Red Deer Regional Airport CEO Graham Ingham. (Submitted file photo)

By Troy Gillard and Sheldon Spackman

Eye To The Future

COVID fails to ground high spirits at Red Deer Regional Airport

Oct 30, 2020 | 9:53 AM

Despite a battered economy and worsening COVID-19 conditions across the country, the CEO of Red Deer Regional Airport says YQF is still poised for growth moving forward.

Graham Ingham admits, however, that not all regional airports across the country are faring as well.

“Generally, they’re not big revenue generators, but what they are is key economic drivers for smaller communities. It gives them that access to the outside world,” he explains. “These regional airports are not generating enough revenue to even contemplate something like a capital bank that would enable them to put money aside for rainy days or help to support existing infrastructure, those types of things.”

On Tuesday, the Regional Community Airports of Canada (RCAC) said the failure of government and the airline industry to embrace a holistic approach to aviation support during the COVID-19 pandemic is leaving Canada’s regional and community airports on the brink of financial collapse and airlines facing massive rates and fee increases next year.

“There’s very little room for these airports to do anything other than raise rates,” Ingham, an RCAC board member, explained. “When you’re trying to hold on, it’s very, very tough to pass that on to the consumer but at the end of the day, you really don’t have a choice.”

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Despite a dramatic decline in airline passenger traffic since the pandemic began in March, the RCAC says Canada’s smaller airports have carried the financial burden of maintaining their runways, air terminals, and emergency services without access to any previous or current financial aid.

Ingham says Red Deer Regional Airport is in a completely different situation than most for two main reasons.

“Number one is we don’t have passenger service. And number two, the businesses that we have are very well-established. You look at Air Spray and Buffalo Airways and the types of business that they’re doing like fire suppression and those types of things, they’re almost recession-proof,” he suggested.

“It’s our land lease revenue that really has supported the airport and allowed us to eke out about a five per cent increase in revenue this year, even though we lost three months of airplane revenue. And we have no bad debts which is a real attribute to the existing businesses that we have at the airport.”

Ingham suggests YQF has gone through the pandemic largely unscathed.

“We didn’t have to lay anybody off,” he points out. “Our philosophy at the airport is we run an absolute minimum staffing level to ensure the safety and security of the airport and we outsource as much to the community as possible. We find that gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility.”

Aside from COVID-19 safety precautions, Ingham says airport expansion plans remains their top focus.

“We continue to get a lot of interest from a number of different companies,” shares Ingham. “Passenger service, cargo, and a few others that are looking at the airport simply because of our cost structure. So we are not increasing our rates, we don’t need to increase our rates.”

Ingham says YQF is doing its growth organically, noting strong increases in corporate aircraft traffic, and charters in support of the oil patch for example.

“Eighty five per cent of new business comes from existing business, so we’re seeing that interest in expanding,” he remarks. “We’ve been flat-out busy working on future expansion partnership opportunities. We have all the pieces of the puzzle in place to undergo a fairly rapid expansion should the right opportunity come long.”

In terms of capital infrastructure, Ingham says their next step is to widen the runway.

“We’re currently sitting at 30 metres which is great for the existing businesses we have and that’s fine, but when you start getting into 737s and bigger, they need a slightly wider runway, so that’s what we’ve been working on the last year or so,” explains Ingham. “However, when we get to potentially looking at a cargo company coming in here with 757s and 767s, then we have to strengthen the runway. But we do have a plan, we’re very methodical about the whole thing, it’s all about the strategy and the partnerships.”