Money to maintain

Lack of funding for municipal-owned Alberta airports

Regional, municipal-owned airports in Alberta continue to struggle with funding.

The province of Alberta is currently home to over 150 airports, including local airstrips, community airports, regional airports, and international airports. Unlike the province’s two major airports in Calgary and Edmonton, many of these facilities don’t receive regular funding by the provincial and federal governments to operate, making it difficult to often run and maintain these facilities.

Transport Canada does offer the Airports Capital Assistance Program (ACAP), which has been funding improvement projects for regional airports since 1995. The program, to date, has invested more than $785.9 million for 904 projects at 182 airports, however, those airports must be able to provide scheduled and charter air services that link communities to regional, national, and international markets for goods and services.

“So long as you have a scheduled service and are moving more than 1,000 passengers a year, you can apply to Transport Canada for ACAP funding,” says James Ogilvie, airport manager at the Whitecourt Airport. “Unfortunately our scheduled service stopped in October 2018, and we are ineligible to receive ACAP funding. It’s a very small pot of money [ACAP] and a very large amount of subscription for funding.”

The Whitecourt Airport, located in Woodlands County, mainly serves general aviation, charters, forestry, and oil and gas sectors, as well as medevacs. The airport, like many regional Alberta airports, is funded by the rural municipality of Woodlands County. Ogilvie says they just started charging landing fees so their revenue will go up somewhat, but they currently run at a deficit. At present, their yearly budget to run the airport is around $900,000.

“Some charge [landing fees] and others don’t. It’s a question for local council if they want to charge them or not,” says Ogilvie.

The County of Northern Lights currently charges landing fees at their airport in Manning to help offset costs that go above their municipal funding. Kenneth Launchbury, airport operator/safety assistant for the County of Northern Lights, says that they aren’t eligible for federal or provincial funding since they aren’t a certified airport.

The Manning Municipal Airport is able to accommodate general aviation of all aircraft up to Code 3 designation, as well as medevacs and those working in the oil and gas industry. Launchbury says that they also rent out a portion of their land to the forestry industry and have some tenants that help to offset some of their costs. They charge landing fees for commercial aircraft that land at their airport, as well as private aircraft over 2,500 kilograms.

Launchbury says that the landing fees do help with the maintenance of the airport. Since they are so remote they do get a lot of medevacs that use the airport, and provincial and federal funding would definitely help them keep their runways clear, especially in the winter months where snow and ice tend to build up.

“I think because we offer the medevacs and fire and whatnot, we shouldn’t be overlooked just because we don’t have scheduled services,” says Launchbury. “Especially in smaller areas that take a lot longer to get anywhere in an ambulance and lives could potentially be at stake, to have that funding would give the potential of keeping our doors open in bad weather.”

Although municipal airports may not be eligible for ACAP funding, there are other grants available. One of them is the Strategic Transportation Infrastructure Program (STIP), which offers the Community Airport Program (CAP). The goal of this program is to maintain the existing network of public-use community airports to support safe airport operations, general aviation operations, commercial air charters, forest fire suppression, medevac operations, local and regional economic development, and provincial investment in airports. Airports applying for STIP funding must meet a set number of requirements and eligible applicants include municipalities that own/operate community-owned, public-use airports.

Lac La Biche airport received a STIP grant in 2019 to install new approach light which are LED into the airport, however, the grant only covered approximately 55 per cent of the bid price. Like Manning and Whitecourt, Lac La Biche County also relies on taxpayer dollars to fund their airport, as well as lease revenue.

“We get approximately 60 per cent of our funding from lease revenue with the hangers we have on site,” says Barry Feledichuk, supervisor at Lac La Biche County. “Our lease rates are 55 to 77 cents a square metre and that covers 50 to 60 per cent. The rest is subsidized by municipal revenues.”

Feledichuk says that, like their other provincial counterparts, they also run at a deficit and although they don’t charge landing fees, it is a topic that they have discussed numerous times over the years. He adds that there are other grants out there that they would be eligible for, but there is so much competition for those grants that it’s hard to get approved for the funding.

“Everybody wants to improve their airport and there’s only so much money to go around,” he says. “We are fortunate in Lac La Biche County that we have an understanding council, and although there isn’t a lot of provincial or federal money out there, we are still blazing away. We are still willing to keep our airport open for business. There’s a lot of spin offs involved with an airport that people don’t understand.”