(Image credit: CFJC Today/File photo).

By Victor Kaisar

YKA Quarter 3

Summer traffic down at Kamloops Airport; year-over-over passenger numbers still strong

Dec 20, 2024 | 9:20 AM

KAMLOOPS — (UPDATE 3:00 p.m.): Passenger numbers are Kamloops Airport (YKA) were down this summer, when compared to last year, according to new data released Friday (Dec. 20).

YKA Managing Director Ed Ratuski says there were 70,638 passengers between July and September this year, a 4.7 per cent decrease when compared to the 74,092 passengers during the same three month period last year.

Broken down further, there were 23,374 passengers at YKA in July, 23,579 in August, and 23,685 in September.

“In August, we saw a significant decline largely because everybody was quite nervous about the fire season ahead,” Ratuski said. “I think that was one of the larger impacts on the passenger numbers this summer.”

YKA stats between July and September. (Image Credit: Kamloops Airport)

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Ratuski says other factors that led to the drop in passenger numbers this summer were staffing shortages at the airlines that impact regional airports like Kamloops more and the end of the WestJet Link flight to Vancouver.

“WestJet ended their agreement with Pacific Coastal to operate WestJet Link service to Vancouver, so that ended in May,” he said. “And then, most of the airlines are still dealing with crew challenges and things like that associated with coming out of COVID.”

Still, Ratuski says overall passenger numbers at Kamloops Airport are up in 2024, as there were 233,947 passengers between January and September, compared to the 227,478 passengers seen during the same nine month period in 2023.

“Moving into the fourth quarter, we started to see some recovery, but we had a few other service reductions that we weren’t expecting from WestJet, which is starting to impact the numbers a bit,” Ratuski said. “Our November numbers were down a little bit further than we had hoped for.”

“All of the flights, even with the service reductions, are operating at between 95 and 100 per cent of capacity, which is significant in terms of our making the case to add those back into the schedule as soon as they can.”