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Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker
Almost all trans-Atlantic flights once had to stop in Gander. There were tremendous benefits for us - if you go back through old newspapers in St. John's, there are advertisements for every conceivable airline, telling readers to speak to their local booking agent in St. John's and fly out of Gander. All of the celebrities of that era passed through. Canada was actually getting a bad reputation because all most people ever saw of it was Gander, and its old bush terminal. It was the federal government that built the award-winning terminal there for that reason:
https://flic.kr/p/cERQEJ
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Regarding our airports - it's mostly due to regionalism. Many are served only by one of our local airlines (PAL, Air Labrador, etc.). These, in turn, are obscenely expensive and mostly serve politicians and the public service. It's all covered by taxpayers, however indirectly, and meant to make it easy for MHAs to get from their rural ridings to the Confederation Building.
Beyond that, Deer Lake (especially, but the others as well) served the up-to-30,000 rural NLers who live here but work in other provinces. That traffic is starting to die down, of course.
The only oddity is Stephenville and Deer Lake being so close together. Stephenville was the big boy, very successful for its size (I believe it's still an international airport, even). Some politician didn't want to have to drive that far from his cottage up near Deer Lake so the latter airport (until then, just one of the airstrips every other town here has) was given political support and Stephenville was politically hobbled and held back. Governments change, incentives change, the people wanting to kill Stephenville lost power before the deed could be done, and so now we're left with both.
The rest all make sense in terms of isolation or legacy. That graphic above isn't even all of them. There are lots of smaller ones, especially in northern Labrador (no roads, no winter ferry service possible due to ice).
St-Pierre et Miquelon has a proper airport as well.
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EDIT: Found some info on the different ones, including all the officially maintained airstrips on the island and Labrador:
http://www.tw.gov.nl.ca/airportservices/index.html |
Just to supplement this:
Gander was built as the "Newfoundland Airport" and wasn't renamed for Gander until later on. YQX was entirely to support early trans-Atlantic travel so that aircraft would leave New York or Boston, refuel in Gander and then often stop off again in Shannon, Ireland before making the last hop to London, Paris or Berlin.
Stephenville was built by the US Air Force to provide a jump off for European bound flights in WWII, and later as a base for KC-97's to jump from and do mid-air refuels, as well as a group of fighter jets. The base then became an alternate to Gander for passenger traffic/refuelling, then Air Canada (Trans Canada Airways) built a civilian terminal for passenger flights.
Deer Lake's emergence was an oddity. Trans Canada Air held a monopoly on flights to an from Stephenville (YJT) back when air service was highly regulated in the 1950s. Eastern Provincial Airways (EPA) came on the scene and wanted to service the west coast but Air Canada wouldn't let them in, so EPA began using the gravel air strip in Deer Lake. Eventually regulations were relaxed and EPA moved its Western/Labrador hub to Stephenville while AC started service to Deer Lake. The two airlines played each other and each airport against each other for a few decades until 2002.
Air Canada pulled out of Stephenville in the late 80s. Canadian Airlines, Air Labrador, and EPA continued service and we still posted numbers of 180,000+ passengers a year. Stephenville began pushing for a new terminal so that service could continue to grow but instead of building a new terminal to continue our growth, provincial government, and mostly Brian Tobin, funded a new terminal in Deer Lake, which gave them a huge selling point over Stephenville. Prior to that they basically had a shed. Stephenville is still using the US Servicemen's terminal from the 1950s. After the terminal business went down, AC bought up Canadian Airlines and took on their routes from Stephenville until 2002 when they pulled the plug and went solely with Deer Lake. Air Labrador followed a couple years later, Canada 3000 went under, Jetsgo later did the same. Deer Lake and Stephenville got into a bidding war for WestJet in the late 2000s, WestJet and Stephenville had a deal worked out but not signed. Sean Durfy took over as CEO of WestJet and immediately took that deal off the table to announce service to Deer Lake the following week - guess where his summer home is? Deer Lake.
Stephenville entered bankruptcy protection in 2004 and asked for government support to replace infrastructure like fuel tanks in order to build on refuelling of private/executive aircraft, a lucrative market for us. They said no. Then the Abitibi mill shut down so government finally threw us a bone and provided a $750,000 line of credit. You can guess how far that goes when you're operating an airport... Their reason was "we're not in the business of supporting airports". Later that year government ponied up a couple million to expand the runway in Deer Lake. Go figure.
When the Humber Valley Resort opened near Corner Brook they wanted to provide a charter to England for chalet owners at the resort. They tried to work out a deal with Stephenville since we are an International airport and have customs service. It couldn't be worked out and they landed the charter flights in Deer Lake, which didn't have customs, an international lounge or a runway longer than 6000ft. The flight used a Boeing 757, which is rather large for that size runway but was allowed if they had emergency fire service on hand for landings. Deer Lake did not have an airport fire service and the town itself has only a volunteer fire brigade. Passengers were then bused to the community fire hall to be processed by customs before being allowed to head to the resort.
The federal government then provided for full customs service and point of entry status at Deer Lake, even though Stephenville already had it a little over an hour drive away. And provincial government ponied up even more cash for another terminal expansion.
In 30 years we haven't been able to catch a break from any level of government.
But in the last couple of years we've had seasonal service to Toronto-Pearson with Sunwing, Halifax/Toronto-Billy Bishop/Ottawa with Porter, and St. Pierre with Air St-Pierre, in addition to PAL's St. John's route which has been expanded from 3 days a week once daily to 6 days a week twice daily over the last year. For all the talk about Deer Lake being a better location, the fact is that 85% of the west coast population is south of Deer Lake. 25,000 live in Stephenville-Bay St. George, another 15K in Port-aux-Basques/south coast communities that are all closer to YJT than Deer Lake. Another 35,000 in Corner Brook-Bay of Islands which is only 45 minutes away, just 10 minutes further than driving to Deer Lake. For comparison, there are only about 15K people from Deer Lake all the way up the northern peninsula. /rant
With the right management and a little support from government, we can come back.
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thanks for the info
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