About This Episode
In this episode of “The Jump Seat,” host Chris Glass takes listeners on location to the Abbotsford Airport, where he sits down with Parm Sidhu, the airport’s General Manager. Parm shares his incredible journey from a Zamboni driver to the helm of one of Canada’s fastest-growing airports.
The conversation delves into the unique aspects of Abbotsford Airport, including its history, growth, and innovative approach to becoming an ultra low-cost airport. Parm discusses the airport’s early days, the impact of WestJet, and how Abbotsford has adapted to changes in the aviation industry over the years.
Listeners will gain insights into the importance of partnerships, the influence of technology, and how the airport plans to handle future growth without expanding its physical footprint. Join Chris and Parm for a deep dive into the strategies and innovations that are driving Abbotsford Airport’s success and learn how this dynamic airport is setting new standards in the aviation industry..
Podcast Transcript
Chris Glass: 00:00
Welcome back to another exciting episode of the Jump Seat. Today we are on location here at the Abbotsford Airport with I’m Parm Sidhu, the airport general manager.
Parm Sidhu: 00:10
Thanks for having me today, chris.
Chris Glass: 00:12
Perfect. Thank you so much for hosting us. This has been such a great trip, learning about the airport and learning about the city here. Thank you for the good weather. Thank you for the view. That is a much better view than we’re used to in the studio.
Parm Sidhu: 00:27
You’re welcome. This is one of the most livable areas in North America and it’s a vibrant economy and we got a lot to offer.
Chris Glass: 00:33
So I think it would be great to start with you and your story, so tell me a bit about Parham and how you ended up becoming the general manager of the airport here.
Parm Sidhu: 00:42
That’s a complicated story but I grew up in Abbotsford, played rugby in Abbotsford and I was pretty good in rugby and I got the rugby club. I joined the rugby club after high school and they kind of influenced me to get a job with the City of Abbotsford. So I started with the city as a skate sharpener and a Zamboni driver in the early 90s and did that for many, many years, worked at Public Works Yard the city’s been a great employer and I’ve never left and then we took over the airport as a city in 1997. Okay, and then a position came up around 2001, and it was for a groundskeeper and basically my first job was keeping the cigarettes off the sidewalk, keeping carpet shampooed in the terminal, keeping the windows clean and plowing snow and keeping the maintaining of the airfield.
Chris Glass: 01:35
Wow, okay, so you start out there. And then how did that grow into the GM role?
Parm Sidhu: 01:40
Well, it took a lot of, you know, a willing employer, a willing employee, and it was a partnership and a collaboration of getting to understand the industry. As soon as I got here on the first day of walking in, I knew I wanted to be in aviation and I started going back to school. I went to BCIT, took some airport operations courses, ended up with a certificate from there, but the on-the-job training was so powerful. You had a rapid-growing Airport with limited amounts of staff and lots of different things going on that grew from there into different roles and various different roles.
Chris Glass: 02:15
I think seven or eight different positions I’ve held here, so that time that you just described, that, that late 90s, was such a heavy growth period for the airlines. You know. You know, taking on the airline I was with, we took on 10 extra aircraft during that time and you know, doubling and tripling the staff. What was it like for airports at that time? Was it the same kind of growth?
Parm Sidhu: 02:36
Well, yeah, for, especially for in 1996 we had 3 000 passengers right and our biggest revenue source as an airport was raspberries by line item right. So the City of Abbotsford assumed operations of the airport January 1st of 1997 and shortly thereafter an airline called WestJet said they wanted to service this marketplace Right, and we didn’t have a terminal. Maintenance garage was turned into a terminal and then the terminal you see today broke ground for $60 a square foot and we didn’t have parking lots, we didn’t have aprons, so we weren’t a complete greenfield, but there was a lot of developments happening.
Chris Glass: 03:14
Off camera. We were talking about kind of how Abbotsford is a bit unique in the way it’s set up, so can you walk me through how I guess airports were deregulated and how Abbotsford is kind of a stand-alone in that world?
