Flying high with airport renos: better functionality, capacity highlights of Sault expansion.

AuthorKelly, Lindsay
PositionSault Ste. Marie

The year 2015 marked a banner period for the Sault Ste. Marie Airport: it reached a new milestone for passenger travel and ushered in a suite of renovations to modernize the facility.

On Nov. 20, the airport processed its 200,000th passenger (over 12 months), a new benchmark. Most of the increase came in September, October and November, with November experiencing a double-digit increase, noted Terry Bos, the airport's president and CEO.

Bos attributes the hike to the fall in value of the Canadian dollar, which is encouraging more Americans to travel north of the border. It's enabled the airport to recapture some of the American business it lost over the last few years, during the peak of the Canadian dollar.

"We had some data in the past that (showed) we were losing anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 passengers we could have been carrying to American airports," Bos said. "So we have a feeling that maybe we're getting a percentage of that back and that's what's really led to the turnaround."

The bump came just as the airport was undertaking a major terminal expansion project, which increases functionality, improves service, and modernizes the airport's aesthetics.

EPOH, a Sault Ste. Marie architecture firm, designed the airy, glass-walled expansion, which is pegged at $2 million, about half of that coming from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp.

The project includes an expansion of the post-screening passenger area to accommodate more passengers, a larger area for international travellers being screened through the Canadian Border Services Agency, as well as a larger passenger-screening area for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.

The airport also added another checkout counter to accommodate additional airlines, Bos said. It will be used by SunWing for the sun destination flights offered in the winter months, but can also accommodate any new airline that might come into the airport.

The hold room has new washrooms and a new food provider, Morningstar Hospitality, which also operates food counters at Sault Area Hospital, Algoma University, and Essar Steel Algoma. Morningstar will provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner service, and will be able to serve alcohol to waiting passengers with its new liquor licence. The counter will operate daily from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., a big change from the former Monday-to-Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. service.

"It's a big change, something that was really needed and we're really happy with," Bos said.

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