Saskatoon airport starting to see small uptick in passengers

Saskatoon’s John G. Diefenbaker Airport is starting to see a very slow increase in passengers going through the facility.

Like many businesses and services, the airport was dramatically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic when it hit.

When lockdowns and restrictions were put in place, they affected how the airport could do business. The federal government began funneling major international flights into only four major airports as a method of mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

In April, the number of passengers flying in and out of Saskatoon dropped between 95 and 98 per cent of previous levels.

CJ Duchinski is the vice-president of business development and service quality at the airport. She says as restrictions are starting to lift a bit, things are very slowly starting to improve.

“At our worst we were down to about 20 passengers a day back in April and we’ve kind of clawed our way back to 400 passengers a day. But that’s still quite a cry from where we used to be, where we used to see 3,000 passengers a day,” said Duchinski.

She stresses that there is still a long way to go to get back to anything resembling normal.

“We’re still not out of the woods. It’s still a pretty drastic situation we’re facing. I can say we’ve seen some flight improvements day after day,” said Duchinski.

She says the announcement Thursday that Flair Airlines will be offering service to Vancouver and Toronto out of Saskatoon came as welcome news.

“It’s good for us to get some more seats in the market. Right now with everything going on with COVID there are not a lot of flights currently operating out of the airport, so we are limited for what’s available for seat capacity, so it’s great to get some of that capacity into the market,” said Duchinski.

She believes Flair made its decision to move into the Saskatoon and Regina markets based on economics and location.

“I think it’s been a difficult market for most of our Canadian airlines over the past several months — some of the airlines that would traditionally fly into the United States or elsewhere have been closed,” said Duchinski. “So our Canadian airlines are looking for other opportunities domestically to pick up that capacity and I think Saskatoon is a good market.”

The discount air carrier will begin service into and out of Saskatoon on Aug. 27.