Kamloops Airport. (Photo via Colton Davies)

Staff at Kamloops Airport are now forecasting passenger volumes to return to pre-COVID levels in 2024.

That is according to YKA Managing Director, Ed Ratuski, after new data released this month showed there were 104,385 passengers at the airport in 2021 – a 15.6 per cent reduction from the 123,675 passengers seen in 2020.

“November and December, we saw significant increases largely in part due to an increase in holiday and leisure travel but also we had a lot of additional flights in and out of Kamloops – at least about 100 additional sections – to keep people moving as a result of the highway closures,” he said.

In total, there were 58,490 passengers in October, November, and December of last year – a 283 per cent increase compared to the same stretch in 2020. A majority of those passengers – 27,785 in total – were in December alone.

Ratuski says that projected return to normal passenger volumes at Kamloops Airport has already been pushed back a year because of ongoing COVID travel restrictions.

“Every time there was another wave of the pandemic, we would see numbers go down,” he added. “Passenger numbers are stabilizing a little bit as you have to be fully vaccinated to travel. I think people are starting to get used to the requirement for travel in the country.”

“We are expecting the numbers to gradually increase but not as much as they did in the last couple of months because of the anomalies of the floods.”

He also couldn’t say how much lower passenger numbers would have been in 2021 if not for that surge in passengers due to highway washouts.

“I should point out, we’re only at 30 per cent of the passenger numbers that we were prior to COVID starting. It is going to be a long recovery.”