Kamloops Airport. (Photo via Colton Davies)

New data from Kamloops Airport shows there were 74,092 passengers during the months of July, August, and September this year.

Airport Managing Director Ed Ratuski says while its an 11 per cent increase from the 66,707 passengers last year, those numbers are still below the record levels seen in 2019, the last full year before the COVID pandemic.

“I think what we saw this summer was just the continued results of COVID and the sustained crew shortages, particularly hitting the regional markets – which Kamloops is, – with the regional aircrafts to and from Calgary and Vancouver,” Ratuski said.

“We didn’t the see the growth that we were originally projecting there.”

He says the summer wildfire season did not have as much of an impact on passenger numbers this year.

“We had a couple of cancelled flights when the approaches here were impacted briefly but it was nowhere near the impacts that Kelowna felt when they were basically shut down for a couple of weeks,” Ratuski said.

“We did accommodate a lot of passengers that were scheduled to fly through Kelowna and opted to come to Kamloops by road to continued their travels. I do believe WestJet also operated some additional sections to accommodate those additional passengers.”

Through the first nine months of the year, there have been 227,478 passengers at Kamloops Airport, about 30,000 shy of the 257,374 seen in 2022.

Ratuski says passenger volumes in Kamloops are expected to increase to the end of this year, with a new direct flight to Victoria operated by Pacific Coastal Airlines and increased service to Vancouver by both WestJet Link and Air Canada.

“With the introduction of Pacific Coastal’s flight next week, WestJet Link’s twice daily service to Vancouver, and Air Canada bringing back the popular early morning departure to Vancouver, we expect numbers in the last three months of the year to bring us closer to originally forecast passenger levels,” Ratuski said.