Regina airport set to run out of money because of ‘catastrophic’ year

The Regina airport is expecting to run out of money this month while hoping to ride out the rest of the pandemic on a line of credit.

James Bogusz, president and CEO of the Regina Airport Authority, says time is running out to get more aid from the federal government.

“Our big push right now is to really try to secure some financial support from the federal government, which we’ve been asking for for 10 months,” Bogusz said Friday.

“We’ve made a lot of cuts to our operating line, we’ve laid off 30 per cent of our staff, we’re sitting here right now and our money’s running out in the month of January. We might be able to stretch into February, (but) then we’re out of cash and we’re into our line of credit.

“We’re really coming to the end.”

The airport is left with the tough decision of possibly charging more fees to use the airport, a decision that Bogusz does not want to make.

“We’re faced with this impossible decision: Either charge more to use the Regina airport — which means fee increases, which is a horrible time to do that, the worst time I can imagine to be raising fees — or we need the Government of Canada to let us know how they can help us financially well beyond the wage subsidy,” Bogusz said.

Bogusz added airport officials greatly appreciate the wage subsidy that’s in place, but it’s not nearly enough to be able to cover the current costs the airport has to carry.

“I want to stress that we appreciate the wage subsidy, but we need an amount that makes sense for our airport,” Bogusz said. “This is not to make us whole. This is to keep our operation running in an efficient and safe way.”

Airlines have been some of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with WestJet announcing on Friday that 1,000 employees will be temporarily laid off, put on unpaid leave or have their hours cut. The airline will chop about 30 per cent of its capacity for February and March while pulling 160 domestic departures from its schedule.

Bogusz said that news doesn’t come as a surprise, and he does expect there to be further implications on the Regina airport because of the WestJet announcement.

“If you were connecting to one of the cities that they’ve now cut, then that would of course have a downstream effect to Regina,” he said. “There really isn’t much left. We had a catastrophic year last year. I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”

Flights leaving Regina throughout December were at around 15 per cent capacity while meeting health guidelines that go with the massive downturn in travel.

“Revenues continue to be in a freefall,” he said. “We continue to cut expenses as much as possible, but they far exceed the revenue. There isn’t much more left to cut.

“It has been almost a year and we’ve been given no meaningful support outside of the wage subsidy and that’s just not enough.”