YXS Hopeful of Landing Funding
Prince George, B.C.- The Prince George Airport will be submitting applications for a share of the funding announced this week by the Provincial Government.
The funding envelope has $8 million dollars this year, in the second of a three year program. The dollars are available for projects at B.C. Airports to support infrastructure improvements. But that doesn’t mean the Prince George Airport will automatically get a piece of that pie says YXS CEO John Gibson “We did submit last year for our capital program and we were denied.”
Gibson says his sense is that most of the funding will go to airports that are smaller than Prince George. “So what we’ve done is, we talked to the Province and told them we will continue to apply for some money there, we’ve also kept our program going with the other small NAS airports to get some money out of the Federal Government.” He says the new federal government is “very focused” on infrastructure although green projects and public transportation are preferred. “From our standpoint, we think we’ve made some inroads. The Federal Government is listening to us both on the transport side and the infrastructure side as there are two separate ministries that deal with airport funding.”
The Prince George Airport has about $3.5 million dollars worth of upgrades that need to be done this year, another $5 million in 2017.
The projects that might qualify for some provincial funding include runway overlays and “We need overlays on what we call our aprons, and we do have some lighting package requirements, and those are the ones that fall most specifically under the provincial (funding) guidelines. Federally we’ll use those projects too, as well as a replacement of our emergency response vehicle, which is almost a million and a half dollars.”
“The Federal Government and Provincial government are looking for what they call shovel ready projects. So we may be combining some projects over the two years if we think we can get the funding for them.”
With or without the funding, the projects identified will be done says Gibson “We had an engineering report done two yeas ago, and it shows that we needed to do our cross-wind runway immediately and we did that last year even without federal funding, hence the increase in the Airport Improvement Fee. Some of the other projects, (such as) the taxi-way, doesn’t take the same rigorous pounding as a runway, but it’s identified as critical for replacement and just about all of our other air side infrastructure, our aprons and such, are fairly serious and in the next two or three years are in need of repair.”
Comments
Gibson…..your answer is lottery tickets. Spend all the money on lottery tickets. Some day you’ll hit it big.
I think the airport should apply for funding for a flexible covered gangway to connect the planes to the airport building. A senior friend of mine arrived from Kitimat by plane. Being somewhat handicapped he underestimated the distance to the building and overestimated his ability to walk from the plane to the arrival entrance! He barely made it and collapsed inside the entrance. Very scary! I was too far away from him to help him! It was also very cold and windy. When is the airport going to do something about the lack of proper safe access to the planes?
Flexible covered gangways are not built for small airports like Prince George. Other than Vancouver I am not aware of any in BC. So I wouldn’t hold by breath waiting for one at Prince George.
This subject comes up from time to time and the answer is always the same. If passenger use was closer to one million passengers a year, then a covered gangway would be considered.
A flexible covered gangway may be out of the question but perhaps some form of covered walkway could be constructed. I’m thinking of something similar to what they have to serve the smaller prop jobs that fly into YVR. It wouldn’t maka a difference for the plane that gets to park right in front of the main entrance but could help keep that example of the senior from Kitimat. Some of the smaller planes such as the Beechcrafts CMA flies often get parked quite a distance from the terminal towards NT Air’s building. Being able to get off the plane in the middle of winter and walk straight ahead 25′ into a covered walkway for the rest of the trek to the terminal would be a significant improvement for seniors, handicapped and wheelchair bound passengers.
Wheelchair bound? Most people get out of their chairs to go to bed, have a bath, sit on a plane etc. People aren’t wheelchair bound. the wheelchair provides freedom b/c with it people can move around our community.
Well, just because others don’t have one does not mean we can’t take the lead in Prince George! Just one really bad injury (broken pelvis, or worse) due to slipping and falling may change the mind of those in charge! Alas, they usually act only AFTER the fact, so you are correct! Numbers and pencil pushing trumps common sense!
Well, at least we have a ramp to get on the planes! that was a long time coming and at least means wheelchair users dont have to be carried up the stairs anymore.
I believe your “gangways” are called jetways and you have to go to Whitehorse to see a small terminal that has them.
Kelowna has them too
Thanks for reminding me of the name jetway! I used a covered walkway in Vancouver when arriving via a flying stove pipe propeller plane! It was pouring rain and did the job of keeping us dry! In PG of course we are a lot tougher, especially in a blizzard when the icy wind is driving the snow horizontally! Making do with less is something we are great at!
Gangway, Jetway, whatever. Kelowna had 1.6 million passengers enplaned/deplaned last year, so I am not surprised they have a Jetway, Whitehorse on the other hand had about 230,000 so they must have one because of inclement weather.
In any event we don’t have too many passenger jets flying in and out of Prince George these days.
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