Region of Waterloo International Airport - YKF

[panamaniac]

It will be interesting to see what the prefab buildings will be like. I’m looking forward to renewed service to YOW.

[nms]

Anything that improves the current tiny baggage carousel and meeting area would be welcome.

[taylortbb]

For anyone curious about what they're doing, go to https://regionofwaterloo.bidsandtenders....4c7d7af31/ and download the document "Section F - Drawings & Technical Specifications".

Here's the overview render. I added the red box around the existing terminal building, everything else is expansion. The bag hall and hold room are "modular relocatable structures" aka semi-fixed tents, which will be built off-site and dropped in. Eventually they'll be replaced by permanent expansion, but I think the logic is that it's better to give it a year or two for planning and figuring out just how big the permanent building should be, might need to be for 2M pax/year.

   

[ac3r]

That's a lot bigger than I expected! I can't help but feel like that's a serious gamble, though. While it's only 11 million dollars, Flair could pull out at any time.

[taylortbb]

The new hold room has the capacity for about 3 737s worth of pax, compared to 1 for the current hold room. That's assuming planes that aren't 100% full.

Right now the hold room is seriously overcrowded whenever there's two Flair/WJ flights departing within an hour of each other. Which happens multiple times per week, half the YKF reviews on Google are complaining that the hold room isn't Covid-safe due to crowding. I don't know what they'd do if there was a flight delay, I think they'd have fire code issues.

Given all that, 3 planes worth of pax doesn't seem that crazy for an expansion. It'll let them do two flights at similar times, and handle a delayed flight. That's a pretty basic level of service.

[nms]

So the next question would be: where would they build the permanent expansion should it be required? Would "Terminal 1" (this one) remain in service while a larger "Terminal 2" is built. Then "Terminal 1" is demolished, ready to build "Terminal 3" and YKF would then have a domestic and international terminal? Or maybe one big terminal built in two parts over a decade?

[ac3r]

I think they'd use some of the adjacent parking lots for a future terminal. Whether or not they'd be connected would remain to be seen, but I would think that having them condensed into one structure would be ideal for the day to day operations. I doubt we'd see another terminal built for a long time though.

[Rainrider22]

During the official Plan there was a sketch showing a new terminal to be built on the northwest side of runway 08/26.

[taylortbb]

The airport master plan shows proposed terminal layouts up to a capacity of 2.5M pax/year in 5 stages, below is the final version. The terminal is the hockey stick-shaped blue building, the large adjacent blue building is a parking garage.

The part of the terminal on the right is where the current terminal is, and they show the phases as progressive extensions of the longer thinner section toward Fountain St. Past 1M pax/year the plan calls for pretty much completely replacing the building though, as it becomes a 2-3 floor building with separate arrival and departure levels.

   

[taylortbb]

https://twitter.com/flywithpivot/status/...6260596737
https://skiesmag.com/news/pivot-airlines...vice-2022/

Pivot's services from YKF to Ottawa and Montreal will be launching early 2022, with ticket sales starting Nov 1.

[ac3r]

Nice! While I live in Toronto most of the time, I rarely fly out of YKF so I'll have to use this as an excuse to do that and visit Montréal again. I'll be curious to see what the flights cost.

[plam]

Nice! While I live in Toronto most of the time, I rarely fly out of YKF so I'll have to use this as an excuse to do that and visit Montréal again. I'll be curious to see what the flights cost.

Value brand for the business customer, they say to Skies Mag, with tickets between $179 and $229 one-way. I could see taking the train one way and the plane the other way. I go to Montreal pretty often and try to drive at most once per year.

[ac3r]

That's not bad then. I make truck loads of money so that's easily affordable. If it means avoiding Pearson I'd even pay more, that airport is atrocious.

[tomh009]

Personally, I find Pearson OK (assuming you are able to do priority check-in etc) apart from the unpleasantness of the 401. I'd do YKF if I could fly direct but so far that's not the case for my particular destinations, whereas typically AC will do direct from YYZ.

But, just maybe, we are finally starting to see some momentum on YKF's side, and this will yet turn into much more than a quiet regional airport.

[plam]

Personally, I find Pearson OK (assuming you are able to do priority check-in etc) apart from the unpleasantness of the 401. I'd do YKF if I could fly direct but so far that's not the case for my particular destinations, whereas typically AC will do direct from YYZ.

But, just maybe, we are finally starting to see some momentum on YKF's side, and this will yet turn into much more than a quiet regional airport.

Yeah, having status + NEXUS is quite helpful for flying through Pearson. I should see about whether they're doing NEXUS interviews again. Getting to Pearson is annoying.