Parm Sidhu: 03:29
Yeah, so under the devolution of airports we didn’t have the volume, so we didn’t make the national airports policy cut. So we are an independent airport and we were basically transferred to the City of Abbotsford. City of Abbotsford formed an airport authority reporting to City Council, and gave the authority, who was the entrepreneurs of the community, a mandate. You’re all. The airport can’t cost the taxpayers any money and you have limited boring powers and we want you to go to the airport. From there the story and the journey began.
Chris Glass: 04:02
Wow. So what’s the structure currently? Now, does Abbotsford still report to City Council, or has that changed?
Parm Sidhu: 04:10
Yeah, we still have an airport authority and City Council. Everyone wants the airport to grow, sees aviation aerospace as a catalyst to the regional economy, the larger economy, and these jobs and movement of people and goods are significant to the region and to the country.
Chris Glass: 04:28
One of the things that I really like that you keep saying and I picked it up and you’ve coined this phrase that Abbotsford is the ultra low-cost airport. I’ve heard of ultra low-cost airlines, but ultra low-cost airport. So what’s the genesis of that and what does that mean?
Parm Sidhu: 04:46
Well, if you looked at what happened in 97, we didn’t have any facilities, so we had to get something to the market because we didn’t know our role. So we got something what we call high value, low cost, operationally efficient to the market and then from there we had free parking. We had a motivated airline in WestJet, wanting to grow the marketplace. They stimulated, not repetitive travelers. They took people out of cars, put them into planes, flew them to Calgary, Edmonton, and we moved the needle from 97 to 2003 fast. You know it went from 3,096 to 97,097. And by 2003, it was just somewhere around 400,000. Wow, and that’s a significant swing in passenger volumes.
Parm Sidhu: 05:30
Westjet has changed the look and feel of many airports and we happen to be one of them. Right, but in those days WestJet used to, from 97 to 2003, Some days WestJet would open and close the terminal. So we gave them the keys to the community and the keys to the airport and there was a free parking a reason to come here and low fares. There’s two things that fill planes in my opinion low fares and free parking, and our example from 97 to 2003,. The data don’t lie. It shows rapid growth. And then what?
Chris Glass: 06:07
happened in 2003?.
Parm Sidhu: 06:09
It was 2004,. We brought in paid parking. We brought in airport improvement fee. You know we had changed the model. The infrastructure was expensive ahead of us. We needed a lot of dollars. We needed longer runways, the terminal needed to be expanded. There was a whole bunch of other regulatory changes coming that come with passenger growth. The funding had to come from somewhere. So we brought in paid parking and our fees were increased.
Parm Sidhu: 06:37
Then, around 2008, we did get a visitor from an ultra-low-cost carrier, a global one. They were looking to expand possibly, and they were like we love what you got. It’s a simple operation, fits our model to a tee, but your costs are too high and we’re like going costs are too high. Our costs were relatively low in the system and then it really from there turned into a conversation with WestJet around 2010,. The changes to the CTA and how airlines show all-in fares. We realized there was something there and then we continued to work with our partners in WestJet and Enerjet at the time. And then who was looking to start? And Canada Jet Lines was looking to start. They were looking at Abbotsford and then New Leaf Travel and Flair. It was the pivot point really to an ultra low-cost airport was around 2015. And what did that transition look like?
Parm Sidhu: 07:28
We realized, from 2004 to 2015, the volumes of passenger volumes didn’t really move. The population base had grown, bellingham was taking a lot of cross-border leakage and we’re still hovering around 490, 503, 470, 490, just hovering around the half a million mark. So we tipped and stagnant, tipped above it twice, but everything was below and we went to, formed a partnership with WestJet and you know the new forms of leadership are through partnerships. I believe that’s the only way to move forward is partnerships and collaboration, and we worked with WestJet of the day and WestJet still today. Westjet put us on the map and New Leaf, which is Flair today. And what can we do to basically move the needle on pasture volumes? You know, we do represent the second largest population base in Canada, but our population is growing, but our roots aren’t Right and air travel isn’t yeah.
