Ben Antifaiff, Red Deer Airport board chair. (rdnewsNOW/Josh Hall)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

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Passenger service at Red Deer Airport two years away

May 9, 2019 | 7:13 PM

The future is full of potential for the Red Deer Airport, according to those in charge, but passenger service could still be two years away.

This and other items were discussed at the organization’s annual general meeting on Thursday.

Board chair Ben Antifaiff says they are close, in concept, but there is some infrastructure work that needs to be completed first.

“We need to work on a new terminal or an expanded terminal and we need an apron capable of handling larger aircraft,” he explains. “We have many steps to undertake, we need to finish the business case, and have pretty in-depth conversations with the City and County who are joint appointors, and decide which course we’re going to take.”

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That means passenger service is 18 to 24 months off, which could work well with plans for entry into service from ultra low-cost carriers such as Swoop and Enerjet.

“It could well be (us),” says Darcy Morgan, founder of Calgary-based Enerjet. “We fully intend to be providing scheduled passenger service to many points across Canada easily within the next 12 months.”

Currently, the approximate costs of the needed upgrades at the airport are unknown, but Antifaiff says they’ll have a better idea this fall.

Air Canada ended its service at Red Deer Airport on Nov. 1, 2018.

While airport officials are waiting, work continues on the five-year strategic plan which includes land development on the approximately 800,000 square metres of earth on the north side of the airport.

A portion of that is set to be taken care of by the Markham-based Rice Group, a development company specializing in retail and industrial job-producing assets.

President and CEO Michael Rice says there are many upsides to working with Red Deer Airport.

“We’re building in Toronto airport right now. As we got into that business, we started to see a demand in the cargo and fixed-base operations, so private plane facilities, and a lot of maintenance and repair,” Rice says.

“Red Deer is like a Hamilton or an Abbotsford because it’s adjacent to large cities, but partially under-developed. The costing is reasonable, and we’ve seen a big growth in cargo. I’m not saying online shopping is taking over the world, but there is some growth.”

Meanwhile, Saturn Power, which is based out of Baden, ON, is making headway on a solar facility which would be located across 80 acres of the airport’s property.

“We’ve been working for a little while with the County and they identified the airport. We have an option to lease the property, so now we’ll go through a development period where we’ll further study the feasibility of a solar project on the property,” says Dave Carscadden, senior project developer.

“Ideally, if we can find an off-taker to buy the power, we will build the project in the next couple years.”

Carscadden says the solar facility could between six and 14 megawatts, the largest in Alberta being 17. The power generated would go straight to the grid.

Antifaiff offered a final word.

“This is about a plan for what the future looks like,” he says. “How do we become self-sufficient and sustainable? In our current state, we’re not, so we need to do something different.”