YYJ Talks Expansion

Victoria International Airport (YYJ) saw a bump in traffic last year, a trend that’s expected to continue. The two million passengers anticipated this year may face long lines at security during peak times and crowded waits at the gates. Those are some of the issues the Victoria Airport Authority (which manages and operates YYJ) plans to address in its 20-year master plan, but according to an interview published in the Times-Colonist, that timeline may be getting accelerated.

“We are at an important turning point for this airport in terms of having to manage facilities that are not ­sufficient for the traffic that we have today,”  says Elizabeth Brown, president and chief executive of the Victoria Airport Authority. “Now the decision we have to make is, in the face of escalating costs and challenges with tariffs from south of the border and acquiring goods from all over, do we spend time building over 20 years? Or do we condense what we need to do in a shorter period of time to take advantage of the fact that prices are lower and [we] expect them to increase?”

Preliminary designs for a new departures pavilion and a two-storey expansion have been completed and feature more space for security, allow for more efficient baggage-handling, and create more room in the departures area. 

Now, the authority must “consider the costs and how to approach the projects from a construction and financial perspective.”

“As a management team we are doing our due diligence [on the projects],” Brown told the Times-Colonist. “We are finding out how much this is going to cost, how we are going to pay for it and how does this impact the airport in terms of projections of passengers.”

For now, the airport is trying to alleviate some of the congestion in the departures area by moving the offices of airport administration and converting the space to passenger waiting areas. 

Related: Expect Construction Delays at YUL

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