Kelowna International Airport anticipating 75 percent drop in December ridership
Minor changes at Kelowna International Airport.
Masks remain mandatory throughout the duration of travel, valet parking has been halted and food services will continue in airports and on planes.
Airport Director Sam Samaddar said all airlines are required to conduct health checks of passengers departing in or out of Canada.
“At the pre-board screening point there will be temperature checks that will be conducted and if you're temperature is above 38 Celsius then you'll be asked to wait 10 minutes and if you fail again you won’t be allowed to board the flight.”
Despite this, COVID-19 restrictions will actually make security wait times significantly shorter.
“The month of December has traditionally been one of our peak months where we handle over 200,000 passengers but with what's happened with the pandemic, we'll be fortunate if we do a quarter of that. So about 45 to 50,000 passengers would be the maximum that we'd be expecting at this point,” said Samaddar, adding that passenger confidence and COVID-19 restrictions will be a major factor.
“As an industry when we look at the airports and airlines we've learned obviously a lot from this. We've come together with international protocols on measures that we're taking to make sure people are safe and being able to implement those measures whether you're stepping on board an aircraft or are going through the airport terminal building itself.”
As provincial covid-19 regulations change, so do airport protocols.
So, YLW has launched a tool to give passengers piece of mind.
“We've introduced, as part of our innovation with the city, the new chat bot called Link. So if people do have any questions, they can go to our airport website at ylw.kelowna.ca and get information on travel requirements of screening. Whatever their questions may be.”
The chat bot will be available 24/7.
