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Airport makes room for more passengers

A crunch for space inside and out of the Victor M. Power Airport in Timmins has spurred some construction at the facility.
Dave Dayment
Timmins airport manager Dave Dayment said renovations at the facility will create more room for passengers.

A crunch for space inside and out of the Victor M. Power Airport in Timmins has spurred some construction at the facility.

The screening and holding area is being expanded to accommodate more passengers, especially since the arrival of Porter Airlines passenger service in the new year. The renovations include new ticket counters, additional baggage handling space and more offices. The expanded holding area includes washrooms which weren't available previously. Passengers requiring a restroom in the secure area would have to leave the room and go through security once more when they returned.

“The holding room could accommodate 50 people comfortably, but we needed more space for the additional passengers with Porter Airlines,” said airport manager Dave Dayment. “If we have delays and there are passengers waiting for two flights, it would have been crowded in the holding area.”

Porter is offering three daily roundtrip flights to Toronto's downtown Billy Bishop Airport that began in mid-January.

“It definitely means more people through the building since an additional 250 seats per day have been added,” Dayment said.

The increased mining activity in the area has also meant an increase in passengers using the airport as a base to get to work or fly home.

One mining company has a bus meeting flights three times a day, taking workers to its mine site and dropping them off to return home. Work schedules are rotational with some working a few weeks at a time and receiving the same amount of days off.

“We have people flying home to Newfoundland and out West since they stay at the camps,” Dayment said.

De Beers Canada's Victor Mine near Attawapiskat has about 500 employees while Detour Gold has about 1,000 workers at its Detour Lake gold mine construction project, about 180 kilometres north of Cochrane.

FedEx Express began flying into the airport once a day late last year following a 10-year hiatus due to an increased demand. The new service means the city is connected to more than 200 countries with its overnight delivery.

Along with the growing demand in flight services, the airport is facing a space crunch for more parking spaces.

Car rental companies at the airport are experiencing more customers and additional spaces for their automobiles are required.

“There are 40 to 50 cars a day being rented so we need more parking space for them,” Dayment said. “They need to position cars and they are constantly jockeying them or having to drive the ones from their downtown location to the airport.”

There is also no space at the airport for the rental companies to wash and clean cars since many are returned muddy and dirty after visiting a mine site.

“Maybe we can find some space for them at a hangar to do that,” he said. “It makes sense to help a business continue to do business.”

Dayment said many passengers arriving in Timmins don't realize that it is a necessity to book ahead for accommodation and car rentals.

“They don't realize how important that is. Sometimes there is not enough stock (rental cars) in the city and hotel rooms are hard to find. If they don't book, they might have to find a place to stay outside the city,” he said.

Passengers parking their cars might also find it difficult to find a spot and Dayment said the next phase of the expansion work will involve creating more parking lots.

“In winter, we can park some trucks on an area that has been plowed, but that is just a short-term solution.”

The airport was nationally ranked 19th in 2010 in terms of total passenger movements (25,318).

“We have 2,000-plus movements a month which works out to about 80 to 100 takeoffs and landings a day,” Dayment said. “We have an increase of eight movements a day with Porter Airlines so we are getting busier. And even with the Ring of Fire, we might become a jump-off point for that so we are in a good position,” Dayment said.

www.timmins.ca/residents/airport