovering airport in Canada from pandemic woes

While air traffic is picking up, the lack of international status continues to take a toll.

  • YLW recovering faster than every other major airport in Canada
  • Still no date for when international flights will come back

Despite no international flights touching down since March 2020, Kelowna’s airport has recovered faster than any other in Canada.

According to a report presented at the Airport Advisory Committee Thursday morning, the facility has recovered 58 per cent of its record-setting 2019 seat capacity as of July 2021.

The Canadian average is just 30 per cent. Kelowna is well ahead of the pack, with second place Edmonton recovering just 44 per cent. Calgary has recovered 39 per cent, Vancouver, 33.

“That is based on our real strategic attempt to get airlines back,” Airport Development Senior Manager Geoff Ritchie said. “We’ve used business in the region to tell us what they thought their capacities could be and we’ve sold the region very, very heavily.”

He said throughout the pandemic, the airport has operated as the sixth busiest in the nation. Two days during a week-and-a-half period this summer, YLW was the busiest airport in Canada. Kelowna International Airport typically operates as the tenth busiest.

To date, 485,135 passengers have moved through the airport. Officials estimate 840,000 people will fly in and out by the end of 2021, up 12 per cent year over year, but still nearly 60 per cent below pre-pandemic numbers.

In 2019, a record 2,032,019 people flew through YLW. There were just 737,447 passengers in 2020.

To cope with the slowdown, nine positions -- 20 per cent of the overall team – remain empty.

Five people are currently working at 80 per cent full time on a workshare program. It is expected they will return to 100 per cent on Nov. 1. Cutbacks have also occurred with contractors.

Push for international flights continues

But standing in the way of YLW rebounding further is its lack of international status.

Speaking to the committee, director Sam Samaddar said he still has no criteria or timeline for when the airport could start to see international flights.

“I can’t answer anything further in terms of the government bureaucracy and how they’ve delt with this, because it has been very, very frustrating and challenging,” he said. “There isn’t much of a rational for why we can’t accept international flights.”

He said YLW is on the next list of airports to open to international flights but had no timeline for when that could occur.

The lack of international flights, he said, has taken a $2.5 million hit to YLW’s books. The broader impact to the regional economy is much larger, he said.

Samaddar appreciated the bounty of outreach to various agencies and levels of government to reinstate the status, but said some of the damage is already done, such as the loss of scheduled flights, frustrating the airlines and passengers.

“These are not things where you turn a key and it starts back up again,” he said.

Business groups have told Samaddar the lack of flights, especially the connector via Seattle, is driving up the cost of business and adding extra days of travel.

Published 2021-10-28 by Tyler Marr

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