Post Grey Cup travel made for 'incredibly busy' day at Regina airport

The day after Grey Cup was an “incredibly busy” time for air travel through Regina’s airport.

“On the Monday after the game, we actually had the single busiest day by a margin, almost 1000 additional passengers to what we would normally expect to give you a sense of scale,” James Bogusz, the president and CEO of the Regina Airport Authority, said in an interview.

Bogusz noted however, that the flights in and out of Regina surrounding Grey Cup were pricy.

“Well for example with Grey Cup, we had WestJet, we talked to them a lot in advance the actual event and they actually put on some extra capacity, but unfortunately the pricing was incredibly high,” he said.

“So that's been a challenge for some, but despite that we're still seeing a real uptick in travel.”

With increased competition, Bogusz said he hopes to see prices come down.

While the increased in travellers around Grey Cup and Agribition will be helpful for the airport’s bottom line, it is still operating below pre-pandemic traffic levels. Bogusz said the airport hopes to close the gap next year.

“We're budgeting around 85-90 per cent of pre pandemic volumes,” Bogusz said.

However, some new costs in the form of infrastructure projects will add some additional financial strain over the next year.

“The challenge for us is we have a lot of capital investment to make like a new runway overlay next year, which thankfully was half funded by the federal government but we still have to borrow about $13 million,” Bogusz said.

He noted the airport is working to raise as much of that money themselves as possible, without having to add any fees and charges for customers.

SUN DESTINATIONS

Flights to several sun destinations from Regina have started up this fall.

Sunwing returned to Saskatchewan with weekly flights to Cancun, Mazatlan, Punta Cana, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos and Varadero.

The Cancun and Puerto Vallarta routes started up in November, while the rest are scheduled to begin throughout December.

WestJet also restarted a direct route to Las Vegas in November. Flights from Regina to Orlando are scheduled to start on Dec. 16.

“So lots of choices nonstop. But remember, it doesn't fly the day you want. You can always connect through Calgary or Toronto, but by all means the nonstop so the best way to go if you get one of those,” Bogusz said