Regina airport finishes renovations, looks at more

The Regina International Airport has now
completed some much needed renovations – outside and inside. There will be more
parking with the addition of a new cell phone parking lot because people
picking up loved ones won’t tie up valuable parking spaces. A new terminal
expansion means increased elbow room for check-ins. And upstairs inside
security, 180 more seats have been added. Plus there are more outlets for your
gadgets, and better access to the airport lounge. 

The new renovations cost
over $9 million and were needed to accommodate the airport’s growth of 3.9
percent last year – more than double what was forecasted. For the eighth year
in a row, the airport saw a record number of passengers come through their
gates in 2012: 1,182,715.  

“As you can see, the Tim Horton’s
needs to be bigger, but no, they’re very nice,” laughed passenger Garnet Hall,
who was travelling to Jamaica. 

Regina Airport Authority
President and CEO, Jim Hunter said, “With the project we finished this year,
with the expansion of our check-in hall and post-security areas, that will give
us enough capacity at the airport, we think until, 2021, 2022.” 

Hunter predicts with the
winter being as cold as it is this winter, 2013 will mean even more fliers, so
although these expansions are only freshly complete, the airport authority is
already thinking of expanding even more. Hunter says work on an addition
another third the size of the current airport could start as early as 2015, but
it won’t come cheap.  

“That first tranche of
expansion and all the associated projects, some of those I highlighted here
today, are going to cost us in the neighbourhood of 100 to 150 million dollars,”
he said.  

No plans are finalized yet
and for now, the latest renovations are appreciated. 

“There’s a lot more space
in here; you can fit a lot more people. Even when there were all these delayed
flights and all these people waiting around, it never felt like it was over-packed.
Had this been in the old facility, it would have been a little uncomfortable in
here, I think,” said passenger Kyle Leadbeater.