Iqaluit airport manager on hold with Air Canada

New flight to Nunavut’s capital could strain terminal’s capacity

By CHRIS WINDEYER

Passengers walk down the ramp at Iqaluit’s airport. Manager John Graham says Iqaluit’s airport has runway room to accommodate Air Canada’s new route to Iqaluit, but passengers could face an even more crowded terminal building.


Passengers walk down the ramp at Iqaluit’s airport. Manager John Graham says Iqaluit’s airport has runway room to accommodate Air Canada’s new route to Iqaluit, but passengers could face an even more crowded terminal building. (FILE PHOTO)

Nunavut’s busiest airport is going to get even busier in March when Air Canada Jazz begins daily flights to Iqaluit.

That’s why John Graham, the director of the Iqaluit airport, would really like Air Canada Jazz to give him a call.

Graham said Tuesday no one from the latest airline to enter the Nunavut market has been in contact with him to discuss arrangements for a third daily flight from Ottawa.

“I have no idea at this point in time what Air Canada even wants,” Graham said.

In an email, Air Canada Jazz spokeswoman Manon Stuart said the airline plans to get in touch with Graham “over the coming weeks.”

Iqaluit’s cramped terminal building could face congestion when Air Canada Jazz planes start landing. The airline’s flight is scheduled to arrive at 12:55, around the same time planes from Canadian North and First Air pull up alongside the terminal.

And on most days, southbound flights will all take off within 10 minutes of one another. It also means another flight with passengers who need to pass through security.

“In the screening room here, which we cannot expand another square foot, it’s going to be extremely congested,” Graham said.

Air Canada spokeswoman Isabelle Arthur said in an email that the Iqaluit schedule was designed to make it easier for passengers to connect with other flights.

Air Canada Jazz will also need a check-in counter and there’s no room to build a new one.

“All existing counter space has been leased out, so I guess we’re going to have to get real innovative once Air Canada states what their requirement is,” Graham said.

Stuart wrote that the airline is “currently evaluating the options for the ground handling [such as baggage handling and aircraft maintenance] of our flights to Iqaluit.”

Still, Graham’s not certain that more flights necessarily means more passengers. He wonders if the three flights will simply split the same number of flyers, at least at first.

But Graham said there is more than enough room on the airport’s apron to handle all the flights. A $10 million upgrade to the apron completed in 2006 means there’s plenty of room for all those planes.

“I’ve got 150,000 square metres of parking space,” he said.

Flights to and from Iqaluit have increased roughly five per cent every year for the last decade, Graham said. The airport now handles 22,000 take-offs and landings every year, an average of more than 60 per day.

Nunavut’s department of economic development and transportation has long eyed a new terminal building for Iqaluit. During the Nunavut Mining Symposium this past March, the department first unveiled an artist’s rendering of what a proposed $40-million replacement terminal might look like.

A department spokesman said a revised version of the Iqaluit airport master plan and a detailed blueprint of a new terminal were to be completed by the end of the month.

The proposal would then have to go before cabinet for approval.

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