December 16, 2008
Airport traffic growth slows - Economy a factor in lack of major increase in traffic levels; airport renos coming along, says CEO

REMO ZACCAGNA - Herald-Tribune staff

The slowing economy has had an adverse effect on passenger traffic levels through Grande Prairie Regional Airport as they increased slightly in 2008, but are far below projections, says airport CEO Brian Grant.

Compared to previous years, in which passenger traffic increased by as much as 30 per cent, 2008 was an “average” year, Grant said, with only modest gains.

Grant said airport officials were projecting an eight or nine per cent increase over the 345,000 passengers that came through in 2007.

“We haven’t seen the huge dramatic increases that we have in the past two or three years, but we are projecting our passenger numbers to be up by about two or three per cent until the end of this year, over last year which was a record year,” he said.

And the credit crunch, coupled with the overall slowdown in the global, national and provincial economy, has been to blame for less passengers coming into the airport, he said.

“Certainly, with the economy, there’s not nearly as much oil activity and we’re seeing moving crude prices,” Grant said. “But we certainly, by any means, don’t see it as a slowdown because we did still grow, but we didn’t grow as much as anticipated using our averages from years past.”

Grant said they’ve tempered their growth projections for next year, predicting a one to two per cent increase in passengers.

“We anticipate that we’ll be fairly well on the mark by the sound of the local economists,” he said. “It sounds like we’re going to be in much the same year as we are this year.”

The final phase of renovations at the airport, which began earlier this year, are on schedule and about 30 per cent complete, he added. The $8 million expansion of the terminal building, which includes adding extra holding room capacity, new extra baggage belts and about 30 per cent more floor space on the main floor, is scheduled to be completed by October.

“They’re just doing groundwork, and they’re going to start steel structure erection right after the New Year,” he said.

Meanwhile, as of last week, Grande Prairie travellers using Edmonton International Airport as a connection to a United States destination will no longer have to retrieve their bags and re-check with their airlines before going through U.S. customs.

Instead, they’ll be able to wait for their connecting flight in the larger domestic passenger lounge and enjoy all the amenities it has to offer, while their bags are transferred directly to the U.S. baggage room.

And the U.S. Connect passengers will then be able to board their connecting flights via a new U.S. Connect security station at the customs area.

Edmonton becomes the second airport in Canada to offer such a service for U.S.-bound passengers, behind Halifax’s Stanfield International Airport.

“This was a key corporate priority for Edmonton airport for 2008 … working on it for about a year and invested about $1 million in its development,” said Traci Bednard, a spokesperson for the EIA.

The service is available to all passengers connecting through Edmonton, but a majority of U.S.-bound passengers are from Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray and Yellowknife. The Swan City has by far the most passengers, Bednard said, with an 80 per cent increase from January 2005 to the end of 2007.

And Bednard said EIA officials visited Grande Prairie a few times this year to talk to travel agents, to Grant and other airport officials, and to the airlines, in order to make sure they tailored the program to what other people were looking for.

“So when we started to take a look at those numbers and when we were business planning, we identified that not only did we need to make sure that the airport was efficient and provided a good experience for Edmonton passengers but we needed to make sure that we were also focusing on how to improve customer service for connecting travellers,” Bednard said.

Article ID# 1348529