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Travellers departing Vancouver International Airport (YVR) for destinations outside the province of British Columbia (BC), with the exception of Yukon, will find it more expensive doing so when the airport raises the airport improvement fee from C$15 to C$20 from May 1st, 2012.  The fee for travel within BC and to Yukon remains at C$5.

The reason given by Vancouver International Airport president and chief executive Larry Berg is unsurprisingly one of economics. The airport needs funding to launch a C$1.8 billion upgrade to fend off growing competition from other airports, and interestingly YVR fears how growing compatriot airports, notably Calgary and Edmonton in the neighbouring province of Alberta, may be poaching its gateway traffic.

Indeed, Berg recognised how gateway traffic has been increasingly eroded by the capability of airlines to operate point-to-point traffic, not just to nearby Calgary and but beyond those points to Toronto and even American ports such as Seattle, Chicago and New York. It is no secret that Vancouver International Airport’s key interest is the growing traffic from China.

Vancouver is Canada’s second busiest airport after Toronto. It recorded a throughput of 17 million passengers last year and a capacity of handling 23 million passengers. Already named as North America’s best airport by more than one survey, it plans to further improve its facilities, all the more the need to do so as other airports are trying to catch up.

There was even a hint that YVR’s success story – growing from connecting six US cities to 22 and from hosting 15 weekly flights to Hong Kong to 15 – in itself is justification enough for the hike in the airport improvement fee, which was introduced in 1993 and has since become a permanent feature. Besides, other major Canadian airports such as Montreal and


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