Study: Rankin Inlet airport badly needs expansion

Passengers enter the terminal at Rankin Inlet’s airport in this 2007 file photo. A new report calls for a major expansion to relieve congestion both on the apron and inside the terminal. (FILE PHOTO)

Rapid passenger growth has left Rankin Inlet’s airport badly in need of expansion, according to a study released by the Government of Nunavut

The airport’s master plan, released June 24, says the airport is far too small to handle as many as 40,000 more annual passengers expected to travel through the facility over the next 20 years.

“The terminal building is now severely undersized and congested and the main apron and taxiway are unable to accommodate arriving and departing aircraft without compromising safety standards and experiencing excessive delays,” says the report, prepared by LPS Avia Consulting.

“Expansion of the air terminal building, apron and taxiway system are essential immediately.”

The report notes that passenger traffic at the airport — Nunavut’s second busiest after Iqaluit — has already grown from 35,000 in 1999 to 55,000 today.

The report states that the Rankin airport is unusable 10 per cent of the time due to a combination of bad weather and subpar electronic landing equipment, which plays havoc with flights, particularly the three weekly flights that connect Rankin Inlet to Winnipeg.

“The frequent unavailability of the airport interrupts the regional transportation network, prolongs business and personal travel and increases the cost of living and doing business in Nunavut,” the report says.

The state of the airport’s landing system also disrupts medevac flights. The report says Rankin Inlet “has by far the largest medical travel demand” in the territory because of the new regional health centre.

Rankin’s airport also needs runway and landing equipment upgrades to accommodate larger cargo aircraft.

In the short term, the report calls for an expansion of the terminal and, construction of a new taxiway, and a new terminal road and parking lot.

It pegs the cost of those improvements at $32.2 million.

The Rankin Inlet plan is one of two — the other plan is for Cambridge Bay — announced June 10 in the Legislature by Peter Taptuna, the economic development and transportation minister.

Taptuna said Rankin, along with Cambridge and Iqaluit, make up Nunavut’s three gateways to southern Canada.

“We all pass through these airports on a regular basis and we can see firsthand how much activity occurs in our hub airports,” Taptuna said.

A master plan for Iqaluit’s airport is undergoing a “final review” and will be released soon Taptuna said. But a copy of the plan, obtained by Nunatsiaq News this past March, envisions a $40-million air terminal and a major expansion of the airport’s commercial space.

Download the Rankin Inlet airport master plan here:

• Rankin Inlet Airport Master Plan: June 24, 2010 (Read-only password protected PDF, 12.5 MB)