Ottawa’s airport is slowing restoring routes that were dropped during the pandemic.
Millions of dollars are being spent to upgrade infrastructure as the airport prepares for a bigger increase in air traffic and the pandemic recovery plan is heavily dependent on federal government funding.
“Our airports have been hit really hard by the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Minister of Transport, Omar Alghabra, “and despite the many challenges, airports have continued to provide essential air services for Canadians.”
Runway repaving was possible through a $4 million federal cheque.
“This investment will help ensure continued safe airport operations for passengers, airline crews and airport workers,” says Alghabra.
Ottawa’s airport lost several key routes during the pandemic. For example, Air Canada had an Ottawa to Frankfurt flight. With pandemic restrictions lifted, some of those routes are being re-instated.
“We’re at about 75 per cent of our passenger volumes,” says Ottawa Airport VP of Communications, Krista Kealey. “And we expect that to go higher during the holidays.”
The infrastructure renovations are just in time for what could be a busy winter for the airport.
“The seasonal schedule for holiday and charter sunshine destination flights is excellent,” says Kealey. “It's probably at where it was in 2019, and perhaps even a little bit better.”
The airport is applying for another federal fund to help add more routes out of Ottawa.
“We've made a request for an Air Improvement Fund, which would enable airports to use funds to try to incentivize airlines to offer more direct routes when they want to de-risk them,” says Mark Laroche, Ottawa Airport President and CEO. “For example, when there's a new route that's announced, the airline takes a lot of risk because they don’t know what the passenger volume is, so they ask for incentives to ensure that they're profitable at the end of the year.”
Porter Airlines is also building two hangars at the Ottawa Airport, another sign of more route options for Ottawa passengers in the near future.
“Receiving funds from the federal government, we were able to build taxiway Romeo, which is the one that Porter announced, and the construction of a hangar,” says Laroche. “This hangar can receive up to six aircraft for maintenance. It's going to bring 200 full-time, well-paid jobs to the airport.”
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