What makes a successful airport?
Is it passenger service? Big jets and a fancy passenger terminal?
Med-evac service? A place for civil aviation, or forestry helicopters?
The Alberni Valley Regional Airport has only been reopened for a few days—and that with limited access for aircraft—following months of construction, and already these type of questions have surfaced. So has the criticism, and lingering bitterness over the cost of the runway expansion.
Does having a business capable of making money in aviation count as a plus for a successful airport? Or an aviation business talking expansion?
If so, the Alberni Valley already has that. Coulson Aviation has been established at the airport for many years, and is talking expansion—including a new hangar and increased business—thanks to better facilities at the airport.
Coulson isn’t the only business operating at the airport, and there is room for more. What about warehouse space? Air cargo? A small industrial park? We need to see the bigger picture.
Aside from aviation and support services, Boundary Bay airport in Delta houses warehouse space for a furniture store, and another business that took over a hangar and restores classic cars. Neither business has anything to do with aviation, but they bring in revenue for the airport’s owner, the Corporation of Delta.
Port Alberni’s airport is at least a year away from a listed GPS approach, and that is a vital pre-requisite for passenger aircraft or any regular air service to land. New runway and taxiway lighting won’t even be online until mid-July.
The expansion has never been about passenger air service from the Alberni Valley. It is about growth.
If people spent half the time thinking of new ideas to drive business at the airport as they do griping about it, we would already be moving forward.
— Alberni Valley News