Sask. airports see slow traffic for holidays
Traffic dropped severely at the Regina airport in April to lowest point ever
Saskatchewan's two largest airports say traffic is still incredibly slow.
The most recent complete data for the Saskatoon International Airport is from November 2020. It shows an 85 per cent reduction in passenger traffic compared to November 2019.
"We have not seen an increase in traffic since August, and have been down month-over-month since then," CJ Dushinski, vice president, business development and service quality at the Saskatoon airport, said in an email.
"On average in December 2020 we had approx. 300 departing passengers per day, compared to over 2,000 departing passengers/day in 2019."
James Bogusz, president and CEO of the Regina Airport Authority, said that airport is in a similar situation.
Traffic dropped severely in April to the lowest point the airport had ever seen. It then climbed a bit in the summer. Now, Bogusz said it's dropping again.
"We had certainly, of course, our slowest Christmas on record," he said in an interview. "Given that Christmas and January and February are typically our busiest months, it's been a huge blow."
Pre-pandemic, the Regina Airport Authority employed 55 to 57 people in the winter and 50 year-round.
"Unfortunately, now we're down to 40, so we've had a dramatic decrease in our own staffing," Bogusz said.
Travel guidelines on the province's website state that interprovincial travel should be limited and that international travel is not recommended at this time.