Christmas travel expected to push Kelowna’s airport to record capacity

December could break passenger records at Kelowna’s airport, but the CEO said it’s ready for the flood of people flying for the holidays.

Kelowna International Airport’s CEO Sam Samaddar said the holidays often max-out the airport’s capacity, so all it can do is plan and prepare. The airport hires extra security, parking staff and more to help out during the busy season.

“When you’re looking at peak capacities, there isn’t much extra capacity in the system, period,” Samaddar said. “We do a lot of pre-planning in terms of trying to mitigate as many of those issues as we can.”

The airport saw a record number of passengers in 2024 with 2.1 million, and this year every month has been busier than last year. There have already been more than 1.9 million passengers as of the end of October.

Samaddar said the airport could be breaking its own record again this year.

“We’re going to be up there, there’s no doubt about that, and we’ll certainly set a record for the year,” he said. “We’re setting record numbers. What that means is we have bigger aircraft, for example, or we have more flights operating.”

The airport usually sees around 9,500 passengers and more than 90 flights per day around Christmas. A slower month like April saw closer to 5,500 passengers going through YLW per day.

This is the busiest time of year for the airport. Last year there were 211,493 passengers who went through YLW in December, which was roughly 24,000 more than the holiday season in 2023.

There isn’t much Kelowna’s airport can do about the weather and delays caused by airlines or other airports. He said the airport has hired some temporary extra staff for things like security and parking to help deal with additional passengers.

Another source of delays that is out of the airport’s hands is the shortage of air traffic controllers. It’s nationwide and it falls under Nav Canada’s control. The air traffic controller shortage could cause some 30-minute delays so that controllers can take necessary fatigue breaks.

People tend to get a bit more frustrated with delays around the holidays, and Samaddar said people who get aggressive with staff might not be getting on their plane.

“If you start to abuse the staff at an airport, I have no tolerance for that, and you may not be getting on your flight. So I ask people to exercise patience, to be good citizens as they go through this process. It’s a busy period of time,” he said.

The airport is in the middle of a massive expansion project, including a new terminal, to accommodate the growing number of passengers.

There is some good news for people going through YLW this Christmas since the new terminal construction project is nearing completion so the airport will be able to extend the pick-up and drop-off areas by Dec. 15.

“We’ll have a lot more curb, probably double, not quite three times the amount of space on the curb than what we had a year ago,” he said.