A new wing completed at YVR, but no passengers or aircraft
An expensive new wing had been completed at Vancouver International Airport. Clocking in at a cool C$300-million it included eight additional new gates, an open air garden and several food and beverage outlets.
The airport authority, which had traditionally relied heavily on direct and transit traffic to and from Asia (at one point YVR was said to host more Chinese airlines than any other airport in North America) described the expansion as “our largest terminal expansion since 1996.“
When the expansion was conceived, YVR said the new gates “will have the ability to support large aircraft including the A380 which have a wingspan of 260 feet.” However most airlines have retired the gas-guzzling Airbus A380.
Now, due to an unprecedented drop in passenger and aircraft traffic blamed on the Covid-19 pandemic, Pier D will be closed off until traffic returns - which could be several more years.
“For many years airlines and airport authorities became intoxicated from double digit growth figures - but with little or no regard to warning signs of a downturn ”
According to Vancouver Urbanized: “Pier D was constructed to provide a capacity expansion beyond the terminal building’s existing capacity of 25 million passengers annually. In 2020, due to the pandemic, YVR saw just 7.3 million passengers — down from the record volume of 26.4 million passengers in 2019. In December 2020, YVR saw just 294,000 passengers, a decrease of 86.4% compared to the 2.155 million passengers over the same month in 2019.”
Asked about the Pier D being put in ice, My Savvy Traveller and global affairs analyst, Michael Bociurkiw, said: “For many years airlines and airport authorities had became intoxicated from double digit growth figures - but with little or no regard to warning signs of a downturn - such as a mass casualty event of the magnitude of a global pandemic.
“As many experts have told me in recent weeks, corporate leaders have been ignoring the warning lights on their dashboards. They should be held accountable by their boards and/or shareholders.”
Bociurkiw added that, in his travels, he has seen many other questionable airport expansions - for growth that never materialized.
Fortunately, as jurisdictions move to build back better, authorities are cancelling plans based on outdated assumptions. Bociurkiw pointed to the example of Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, where an expansion based on an additional 40-million extra passengers-a-year, had been scrapped.
