A very empty Vancouver International Airport (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)

Jun 16 2020, 10:10 pm

To say the least, Vancouver International Airport (YVR) is looking very quiet these days.

Recently released statistics show just 69,000 passengers went through the airport in all of the month of April 2020 — the peak of the global crisis.

Comparatively, on a normal day before the pandemic, YVR typically saw 78,000 passengers over a single day. The airport’s numbers for April represented a 97.6% drop in passenger volumes from the same month in 2019.

COVID-19 has resulted in a nosedive in global air travel demand, with airlines cutting frequencies and routes entirely, and governments enacting travel restrictions.

In May, YVR said it was forecasting between eight and 15 million passengers per year for the next three years, with the low end of this forecast equivalent to YVR’s pre-1992 levels — before the opening of the modern international terminal — and the high-end equivalent to 1998’s volumes. In 2019, the airport saw record traffic volumes of 26.4 million passengers.

A basic level of operations and services has been retained, but much of the airport’s remaining operations is now consolidated into a smaller footprint to help reduce operational costs, which reduces the drain on cash reserves.

Normally there would be thousands of passengers streaming through the terminal building, but here are some snapshots and videos of the temporary “new normal” during the pandemic:

 

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Kenneth ChanKenneth Chan

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