Parm Sidhu: 08:24
And air travel was growing. Yeah, and that’s when we decided, okay, we did a lot of research on ultra low-cost carriers and what was happening around the world. This was around 2012, 13, 14 and we were under the understanding that someone’s going to hit the market. Well, when someone does, our platform will be so competitive that they will have no choice other than to be here To make it happen. Yeah, absolutely. So we went and studied the region, studied the nation, took the pros and cons and then we went into the US, looked at what Bellingham was able to do. Bellingham’s peak year was 1.3 million passengers in 2013, and their primary 700,000 were Canadians. Cross-border leakage.
Chris Glass: 09:05
So money going straight to USS carriers, US.
Parm Sidhu: 09:08
Yeah, yeah, and some can make the argument. You know, if it wasn’t for Legion Airlines and what they’re doing out of Bellingham, a lot of Canadians would not have a lot of people from this market would not have seen Vegas. Right, those lower fares bring in a different customer and they bring in repetitive travelers because they make it affordable and accessible, right. So we decided to understand the ultra-low-cost carrier space. If you looked at what was happening internationally with Ryanair, allegiant Airlines, some of the most profitable airlines were ultra-low-cost carriers. Right that, you know what do they do and they control their costs.
Parm Sidhu: 09:40
It’s a disciplined business model, it’s volume-based and we kind of went back to our partners and and the airlines WestJet and, just today, flair New Leaf and they said okay, we will grow, but get the facilities ready and reduce your fees and we’ll give you a volume. And that’s what they did. So we went from 490,000 passengers in 2015 to 530,000 in 2016, 677,000 in 2017, 842,000 in 2018, broke the million mark in 19,. One year ahead of planned. Covid hits us. We had surpluses in 2020. Why? Because we controlled our costs, yeah, and then we simply had 315,000 passengers in 2020. 2021, we hit 515-ish. 2022, we hit 992. 16,000 shy of the 2019 total. And in 2023 was magical, literally. We made travel more affordable and accessible for all Canadians. Our fares were $49 to $79. Any day of the week you can buy one, not saying on that day, but there was something.
Parm Sidhu: 10:51
Low cost parking full of value. We were turning into the Vegas of Canada. Literally, our parking lot would fill up Thursday and by Monday night you can see it was emptying out. People were traveling all parts of Canada for a weekend, for remote work or whatever the reason was, but it was stimulation. But as an ultra-low-cost airport, our core business was identified as runways, taxiways, renting our land for direct investments to aerospace companies and giving the airlines a terminal that they want. They didn’t want loading bridges, they want power out. They want front and back loading and offloading.
Chris Glass: 11:26
They want a simple terminal experience and in our business model, the passenger belongs to the airline and I see a very conscious I’m assuming it’s a conscious decision when I walk through Abbotsford Airport. It’s a very aesthetically pleasing airport, but it’s not unnecessarily aesthetically pleasing. There’s not statues, there’s not giant paintings and murals. It’s. It’s a terminal.
Parm Sidhu: 11:51
It’s it’s clean, it’s efficient, but it’s designed to get me through security and onto the aircraft yeah, so the the terminal was designed with a lot of feedback, uh, from the airlines, and they will. They said we want simplicity, we want a terminal that’s made for throughput. This summer 2023, we were pushing through 7,400 people a day from that very terminal. Right, we have no debt today, but it’s a disciplined business model. We still fund our core business and our core assets with priority, but it’s just stay in our lane and we enable and empower the airlines to manage Chris Glass from curb to gate, gate to curb Right and we journey mapped it. At the end of the day, an airport doesn’t control a lot outside of paid parking, retail experience, the bathrooms everything else is controlled by an airline. The reason why you’ve come to the airport, for the most part, is because you bought an airline ticket.
Chris Glass: 12:45
Right, nobody’s coming here to hang out on a Friday.
Parm Sidhu: 12:48
Unfortunately no Maybe you’re on the airfield or maybe at one of the restaurants off outside of the terminal. But to a terminal? No, you’re coming here because you’re either you’re flying out and the airline has sold you something. Our relationship is very B2B, not B2Consumer or passenger. If a passenger has an issue with one of our facilities, yeah, we’re gonna support them and go above and beyond. But we really the airlines carry a strong voice here.
