Image: Wayne Moore
Kelowna international airport broke passenger records for the second year in a row in 2017, as close to 1.9 million people passed through its doors.However, as YLW’s rapid growth continues it’s facing ever-more-pressing challenges with congestion, parking, and space for arriving airplanes.
Airport staff addressed those challenges, and their solutions, today when it presented city council with its latest planning document.
The report builds on goals set out in the airport’s recently completed 2045 Master Plan, laying out specific steps for expansion over the next few decades.
According to Ed Stephens, YLW’s senior manager of airport development, one of the most pressing issues facing the airport is congestion and overcrowding in the airport terminal.
“We need that yesterday,” Stephens joked, referencing the expansion of the terminal.
Rob Grant, a consultant who worked on the new plan, pointed out that several spaces inside the terminal are too small, including the food and concession area, the baggage claim area, and the airside corridor.
These small spaces are causing overcrowding, especially during the busiest times, and that’s making it even more confusing for people trying to navigate through the airport.
To tackle these issues the plan lays out an expansion to the airport terminal. Taking place over several phases, the buildout will eventually add three new baggage claim areas, more concession space, more space for pre-boarding screening, and a separate throughway for arriving international passengers.
Airport director Sam Samaddar also said a new pre-boarding screening process will soon be implemented that will potentially allow agents to screen 250-270 passengers per hour per line. Right now, about 120 passengers an hour per line can be screened.
The plan also calls for five new waiting spaces for airplanes, to help deal with the fact that there is more demand for spaces at the airport than its current capacity.
Another significant challenge facing YLW is parking.
While the current parking lot usually fills up completely during the Christmas holidays, Samaddar says this year it has already gone over maximum capacity three times this year.
Samaddar said fixing that problem might prove somewhat difficult, because YLW is “ultimately land constrained,” making it tough to expand the parking lot.
One option would be to build a parkade, but Samaddar said that option is quite expensive and, generally, airports don’t consider putting up parkades until they reach 3-3.5 million passengers.
Letting a private company handle parking is also problematic, because parking is one of the airport’s biggest sources of revenue, and giving control of parking over to someone else means giving those dollars up.
Samaddar said new transportation options like carsharing and autonomous vehicles also have the potential to dramatically change transportation and parking needs at the airport, so planners need to be very mindful of them when addressing parking issues.
In the meantime, YLW continues to acquire more land with an eye to future expansion.
“We have a whole land of opportunity on the east side of the airport that there’s a lot of interest in from outside parties,” Stephens said.
He said the goal is to eventually develop that entire east side of the airport with retail and amenities.
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