Provincial Airport Funding Won’t Land at YXS
Prince George, B.C. – $24 million in provincial funding over the next three years won’t be landing at YXS.
Instead the money will be benefiting airports in smaller communities like Fort St. John, Smithers, Terrace and Quesnel as part of the Province’s new 10-year transportation plan.
“Through the B.C. Air Access Program, the ministry will cost share with public airports on projects such as lighting and navigational systems, terminal building expansion or upgrades, and runway improvements,” reads a government news release.
The money ($6 million in 2015) will flow through B.C.’s Air Access Program and communities have until June 22, 2015 to apply.
It has caught the eye of Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson who notes “we’re actually looking at it. By happenstance, we’re just completing an airport business plan and we also had a private sector development plan come forward for the airport,” he says. “So we may be able to partner with them for an oversized hangar that would allow us to overnight some of the Central Mountain Air flights.”
But he says the City will also need to consider the funding criteria.
“In most cases, this is not free money, in that they will underwrite 100% of the costs. It does require a contribution from the local taxpayers,” says Simpson.
“If they (Victoria) were really interested in regional airports and making them viable, then they would engage with us in a meaningful way to underwrite the costs of running those airports because the Quesnel Airport has lost money since the City was forced to take it over from the federal government. Our taxpayers are subsidizing that airport.”
Despite those challenges, he says either by the end of this week or early next week “we should be in a position to decide on some projects we might be able to throw in there without upsetting our own capital plans for our community.”
Manager of Marketing and Communications with the Prince George Airport Authority Lindsay Cotter says YXS benefits indirectly when smaller airports expand through “any increases in aviation activity,” and adds “Even the port and road improvements will benefit us, as more access generates more business and business generates jobs and people with jobs travel.”
Comments
does YXS need any funding?
They have a nice long runway that no one needs….
they have this wonderful pipe dream that the planes flying over at 30,000 feet are going to just drop on in to say hi…
YXS must be flush with money given all those cargo planes landing and re-fueling at the airport. Probably time to hire a few more experts to sort out the logistics of handling all the additional air traffic. In the minds of some YXS is no doubt being considered as Chicago O’Hare north.
Good one Resident.
Federal Govn’t goofed on the cargo plane idea. They sunk in millions building the runway, but won’t change the landing tax which makes us non-competitive with Anchorage.
What landing tax would that be pgjohn, and how much is it.???
Once again having MLAs and two high power back benchers sitting on the government side of the day has brought you dick . On the other hand mla Austin and MP Cullen have delivered mega up grades to yxt that are continuing still .
YXS was set up as an Airport Authority a number of years ago, and has instituted an Airport Improvement Fee that originally was $5.00 per outbound flight but is now $20.00 per outbound flight. The Airport Improvement Fee money can only be used for Airport Improvements, and the amount collected in 2014 was $3,871,215.00. If they don’t spend this money on improvements then they would have to reduce the AIF rate.
Projects that this money has been spent on over the years were:
a. Expanding the Terminal Building
b. Expanding the parking spaces from 500 to 800
c. Building the runway expansion
d. Buying the fuel storage tanks and hiring an operator
e. Now in the process of building at 25000sq ft warehouse at the North End of the Airport.
So you can see they have no shortage of money at YXS. In fact if you look a what the money has been spent on over the past years you could say most of it has been wasted, or will be wasted. This is what happens when you insist that money collected in Airport Improvement Fee’s be spent on improvements. That’s what they will do.
Insofar as parking goes, they collected $1,535,762.00 in revenue in 2014. Hmmmm. Perhaps they could reduce the parking costs.
Excess of revenue over expenses in 2014 $3,957,831.00
So YXS does not need any Provincial money, and in fact should be looking at reducing the Airport Improvement Fee’s.
Yes it’s also great for Ottawa and Victoria . Gst/ pst . And pst/gst on upgrades and IT on wages . Fleecing sheeple is what it’s all about .
“Prince George, B.C. – $24 million in provincial funding over the next three years won’t be landing at YXS. Instead the money will be benefiting airports in smaller communities like Fort St. John, Smithers, Terrace and Quesnel as part of the Province’s new 10-year transportation plan.”
And rightly so! The increase in Fly-in Fly-out work camps up here in the north, will not benefit our airport all that much. Many camps, with dirt runways need small planes to transport their workers in and out. Therefore the emphasis should be on small airports. Anyone else getting the impression that, more and more, Prince George is being bypassed?
I agree Sophic Sage. I think that Terrace BC will be the hub of the Northwest in the future.
You can service Kitimat, Prince Rupert, and Highway 37 from Terrace, so Terrace is a natural distribution terminal. In fact some trucking companies are already expanding their facilities in Terrace.
Prince George will continue as the Hospital, University, College, and to some extent Government worker town. However there doesn’t seem to be anything going on in the Prince George area that will help this town grow.
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