THUNDER BAY - With hundreds of holiday travelers setting off for Christmas vacations, the Thunder Bay Airport is expecting its busiest season yet and wants to make an already stressful journey a little easier.
“This December is the busiest on record for us,” said Ed Schmidtke, president and chief executive officer of the Thunder Bay Airport Authority.
There are a number of reasons for the spike in travelers, according to Schmidtke, including students heading home for the holidays, winter charters starting much earlier this year, and of course, the Christmas rush.
“At our busiest peak hour there will be more than 400 people catching a flight out of Thunder Bay airport this week,” Schmidtke said. “We do the best we can to accommodate everybody, but with 400 people being processed in the course of an hour, there are going to be lineups, and there is going to be delays from time to time. We encourage people to take that into consideration.”
In order to make travelling a little smoother this season, the Thunder Bay Airport Authority has included all information travelers will need on their website.
Information includes all baggage policies for each individual airline, as well as security rules for carryon bags and luggage.
“This is the time of year where people who are not regular travelers travel, so those rules are not always front of mind,” Schmidtke said. “It’s also a very emotional time. People are excited to be visiting friends and family and have other things on their mind. If they could just take moment to visit our website they can get a refresher on what is permitted and what is not.”
“All that reconnaissance, all that type of homework will alleviate problems at the airport,” Schmidtke added.
Travelers are expected to arrive at least one hour before their flight and be patient with any delays. Schmidtke explained that often there might be three other flights going to four other destinations and that is a lot of people to cycle through the airport.
And of course, always be mindful of the weather, in your own location, as well as your destination.
“When you’re travelling by air, in Canada, in the winter, weather is always a consideration,” Schmidtke said. “It doesn’t matter whether it is at this end, or weather at the destination end.”
Jim Lees, who is travelling to Mexico with his wife, said he hasn’t run into any problems so far with his holiday journey, but this is also his first time.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever done it,” he said. “We’re getting old and we want to be warm. And our kids our older, so Christmas doesn’t hold the same significance.”
Lees said he and his wife decided to arrive two hours before their flight and they were not expecting there to be significant lines. Luckily, the lines were short on Wednesday afternoon.
Beverly Olson arrived back in Thunder Bay on Wednesday from Toronto, and for her, sometimes travel this time of year is just unavoidable.
“I know it is a hectic time of year, but it was a very important business trip I had to go on, and I was a little concerned that the weather would change, because Christmas is family and I needed to be home,” she said.
Olson said she did not have any issues with her travels and even the Toronto airport wasn’t very hectic.
“I would have no problem travelling for the holidays,” she said. “Surprisingly enough, there were a lot of people down town in Toronto, but the airport didn’t seem all that congested, the line ups weren’t that bad, unless it the next couple of days it will be pretty hairy.”
Schmidtke said the rise in travelers during the month of December is keeping with an already successful year and he hopes to carry that growth into the New Year by seeking more of the U.S. market.
“We’ve had very high numbers since about the second quarter of the year onwards,” he said. “We are going to finish the year with record numbers. We’ve seen significant growth in leisure, we’ve seen a lot of competition across air carriers that has resulted in very attractive air fares, and we’ve seen growth in U.S. travelers deciding that Thunder Bay is their best gateway not just for Canada, but Europe as well.”