Chris Glass: 13:14
What do you have to say to airlines that aren’t flying here? Like I know I’m teeing you up here, but this is a great value proposition for me as kind of a-minded person and somebody who doesn’t like a lot of waste. I don’t look around and see a lot of waste. What do you have to say to the porters of the world and Canada Jet Lines? Abbotsford’s open for business.
Parm Sidhu: 13:37
We’re open for business. We’re an open platform. You know we enable airline profitability, viability and they’re enabled with a very competitive fee structure. We don’t have an airport improvement fee, we only charge a landing terminal fee and. But it stimulates growth and it’s a lot of repetitive travel a lot of first-time travelers, a lot of people going back and forth seeing grandkids, a lot of students, a lot of ethnic people flying back and forth, a lot of new immigrants flying back and forth. You make it affordable. We know we have the data. Now it can work.
Parm Sidhu: 14:15
You know the ULCCs represent somewhat like a dollar store. Dollar stores force us to buy more multiple times. We buy more than what we need, and you know. And then we feel bad or guilty going to a dollar store. That’s right. Us to buy more multiple times. We buy more than what we need, and you know we feel bad or guilty going to a dollar store. That’s right. And then you know, not everyone can go upmarket and bypass the dollar store. The ULCCs bring an opportunity and ULCC fares to grow the business and grow the volumes.
Chris Glass: 14:39
Right. So enough about making this a really good commercial for Abbotsford Airport, which I think speaks for itself. At Flight, we really believe in unlocking information and leaving no data strand and no data left behind, and using technology to help our airline partners do things more efficiently. We were talking, just before the camera started to roll, about some of the technology that has been used here at the Abbotsford Airport, and where do you see technology playing a role, getting you to more passengers coming through, more volume coming through, without having to build a bigger facility or without having to increase your footprint?
Parm Sidhu: 15:22
Yeah, so that’s a really powerful question. So you know, technology has changed and will continue to change the way we do business, interact. The consumer will own the consumer and they’re going to be enabled by this thing called a handheld device of some sort. And you know, you can now see technologies that go multimodal air, ground, ground, air. They can take you couch to couch or home to home or office to office and you never leave a portal, a super app such as Uber. Imagine an Uber app taking you from Surrey to Edmonton, surrey to Abbotsford, and Uber same ticket gets you onto an aircraft, takes you to Edmonton. It’s multimodal, seamless. Imagine getting your bag tag printed in the Uber for a fee.
Parm Sidhu: 16:09
Imagine your lunch being, or your packed lunch, or whatever you want being handed to you, right? So digital disruptions are real, but I think digital can bring a different way of stimulation and connectivity that we haven’t seen, right?
Chris Glass: 16:24
So and you have some interesting theories on who should own that. I know a lot of airports sometimes buy great technology, but we were talking about where you think the technology belongs.
Parm Sidhu: 16:42
Well, I think again, who sells you something? It’s the airlines, right, so what? We are platform for business. We take care of runways, taxiways and and a simple costco type of terminal. Uh, the form one of the former ceos of west that used to call us the costco of airports. High value, volume, priced one dollar hot dogs outside? Yeah, unfortunately not. We do make money off the food beverage. Uh, I can’t afford $1 hot dogs. We might have to bring back an airport improvement fee if we’re going to have that.
Parm Sidhu: 17:11
But at the end of the day, the airlines, basically in our business model, control the passenger couch to couch, and the more repetitive travel they can create, the more volume we all get. They’re the ones that sell you something, right? So understanding their brand and brand loyalty and who’s in the marketplace with them allows us to basically grow our volumes. Since 2015, we have been one of the fastest growing airports in Canada by percentage points year over year, and Hamilton from 2015 to 2019, 2020 up until COVID, it was us in Hamilton and then the ULCCs were centered around these two airports in the two big markets For a reason. Yeah, the population base was there and cross-border leakage was an issue. And then COVID hit and you know the ULCCs we had a lot of competition and they had gone national right. Right, we had a lot of competition and they had gone national right, and I still believe there’s a way to do this.
Parm Sidhu: 18:09
Volume-based, open for business and digital connectivity will be very important and the consumer will make their decisions. We’re not even talking wearables or voice-activated stuff yet. We’re all going to have some sort of a bot or something in our house. Someone robot cleaning or some voice-activated order me a pizza. That kind of thing. We believe all the airport processes can be put in your home. You should be able to tag your bag at home, weigh your bag at home. A domestic passenger it should be facial recognition, just through the system.
