The CEO of Victoria Airport Authority (VAA) Elizabeth Brown took stock of the year's accomplishments, challenges and goals for 2025.
In an interview with Peninsula B次元官网网址 Review, she described 2024 as a year of transition and opportunities.
PNR: We are definitely experiencing the airport rush for the year-end holidays.
EB: Definitely. We've got two busy seasons here: summer, but it's spread over a longer period, whereas the holiday season is all concentrated on a very short period. So, we get a lot of people coming through the doors and lots of people that are happy and sometimes a little stressed because they're trying to get their gifts through security and that sort of thing.
PNR: How would you describe YYJ to someone whoB次元官网网址檚 not from around here?
EB: We are a capital city airport B次元官网网址� capital of British Columbia. We're a destination, so we are not a connecting airport by any stretch, but we are an airport where lots of people are trying to come and see what a beautiful place we live in. The airport plays an important role in ensuring that our first and last impressions of Vancouver Island are positive.
PNR: In 2024, how many passengers arrived at YYJ?
EB: This year we expect that we will finish with about 1.86 million passengers in total...so that's inbound and outbound. And that is up against our budget, but also up against last year when we were sitting around 1.7 million passengers. It's a good, healthy increase that we've seen in passengers year over year, but we're not quite at the level that we were in 2019 before the pandemic (2 million travellers).
PNR: Why is that?
EB: Well, you know, it's been a slow recovery. The larger airports are big connecting hubs, so their recovery has been a little faster than some of the regional and smaller airports like Victoria, Regina or Prince George.
PNR: Does YYJ continue to experience the pandemic's after-effects?
EB: The challenge that we're having is less pandemic-related now and more just what's happening in the aviation industry. The Boeing strike which resulted in delays of aircraft deliveries, particularly the 737 Max. And that's an aircraft that's supposed to go to one of our biggest air carriers here, which is WestJet. When airlines are not getting the capacity that they were planning on, it means that they're not able to grow or to be able to provide all the routes that we've had in the past. That's really the challenge that we're having right now with the aircraft that we have here. They perform exceptionally well; we have what we refer to as very high-load factors; if there are 100 seats, the majority of them are occupied; however, the market has fewer seats than it did before the pandemic. There's just not as many airplanes, there's not as many seats in the market, and that's kind of our challenge.
PNR: Aside from the challenges, could you share some of the positive changes at YYJ this year?
EB: We've now seen Porter Airlines here in our market for a full year. They started in October of 2023. They're performing really well. That's our daily service to Toronto on Porter, and they have great-sized aircraft. They fly in Embraer E195-E2. It's a nice small jet, so it's a great level of service.
In addition to re-entering the market, Alaska Airlines expanded to four daily flights this year. As a result, we have excellent access to Seattle's Tacoma International Airport, the United States, and Mexico via that gateway.
WestJet and Air Canada continue to provide good strong services. We had Montreal come back this summer. WestJet does really well with their services to Toronto as well as to Calgary, Edmonton and Kelowna and that's been great for us. A hailstorm caused some of WestJet's aircraft to ground. They had some damage to their aircraft and those aircraft have not fully returned to their system. So that's made it very difficult for them to be able to fly all the services that they want to fly and yet they continue to support Victoria and continue to operate flights to numerous domestic locations as well as popular winter destinations.
We've been fortunate that WestJet sees Victoria as a strong market for them.
PNR: How would you describe 2024 at YYJ?
EB: That's an interesting question. This airport is going through a time of great transition and exploring great opportunities for us in the future. I think 2024 has laid some very strong groundwork from adding more people to the Victoria Airport Authority team and starting to explore what terminal expansion could look like in the future and the investments that we need to make in this infrastructure.
Some of the partners that are present at the airport, such as Viking Air, have shown great strength. They plan to increase their production of water bombers and create more jobs at the airport.
With the work we're doing on our team, we'll see some growth in terms of air service and land development opportunities that we have in the area. We've also laid some solid foundations for growth in 2025 and I'm sure that we'll see a complete return to pre-COVID numbers.
PNR: Could you elaborate on the VAA's plan to rezone airport land in relation to land development opportunities?
EB: It's not really a rezoning that we're doing. As part of our head lease with Transport Canada, we are required to update the way all of our land is categorized. Transport Canada made a recommendation for us to simplify the way we've done that and that's what we've done. Almost nothing on airport property has changed substantially, including how it might be used or zoned.
At the end of the day, we do what's most important B次元官网网址� to offer our passengers excellent service and ensure their comfort from the moment they arrive at our curbside until they board their aircraft and when they disembark, as well as throughout their entire journey to their ground transportation. Therefore, those are some of the choices we must make to ensure that we never lose sight of the fact that we are here to serve the community and that we are giving passengers the best degree of service possible.
PNR: This year, the construction of a hotel and a new airport tower got underway. How far along are those two big projects?
EB: Nav Canada is actively working on the tower that's expected to be completed by 2027. We're very excited. It's just starting to take a little shape out of the ground over on the west side of the airport campus. The Marriott Town Suites is also starting to take shape and is expected to be competed by the end of 2025.
PNR: Would you say that Hawaii Mars' arrival was another noteworthy event at the airport this year?
EB: Yes. That is just such a significant aircraft to have here, as you know, there's only two of them left in the world really that are flying. To have Mars now sitting at the B.C. Aviation Museum and the great work that our partners over at the museum did to work with Coulson Aviation to bring that aircraft here is amazing and just iconic. We have people who are arriving at this airport who are coming just to be able to see that aircraft. ItB次元官网网址檚 very exciting for us and at the end of the day we're all aviation geeks, right? We all like to watch airplanes.
