Edmonton is on pace to be at 7,000,000 this year or damn near.

I'm impressed by the Edmonton airport control tower. It still looks as if it were a rendering.

I think it's a remarkable demonstration of the nation's shifting centre of gravity that Alberta's airports now move 20,314,582 people annually. Add Vancouver, Kelowna, and Victoria and the two western-most provinces' large airports are moving 40,859,013 people annually. Add Winnipeg, Regina, and Saskatoon, and the western provinces' large airports move 46,909,741 annually; 45% of the total moved by the 14 large airports on that list.

Whenever Edmonton's passenger numbers grow it seems like Calgary's do too. The west is booming.

YYC is on track right now to easily break 14 million this year and overtake YUL as the 3rd busiest airport in the country.

http://www.yyc.com/en-us/media/facts...tatistics.aspx

Can anyone explain what these letters mean; YOW, YYZ, YUL?

Actually it is not. A focus city yes, but a hub - no way. Vancouver is more of a hub than YYC is. Calgary hits way above its weight because of the energy industry and the traffic that generates (both business and leisure).

Good to see that at half the population, Vancouver has half the passengers than Toronto. Considering Toronto is the home of AC and the largest airport in the country, and Vancouver has no home airline its doing quite well.

Vancouver lead the way with downtown-airport rail link when they built the Canada line for the 2010 Olympics and Toronto is finally building a long overdue link to Pearson International but are their any other cities taking a serious look into a Downtown-Airport link?

Going through the thread I saw MTLskyline's May 2010 post about Pierre Trudeau International's underground rail station progress and different possibilities (ATM or STM) but I have yet to hear any update on this.

Codes for Ottawa, Toronto (Pearson) and Montreal (Trudeau) airports, respectively.

Discussions about airports and aviation typically use IATA airport codes... you can find a complete list here: http://www.prokerala.com/travel/airports/canada/

They're just airport codes. For some reason, Canada didn't get their city names as acronyms for their airport codes like American cities, but most Canadian cities have at least the first letter of the city name in their code, like YVR for Vancouver, YYC for Calgary, and YEG for Edmonton, among others.

Thanks. Still don't get the point though.

Idenification purposes, because many cities have the same or similar names.

Fair enough.

You should probably tell Air Canada that, because some rube in marketing has been happily marking Calgary down as a hub. What an embarrassment; they should know better!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield <-- 7 countries' worth of Springfields
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland <-- 9 countries' worth of Portlands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...S._place_names <-- most common city names in US
Etc.

Montreal is the home of Air Canada. Toronto is just our largest airport and naturally where Air Canada's largest operations are. ;)

It's a combination of Calgary hitting above its weight and Montreal hitting below. Interesting to note that Melbourne is the same size as Montreal, but has almost double the traffic. Air travel is far more expensive in Canada so travelers drive, take the bus, or train when possible. Montreal is also a fairly poor city by north American standards. People don't hop on planes like they do in Melbourne, Boston, etc. High prices caused by Ottawa taxation policies just exacerbate the problem. For the sake of comparison:

1. SYD Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport - 36,927,417 passengers. (Toronto is a far more populous city in a far more populous region)
2. MEL Melbourne Airport - 29,297,357 passengers. (Montreal is the same size, but in a more populous region)
3. BNE Brisbane Airport - 21,017,060 passengers. (Vancouver is the same size, but in a more populous region)

Competition for Toronto in the east? I think Halifax takes a tiny bit of trans-Atlantic traffic away from Toronto, but not much. Halifax benefits from geography, but its potential as a north American hub has never been realized. For instance, it could be used instead of Boston or New York for flights that continue on to points in the US heartland, but I doubt they get much of that business.

I'd argue that YYC is in fact a "Hub"...but I'd put label it as more of a Domestic/Transborder Hub.

^^ Calgary is definitely a hub and AC is developing it as one.

Billy Bishop (Toronto Island Airport) is missing from the list and should be in 9th spot behind Winnipeg. Wikipedia lists it at around 2,000,000. Sounds like an estimate, but roughly right.

01. Toronto (Pearson) 34,912,456
02. Vancouver 17,596,901
03. Montreal (Trudeau) 13,809,820
04. Calgary 13,638,137
05. Edmonton 6,676,445

06. Ottawa (Cartier) 4,685,956
07. Halifax (Stanfield) 3,605,701
08. Winnipeg (Richardson) 3,538,175
09. Toronto (Billy Bishop) 2,000,000*
10. Victoria 1,506,578

11. St. John's 1,450,000
12. Kelowna 1,440,952
13. Quebec City (Lesage) 1,342,840
14. Saskatoon (Diefenbaker) 1,326,838
15. Regina 1,185,715


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...orts_in_Canada

Not a chance. If that was the case Edmonton's numbers would be a lot closer to Calgary's (or vice versa)

Calgary is a hub for Air Canada, and obviously the focus airport for Westjet.

IMO those are the reason the numbers get inflated.

I think Australia might have bigger numbers due to the fact that they are an isolated island. Comparing two similar sized cities in North America Toronto Pearson's numbers (34,912,456) are in line with Boston's Logan (29,325,617). Same with Vancouver (17,596,901) and Portland (14,390,784).