Picture a two-storey departure pavilion on the current site of Victoria International Airport’s short-term parking.
Passengers would check in, go through pre-boarding screening and cross a bridge through the existing rotunda to departure gates on the terminal’s second floor.
The main terminal, meanwhile, would have a two-storey extension on the west side to accommodate a more efficient baggage-handling system, as well as to expand security and allow additional sky-bridge access to aircraft on the second floor.
Work on all of it could start within two years, if a 20-year master plan is fast-tracked, something that’s being considered by the airport authority as passenger traffic grows and airlines switch to larger, more efficient aircraft types. Traffic at YYJ is expected to exceed more than two million passengers this year, up from 1.87 million last year.
According to the airport authority’s most recent data, passenger counts on domestic flights are up 5% to 621,842 through the period from January to May, while international flights to Mexico have jumped 17.5% to 31,360 over the same period compared to a year earlier.
The total passenger count for the first five months of this year is 703,286, a 4% increase overall, with some of the busiest periods yet to come.
Increasing traffic has prompted a plan to remodel the upper floors of the departure area within a year and start building major additions to the terminal within two years, much sooner than the 20-year horizon in the airport’s master plan, said Elizabeth Brown, president and chief executive of the Victoria Airport Authority, which manages and operates YYJ.
“We are at an important turning point for this airport in terms of having to manage facilities that are not sufficient for the traffic that we have today,” Brown said in an interview.
“Now the decision we have to make is, in the face of escalating costs and challenges with tariffs from south of the border and acquiring goods from all over, do we spend time building over 20 years?
“Or do we condense what we need to do in a shorter period of time to take advantage of the fact that prices are lower and [we] expect them to increase?”
The authority, which employs 72 staff, is a not-for-profit, non-share capital corporation run by a local board of directors. It earns its revenue from land leasing, passenger fees, concessions and other commercial activity, and reinvests its earnings into airport development, while also paying rent to the federal government.
Brown said it receives no federal funding for capital projects and ended the 2024 fiscal year debt-free.
As passenger traffic increases, the executive management team is working through a lengthy process of defining the needs and “pinch points,” and where to make investments that best benefit the airport, she said.
She said preliminary designs for the new terminal pavilion and western expansion have been completed and now the authority is considering the costs and how to approach the projects from a construction and financial perspective.
Ultimately, the 12-member airport authority board will make the final call on what moves forward. Chaired by Butchart Gardens CEO David Cowen, it includes representatives from Sidney, North Saanich, Saanich, the Capital Regional District, the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce and the federal and provincial governments.
“As a management team we are doing our due diligence [on the projects],” said Brown. “We are finding out how much this is going to cost, how we are going to pay for it and how does this impact the airport in terms of projections of passengers.”
Brown said the team has been discussing expansion plans with the board over the past 18 months.
“We’ve toured them through so they can see the challenges with baggage handling, spillovers in security, particularly during high-demand times, and the problems we have in the upper hold rooms,” said Brown. “They are in the best position to make these decisions for the airport.”
Hold-room expansion for sky bridges
The most immediate pinch point — overcrowding in the upper waiting areas — is likely to be addressed in the next year.
The project will involve relocating 25 airport authority staff members, including Brown, from their office wing to expand holding areas for the gates that load passengers through second-floor sky bridges on the east side of the terminal.
There are currently four sky bridges on the upper level, but lack of seating during peak times means passengers are forced to wait on the ground level, or move down to take advantage of concessions.
Brown said about 60% of YYJ’s traffic is loaded via sky bridges because the newer jets — such as the Embraer E195 used by Porter Airlines, Airbus A220 by Air Canada and Alaska Airlines’ Embraer 175 — are designed to be loaded that way. Boeing 737s are also being loaded via sky bridges.
Brown said twin turboprop aircraft like the Q400, which are typically loaded at ground level, are not being manufactured anymore, so a lot of airlines are turning to smaller jets for more efficient loads.
Alaska Airlines stopped serving YYJ during the pandemic but has returned with five flights a day to Seattle using a jet service instead of turboprop planes. Porter Airlines started service last fall, flying 11 times a week to Toronto. This year, it’s running daily flights to Ottawa.
“These are the perfect-sized aircraft for this market,” said Brown. “We’re not a huge city, but we can sustain a lot of non-stop services with the right-sized aircraft. The bigger the aircraft, the harder it is to fill, so 130 seats is a good sweet spot for Victoria to be able to attract those services, and a lot of airlines are flying those types of aircraft.”
Brown said the expansion of the holding area will include a new restaurant and bar, a concession area and, pending security approval, an outdoor deck overlooking the airfield. Designs are in the works, and tendering is expected to go out in January.
New departure building, terminal stretch
The other expansions to the terminal — the new departures pavilion and western expansion — could start within two years and open in four to five years, said Marc Turpin, the airport’s vice-president of planning and infrastructure.
