Transborder = USA
International = Everything else

Calgary punches far above our weight mainly due to the domestic traffic, however transborder has had big increases over the last few years too. International is nothing amazing, but for a city our size having non-stop flights to LHR, FRA, AMS, and NRT year round scheduled is pretty impressive.

Also worth noting that our traffic counts DO NOT include all the oil and gas charter flights that leave from the private terminals and FBO's on the field. I couldn't even hazard a guess at the numbers, but there are quite a few flights every day serving that exclusively.

:previous: Cool little tidbit Bigtime, thanks.

Interesting you bring up this point Bigtime. Over on the YEG thread in the Alberta section they have posted the latest passenger numbers for the airport and for the first time (that I have noticed) they are including FBO passengers. At YEG they are running at about 11% of the total traffic for the airport. I would think YYC would be about the same percentage. And taking this even further, if you think the numbers would be larger for Calgary or Edmonton, consider how much traffic to Ft McMurray is NOT using YMM but flying directly to the various other airports in the region. YMM is experiencing explosive growth as it is, think what it would be if everyone flying to Ft Mac actually flew into the city airport.

The decline in YOW traffic is almost certainly caused by reduced government travel. I work for the federal government and there's been a huge cutback in travel budgets. They don't send people to conferences nearly as often as they used to. Its rather embarrassing, as at many international conferences/cons, there's delegates from practically every country with Canada missing... but I digress.

YOW's traffic has always been a lot lower than you'd expect for Ottawa's population because of the proximity to YUL and a lesser extent YYZ. If Ottawa was located in, say, the middle of the Northern Ontario bush its air traffic would be high. That also explains why Calgary's air traffic is so high, its relative isolation within the continent--also the large corporate presence. It wasn't that long ago that Ottawa was bigger than Calgary (Calgary pulled ahead around 2010-ish I think), yet Calgary's air traffic was much higher even 10 years ago.

Ottawa's public transit declines is due almost entirely to federal downsizing. Ottawa's transit ridership was growing at incredible rates right until the downsizing started in 2012, then it started dropping. A lot of the people laid off by the feds were older people who simply exited the workforce entirely taking their lay off as a reason to retire early. It's actually a good thing IMO, as the BRT is insanely overloaded as it is, and if ridership kept growing at 2%-3% a year, there's no way the Transitway could have kept us going until the Confederation Line completes, whereas now we'll probably squeak through just in time.

That is sort of a cop out. It just isn't as busy of an airport, the end. If your assumptions about why Calgary's is so busy were correct, than why are Edmonton's so significantly larger than Ottawa's too? Edmonton is only 3 hours from Calgary, two major cities in a short distance. Our numbers are larger because we're relatively a hub in the west.



Some pics of the new terminal of Fort McMurray International Airport. It opened yesterday.


http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.c...rport27rb2.JPG
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.c...rport27rb1.JPG
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.c...rport27rb8.JPG
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.c...rport27rb9.JPG

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...ticle18876169/

^ Sharp looking interior for Fort Mac. Good stuff. That was a Michael Green project, if I'm not mistaken. Had Dialog won the project it would have had an Alberta terminal hat-trick.

Out of curiosity, why would traffic through private terminals & FBOs not be counted for Calgary or Edmonton's airport throughput? They use the same runways, taxiways, etc. Would anyone happen to know whether flights out of YVR's South Terminal are similarly excluded?

God, they're really going for it, aren't they? They're really going to make Fort Mac a boomtown. It's SO far north! I hope it lasts.

Airport terminal is gorgeous for a small city. Probably the smallest one that's certain to have direct flights from YYT. :haha:

Edmonton's also relatively isolated within the continent. Plus there's a lot of air traffic between Calgary and Edmonton (which I've always found funny given how close together they are...). Neither city has to deal with YUL being a 1.5 hour drive. I've actually only ever been inside Ottawa airport once (when I was flying to Edmonton last year, coincidentally enough :)), despite growing up there--every time we travelled, we drove to YUL, occasionally to YYZ. My parents go to Europe every summer and they always drive to YUL. Does Edmonton have a trend of being driving to Calgary? I imagine they would given how many convenient connections Calgary has, but YEG's numbers are so high that it doesn't seem like it.

