THUNDER BAY — New statistics obtained from Thunder Bay International Airport show how severely the airport has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020 slightly under 293,000 passengers travelled through the airport, a 65 per cent drop from 2019's total of about 850,000.
The numbers for April through December are even more revealing.
After travel restrictions were imposed, traffic plummeted by 80 per cent over the nine-month period, compared with the previous year.
Not surprisingly, the dramatic reduction in revenue has significantly affected airport operations.
CEO Ed Schmidtke says "cash management has become job number one."
Schmidtke said "We have reduced services to airline customers. We are working with a skeleton staff. And capital projects, where possible, have been deferred into the future."
He was hesitant to forecast what Thunder Bay Airport can expect in 2021.
"It is really anybody's guess. But we hope that some time in the second half of the year, we start to see confidence in the economy, confidence in travel, and confidence in getting back together," Schmidtke said.
All airports have been affected by the downturn in travel.
However, Thunder Bay has escaped the blows suffered by airports in cities such as Saint John, N.B. and Sydney, N.S. which currently have no commercial air service.