Chris Glass: 18:41
I look at Al like movie theaters have been completely disrupted. Before you have to wait in line for a ticket, you have to show up early. If you remember back in the day when Star Wars came out or whatever, you’d have to line up, be the first to buy your ticket and then wait three hours to get inside and wait for a pop, wait for chips and all that kind of stuff. And now you can buy it online, scan your pass on the way through and you take your seat. It’s a much better experience for everybody, including the movie theater, and it seems that’s the way everybody’s going Well.
Parm Sidhu: 19:11
More and more transactions are happening in advance, right, if you looked at car rental facilities, here operations very few transactions happen day of it’s either reservation, you know. Even paid parking now with reservations, more and more is proactive, right, right, it’s not reservation, you know. Even paid parking now with reservations, more and more is proactive, right, right, it’s not day out, it’s not reactive. So I do see digital connectivity continuously positively providing the consumer with more options.
Chris Glass: 19:37
Now we were talking about the future here at Abbotsford and what that’s going to look like. So if you wouldn’t mind giving some colour on what airlines can expect when a guest gets at the very front to all the way through security.
Parm Sidhu: 19:52
Yeah, we want to go multi-modal. We had a shuttle between here and SkyTrain pre-COVID, actually deeper than 2016,. New Leaf rolled out an integrated bus into their reservation system and you actually went to newleafcom and could buy Surrey to Edmonton, for example, and it was a seamless ticket air ground ground air and about 18 people were using it by week four. So we know there’s demand for multimodal. People will do things differently if there’s that opportunity. So we believe more and more of the processes will be done from your couch and you’ll do more and more from there and the airport time time in the airport in a place like Abbotsford will shrink simply because you’re going to show up, drop your bag off. Your facial recognition recognizes you’re welcome, mr Gloucester. Pre-board Screening you’re fast processed through trusted traveler programs all that. You’re flying within Canada and you’re through the system. Right? You know that’s ideally. You arrive one hour to departure and you’re boarding at minute 45. Right?
Chris Glass: 20:59
and not only is that better as an experience, from the consumer’s point of view, it allows you to do more with less in the facility. Right, you don’t have the queuing, you don’t have the physical checking counters anymore, you know, you can kind of open that up.
Parm Sidhu: 21:16
Well, if you journey match Chris Glass’s journey couch to couch today you buy a ticket from Flair or WestJet. You show up, we have parking to sell you, possibly because you bought an airline ticket or you got dropped off on the curb. You go to the check-in counters. You’re dealing with a Flair agent or a WestJet agent. We as the airport own the counters but the consumer doesn’t know that. Right, you use the washroom, buy coffee. You go to pre-board screening.
Parm Sidhu: 21:45
Well, caatsa is a parallel entity that reports to Transport Canada with airports I can’t influence. Day up I can work with them, planning strategy, long-term assets and expansion. But day up you go through CAATSA, you end on the secure side. You buy coffee. We control that. Now you’re at a counter again that we own, but you’re dealing with West Yatter, flare and you board. So if you journey mapped it, you know the touch points of the airports is more on the facilities and secondary products and accelerated revenue opportunities for the airport and parking and food beverage. The main relationship is with the airline and they’re the ones that can take that data to convince you to travel again. And so that’s where we simplified our business, saying, okay, airlines, what do you want? They go well you manage. Curb to gate, gate to curb yeah. Will you give us lower fees? Yeah, will you give us volume? Sure.
Chris Glass: 22:33
That’s the trade-off you give us the volume, we’ll give you the ULCA, if that is.
Parm Sidhu: 22:41
And the ultra low cost-cost airport isn’t meaning our ultra-low-cost carriers are cheap. No, they’re not cheap. It’s more of a discipline around the core business, right. Everyone wants to complicate the business model, right, but keeping it streamlined and simple is the success of a ULCC.