There's probably a whole host of other reasons too. Ottawa being a government town, Calgary being a business town is likely a factor. Both cities have around the same average household income so that wouldn't be a factor I imagine. Though there's a difference in the reason for high income--in the case of Ottawa its because the blue-collar working class demographic is very small so it inflates the city's average income--there actually aren't many rich people in Ottawa--whereas Calgary its because everybody simply makes more, so maybe that is part of the reason.

That's one hell of an airport for a place like Fort McMurray.... they probably need it though with all the temp workers going in and out.

Do you have the numbers for international travel in Montreal versus Calgary ? I'd be curious to know them.

I could look them up but YUL trounces YYC in the international category.

Here you go, 2013 international passenger numbers:

YUL: 5,302,692 (up 1.1%)
YYC: 1,325,846 (down 0.67%)

Now take a look at the domestic numbers:

YUL: 5,408,528 (up 1.4%)
YYC: 10,069,903 (up 5.14%)

Thank you !

I wish we had that airport when I was up in Fort McMurray - the old terminal was a dump! I can't tell you how many times I was stuck waiting outside in -30 to check in during the Christmas rush...it was gross.

The scary thing is that the terminal was built to handle 1.5 million passengers a year and they are already at 1.2 million! So an expansion is expected in 5 years - insane.

I suspect that some of the companies that have direct charters to private airfields did it because the commute time from the airport to their sites adds another 1.5 hours plus and there may not actually be an easy direct road connection. Highway 63 literally 'ends' at some of the plant sites north of the City...I always found that funny.

Most of the sites that were within the 1.5 hour commute time and had a direct road connection (from what I recall) didn't have private airstrips and all funnelled through YMM. If you tried to get on highway 63 at the wrong time you would see this massive wall of traffic coming either into town or heading out as the shift changes hit.

It looks even nicer now that it's opened. There is a wall in the main concourse that glows green like the northern lights! It's all rippely and everything! :) You can see the wall in the upper left of the first pic I posted.


Apparently they are already working on the design of the next expansion at Fort Mac, as this new terminal is designed to handle 1.5 million passengers a year, and their numbers are already around 1.3 million.

The old YMM terminal will still be used for Syncrude and Suncor flights. There are a couple of Major Aerodromes north of town and I know Stat Oil has their own runway about 150 km south.

As to why YEG and YYC are so busy, if you have driven between the 2 cities you will know why most businesses opt to fly or take Red Arrow. Also YEG has been running a campaign to stop driving to the YYC terminal and demand more direct flights. Its also safer to fly to YMM than drive. There are a multitude of reasons for the 2 airports doing so well but also remember there is also a lot of travel into the far north from YEG as well.
When I am back up in YMM next month I will get more shots and post them if no-one else does by then. It is also shocking to see how many Americans are making the trip to McMurray now, even over just a year ago.

That's astounding that international numbers are almost identical to domestic at YUL. I'll hazard a guess and say that insinuates that:

1. Quebecers are less likely to travel within Canada and more inclined to eeave the country.
2. a lot of domestic travel is done locally (confined within Quebec or southern Ontario) and thus more likely to be done by auto or train than by air.

Toronto is only 5-6h by car. Quebecers prefer to go to Europe instead of going to Vancouver or Calgary for example.

Well obviously:haha:, so do Calgarians and Vancouverites (the vise versa) :P Though Asia and Oceania may be a bit more popular than Europe here.

It's expensive to fly to Vancouver. A ticket to Paris costs the same.

Also to consider, is all the travels to cuba/mexico/dominican republic... during winter which definitly boost the international travel numbers