The airport authority posted its second quarter traffic results Tuesday, (July 17) showing a passenger increase of close to nine per cent over the same period last year.
Airport CEO Doug Newson said he believes this, coupled with similar growth last quarter, shows the Charlottetown Airport is likely on its way to a record year.
“We’re pretty pleased with the numbers so far,” Newson said in an interview.
“From what we can tell going forward, based on flight schedules and other indicators, we think it’ll be a record year for the airport in terms of air travel.”
Passenger traffic for the first six months was just more than 126,800 planed and deplaned passengers, which is an increase of 10,000 passengers – or 8.7 per cent – over the same period in 2011.
One of the biggest factors leading to this growth was an increase in the number of seats offered by the airlines.
Newson said the airport requested airlines, notably Air Canada, to add more seats after cutbacks in seat numbers last year.
“Obviously they do their reviews every year of traffic numbers and we had felt that they cut a little bit too much in last year’s capacity, and so we were in discussions with Air Canada to add more seats for this particular year, and they’ve responded and luckily the traffic has responded as well,” Newson said.
The Guardian
