Calgary airport hosts busiest travel day since start of pandemic

Holiday travellers and even a few foreign tourists were making their way through YYC Calgary International Airport Thursday, making for the busiest single day of travel since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic roughly 20 months ago.

"November we are 54 per cent of what we had in 2019. We're estimating that we should finish the month of December is 65 per cent of 2019," said Chris Miles, vice-president of operations and infrastructure for Calgary Airport Authority. "So we're still seeing a growth in our traffic which is reassuring to our carriers and our employees."

The airport is expecting roughly 35,000 passengers a day during the holiday season. In previous years. the annual average was as high as roughly 55,000.

"Really we're we haven't seen much of a reduction in the loads even with the Omicron variant," Miles says.

He advises people to arrive early and prepare ahead to leave time for additional procedures which are not optional.

"Certainly for those that haven't been in the airport in two years, it's a different process," explained Miles. "Masks are an absolute must. Vaccination is an absolute must. And the more preparation that you do in advance of arriving at the airport, the better your experience is going to be."