Halifax Airport to build new international connections facility by fall 2025, gets $8.4 million in federal money for the project

Halifax Stanfield International Airport will construct a new international connections facility by the fall of next year to make Atlantic Canada's air-travel hub a more attractive destination for flights from abroad.

The airport, which will offer passenger flights to about 20 destinations outside Canada next year, has received $8.4 million (US$6.2 million) in funding from the federal government for the project. The grant was made to the Halifax International Airport Authority (HIAA), the federally backed agency that operates the airport.

"The facility will improve the connections process for air passengers arriving into Canada on international flights as well as to connecting to domestic destinations," the federal government's National Trade Corridors Fund said in a statement. "The additional cargo capacity will also support the movement of goods between Nova Scotia and international markets."

No details were provided about the total cost of the project or its impact on the airport's current capacity and operations.

An official for Transport Canada said an "announcement is scheduled in the coming weeks," declining to elaborate. An HIAA official declined to comment.

Halifax Stanfield, Canada's eighth-busiest airport, has scheduled year-round flights to London and Boston, and summer services to Frankfurt, Philadelphia and Washington. Flights to Reykjavik, Iceland, Edinburgh and Dublin will begin this summer. Winter flights go to warm-weather destinations in Cuba, Mexico and Florida.

HIAA says in a summary of its 2041 master plan: "In the near-to-medium term, an expanded International-To-Domestic Connections facility will be developed on a newly constructed floor above the International Arrivals Hall, to provide additional capacity for processing passengers arriving on international flights and connecting to an onward domestic flight."

The HIAA master plan forecasts that the airport will serve 6.6 million passengers by 2041, up from 3.6 million in 2023. Passenger traffic was 4.2 million in 2019, the year before the pandemic. Passenger figures are not broken out under the domestic and international categories. A total of $700 million has been invested in the airport since 2000, according to the master plan.

Halifax Stanfield is among Canada's 10 busiest cargo airports, according to the airport.

--HBB

St. John's airport traffic rose 14.7% in 2023; Regina International records 28.5% gain

Airports in St. John's and Regina, Saskatchewan, recorded double-digit gains in passenger traffic for 2023, extending rebounds from the depths of the pandemic. Traffic at both airports remained below pre-pandemic levels.

Passenger traffic at St. John's International Airport rose to 1.26 million in 2023, said Ryan Howell, the airport's marketing and communications advisor. That was up 14.7% from 1.10 million in 2022. At Regina International Airport, the 2023 number was 981,845, said Justin Reeves, the airport's director of revenue development, public relations and customer experience. That was up 28.5% from 764,128 in 2022.

St. John's International is Canada's 13th-busiest airport, while Regina International ranks 16th and is the second-busiest airport in Saskatchewan after Saskatoon. In 2019, St. John's recorded 1.48 million passengers and Regina 1.18 million.

-HBB

Billy Bishop airport, Canada's ninth-busiest, reports 17.5% increase in 2023 passenger traffic as travel extends rebound

Billy Bishop Toronto CIty Airport, the downtown airfield that handles regional flights on turboprops, reported a 17.5% increase in annual passenger traffic as travel continued to rebound from the pandemic.

The number of passengers passing through the airport climbed to 2.036 million in 2023 from 1.732 million in 2022, Jessica Pellerin, Billy Bishop's manager of media relations and public affairs, said in an email. The airport remained Canada's ninth-busiest after Halifax Stanfield International Airport, which served 3.579 million people in 2023. Passenger traffic at Billy Bishop was below the 2.800 million high reported in both 2017 and 2018.

Billy Bishop, known colloquially as the "island" airport because of its location on land 800 feet off the shore of Lake Ontario, is banned from serving passenger jets. The airport's main tenant is Porter Airlines, which flies to a dozen Canadian cities and several U.S. destinations using De Havilland Dash 8-400 turboprops. Porter also began operating from the city's main airfield, Toronto Pearson International Airport, in early 2023 using Embraer E195 E2 jets.

Pearson, Canada's busiest aviation facility, is one of the few major airports that hasn't reported its passenger traffic for 2023. In 2022, Pearson served 35.6 million people. Billy Bishop is named for a World War I Canadian flying ace.

--HBB