Region of Waterloo International Airport - YKF

[SF22]

I need Flair to limp through long enough until YKF expands and can support some Air Canada (I will even take Rouge) and Westjet flights. Something reliable, just on a smaller scale than you'd see at YYZ. If you pair that with strong improvements to the Kitchener GO line, then you could mix-and-match your flights between Waterloo and Toronto to whatever fits your schedule best, because you can just hop on the at-worst-hourly GO train to get home from Toronto, if needed.

I don't think the obstacle facing flights out of Kitchener was airport expansion. Much more likely is for us to spend money on this expansion, then flair goes under and we are once again left with 1-2 flights per day and the bill for all the work we did. The problem for airlines was always economics.

And you're right, GO train improvements would vastly improve accessibility to Pearson...which only further weakens the business case for our airport, since the main reason I'd pay more to fly out of Kitchener is to avoid travel to Pearson airport. Pearson has over a thousand flights per day, Kitchener will never meaningfully improve the flight options compared with Pearson.

True, but the time-savings can be significant. If you can trim 60-90 minutes of travel off your trip by avoiding Mississauga, and another 30-60 minutes within the airport (because YKF is small and you don't need to hike 3km to get to your gate), YKF can continue to be an appealing option for travelers.

We also know that Pearson is working at near-capacity for how many passengers it can transport in a day, and that the population of Canada is only growing, and eventually they may not be able to handle the amount of flight traffic in/out of YYZ even with expansions, in which case the smaller airports like Waterloo and Hamilton may need to pick up the slack.