The pavilion building and western extension would be expandable in the future to the east and west. “We’re trying to make decisions today that don’t tie the hands of future management or boards,” said Brown.
Turpin said passengers would check in on the first floor of the departure pavilion, drop their bags, go up to the second floor, go through pre-board screening, and then walk across the sky bridge to the terminal.
He said baggage handling, currently under the centre of the terminal, would be moved into the expanded west wing below the baggage pickup carousels, making more efficient use of the system.
The new wing would also include expanded customs and Canada Border Services Agency arrivals screening. Brown said the current security system is too cramped with lineups and a waiting system that is “counterintuitive” because lineups take too many turns and confuse passengers.
Additional aircraft bridges and waiting areas on the second floor would be part of the western expansion, said Turpin.
Building the departure pavilion would also mean realigning the roads and curbside around the terminal, moving exits farther to the west and developing new parking areas.
The airport authority said it will be working with its new parking manager, LAZ Parking Canada, a subsidiary of U.S. airport parking management giant LAZ, on how to increase parking, saying that could mean a multi-storey parkade or new surface lots with shuttle services. Brown said parking fees, along with concession rents, are an important source of revenue for the airport.
The expansions are expected to proceed with no disruptions to service, he said. “These would take about four or five years to build, and we would move those functions into the new areas and come back and renovate the rest of the building.”
Meanwhile, a 130-room hotel is under construction on the airport grounds and expected to be completed later this year, while a 27.7-metre-high air traffic control tower under construction on the airport’s northern edge is on schedule for completion in late 2026 or early 2027. The new tower will be seven metres taller than the existing air traffic tower, which was built in 1958.
Once the new tower is completed, the old one will be decommissioned and removed, said NAV Canada.
The building, with a total floor area of 792 square metres, will have state-of-the-art technology to safely and efficiently manage growing air traffic demand, according to airport officials.
The new tower will also have better sightlines over the airfield, said NAV Canada, the private, non-profit agency that manages air traffic across Canada.
It will be NAV Canada’s first in the country built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards and will operate with zero greenhouse gas emissions.
NAV Canada, which operates 42 control towers around Canada, earns its revenue from airline and aircraft operators who pay to use its services.
Economic driver, new routes
Brown said there’s no question that YYJ is a “huge economic driver” for the region and the Island. As a main entry point, the airport is constantly looking at air-service development to attract more people for tourism, conferences and business.
“It’s about getting more aircraft here and more routes that are non-stop, so we don’t always have to fly through Vancouver,” she said. “There will always be an element of that, but we do have a strong enough market here to sustain some new air services.”
She said Porter’s launch of its Victoria-Toronto service was a significant display of confidence. “We are spending a lot of time finding out where people are travelling to, how they are getting there so we can have a much more specific strategy in terms of what air services we need.”
Brown believes the most underserved domestic market is Halifax. “We’re the home of Canada’s Pacific naval fleet, so it makes sense we should have some connectivity to Halifax because people are travelling between here and there.”
The airport has seen increased service to Mexico, and she predicts those flights will continue to expand south into the Caribbean.
Brown said there is also demand for direct service to England, but there are limitations in runway-length capacity at YYJ due to specific jet landing and take-off requirements.
The main runway reached its current 7,000-foot length in 1971. There were discussions in 2008 and 2013 about adding 600 more feet on one end and 900 feet on the other to create an 8,500-foot runway, the maximum possible at YYJ, though funding never materialized.
Brown said the ability to offer flights to London, and even Paris, would depend on the airline, aircraft type in relation to runway length and if a regular flight would be economically feasible.
She said the 590-foot extension to the main runway in the airport’s current master plan would give YYJ “that extra we would need” for a narrow-body jet type, full of fuel, passengers and bags, to make the takeoff and reach those distances. But the final decision would rest with the airline.
The airport has already completed safety zones at each end of the runway over the past year, a federal requirement to ensure pilots have enough landing space.
Brown, who replaced Geoff Dickson as CEO in 2023, said she has worked in the airport sector for three decades, including Edmonton International, Sangster International in Jamaica and Sanford International in Orlando, Florida. She was also part of developing a cross-border pedestrian facility that connected San Diego with Tijuana International Airport.
Brown said the airport authority system in Canada is an efficient way to run safe airports.
“I’ve been on the U.S. side, which is completely funded by the federal government and pretty much an arm of municipal state governments. And I’ve been in fully privatized airports. And we have the perfect combination here of being independent, fully financially accountable, and we can be nimble and make the decisions like a truly private business would.”
Brown said the airport needs to expand “side-by-side” with the growing region. “If we’re not here to support that growth from an air facility perspective, that’s going to hurt Victoria.”
