[markbarbera]

The thing is, expansion has to be kept at a slow pace so as to prevent landing fees from skyrocketing. flyglobespan was attracted to Hamilton mainly due to the cheap landing fees compared to Pearson. The cost of airport expansion is always passed on to the airlines via landing fee increases, and to passengfers via airport improvement surcharges. Increases in these charges will make the airport less attractive to low cost airlines and their passengers.

The current terminal design accommodates about 15 flights a day. I believe this meets current flight levels. Of course, this is also the heavy summer travel time. Come October, flyglobespan is drastically reducing its overseas flights to just two weekly (as opposed to its current 15 weekly flights), which is a significant drop in overall traffic for this airport. Moreover, flyglobespan's expansion into long-haul flights has gone anything but smoothly this summer, so they may be a little less ambitious with next year's summer schedule.

YHM did have terminall expansion plans all drawn up a few years back, which called for two phases of terminal expansion. The first phase was to see a seven-gate rampway built (wow, imagine boarding a plane via a rampway in Hamilton!). However, these were drawn up in the heady days of 2003 when WestJet was still using Hamilton as its eastern hub. Phase one was supposed to begin in 2005, with a target completion date of 2009. Phase two, 12 additional gates, was scheduled to take place between 2010 and 2014, dependant on additional lands being acquired for displaced hangars. The plans are now two years behind schedule (typical for Hamilton projects), and, when they do start, will most likely be less ambitious in scope and timing. Should anyone know of, or have a copy of the revised expansion plans, it would be interesting to see them.