Starting June 1, the Thompson Regional Airport Authority (TRAA) is upping the price of their airport improvement fee (AIF) from $20 to $30 per person.
Even through it remains a controversial measure, AIFs are used by airports across Canada to upgrade infrastructure and secure funding for special projects.
According to Curtis Ross, the CEO of the TRAA, the same is true for the Thompson Airport, except they are using this extra $10 for a very specific purpose.
“We allocated that $10 and we identified it as going towards the water treatment plant facility,” he said, referring to an airport expansion project is due to start major construction in the spring of 2018.
Ross and the TRAA believe this increase in the AIF is needed for the estimated $6 million project, since they are forced to foot the bill without any help from the city or the federal or provincial governments.*
“We don’t have, unfortunately, the municipal dollars to help us. We are, essentially, on our own out there,” said Ross, explaining how the airport doesn’t have access to any water or sewer services. “We are having to supply all those pieces of infrastructure in addition to trying to maintain the airport.”
The cost of AIFs varies wildly throughout the country, ranging from $40 in Barthurst, New Brunswick to $4 in places like Kingston, Ontario. These price fluctuations are mostly due to unique regional differences and Ross says that the TRAA similarly faces problems that other airports don’t have to deal with.
“Another airport that gets an $25 AIF, a lot of those are hooked up to municipal services. So they don’t have to worry about sewage lagoons and water treatment plants or roads. I mean, that’s all on our own dime.”
Ross said this is made worse by the fact that the TRAA isn’t entitled to the entire $30 once the airlines take their cut.
“For every airline that flies in here and they collect the fee, they get a three per cent [cut] for collecting that fee,” he said. “So we’re actually working on a smaller piece of the pie.”
In the future, Ross is hoping to bring the AIFback down by getting the airlines to absorb more of the cost.
“If we get it on a ‘per seat’ basis as opposed to a ‘per passenger’ basis we can probably meet the fee at $20,” he said. ”Instead of charging it through the passenger it would be simply an airport fee to the airline. So they would build it into their ticket price.”
* This sentence has been changed from the original to reflect that the federal and provincial governments are not contributing to the water treatment plant either.