Chris Glass: 23:00
It’s one of the most fascinating things when you hear Michael O’Leary talk Ryan Eyre about the discipline of keeping fares low, and he’s so laser focused on keeping air fares as low as humanly possible. I heard him talk about taking the bathrooms out of planes and people thought it was a money grab and he said, no, if I could take one bathroom out, I could fit another two rows in and I could drop prices by two bucks or something along those lines. And the discipline that the ULCCs have has somewhat been missing in the airport world and it seems like I don’t want you to throw any other airports under the bus, let’s talk about this airport, but it seems like the same focus that Ryanair has on cost control is the same focus that Abbotsford has on cost control.
Parm Sidhu: 23:48
Discipline around our core business. We will spend on our core business just like anyone else would, but it’s discipline around the core business and funding it well and staying true to the partnerships and collaborations we have with our airline partners. I can only speak for Abbotsford Without growing viable airlines and you just can’t grow we’ve had to fight for everything. You know, in the early days there was not a much return. We had a lot of infrastructure ahead of us. We’re scrappy. We have to fight for everything.
Parm Sidhu: 24:21
Nothing comes easy for places like Abbotsford and tertiary airports in Canada. Right, Population is sparse. There’s big centres. You need competition within the space. Tertiary airports like Abbotsford and Hamilton and Kitchener come to life for three reasons Cost at the big, capacity at the big, or you land an airline that maybe doesn’t want to operate at a primary airport, like the Ryanair’s in the southwest that have done so. That is the opportunity. The population base is here to grow. The business and the brand is Canada. Right, and if only 37% of Canadians flew pre-pandemic that’s’s the number an airline executive gave me we should be driving that to 40, 45 to 50 and more. Right, Because you can’t see this country without air travel for the most part.
Chris Glass: 25:11
Yeah, you can’t drive coast to coast. Yeah, do you know what that noise is? Yeah, do you know?
Parm Sidhu: 25:19
what it is, what. Let’s sit here, I don’t know like it’s super loud. It’s an engine it’s yeah. So you want to give an ecosystem of value to the consumer and if abbotshire now has the data, like 7 400 people were using us. We were about summer. We were the ninth busiest airport for one-third of summer, you know. 7,400 passengers annually. That puts us at like 2.8 million for the year. Wow, that’s significant. But that just means everyone. It’s a win-win-win, because who is a ULCC passenger today?
Parm Sidhu: 25:57
Well, eventually we’ll fly WestJet Premium Economy At some point yeah today, we’ll eventually fly WestJet Premium Economy at some points, because if you can’t get someone in the door, you’re not going to get them and upsell them right.
Chris Glass: 26:07
Right, and I think traveling is one of those things that if you don’t do it you don’t know how addictive it is, but once you start you can’t stop. So when you use a flare or formerly Lynx or ULCC and get it in your blood, that is something that sticks with you, the love of travel that sticks with you for so long. So it’s so important to have uh. I know we’ve been having a lot of discussions recently about uh affordability and air travel from an airport operator’s point of view. Where do you see the industry now and how healthy is it? Where do you see us going?
Parm Sidhu: 26:43
Well, covid wasn’t easy on airports or airlines. You know, got to remember airports are multi-decade facilities. You’ve got to plan and we may have a certain recipe here, but at the end of the day, a runway resurfacing a new runway is pretty expensive, regardless of what airport you’re going to do it at right. Yeah, uh, the core bit, the core funding of the infrastructure, is expensive. So you know, covid wasn’t easy on the airline sector, uh, and on the consumer and the passengers in north america, anywhere in the globe. So you know they’re coming out of that.
Chris Glass: 27:16
You know there’s some concern, the fog of kovitz lifting, and now the new operating environment is there.
Parm Sidhu: 27:23
That’s right and costs have gone up within the airline systems. Costs have gone up at airports. We do have expensive infrastructure to maintain and the ecosystem off airport. It all ties to, like I say, vegas of the 90s. It was a party, right, we were going back and forth to Vegas I think about 1,200 Canadians and I believe we were partying pretty good for 1,200 Canadians for three nights, right.
Chris Glass: 27:46
We were doing. Well, I was part of that. Airfare was really cheap.
Parm Sidhu: 27:50
Accommodations were, you know, 20 bucks a night. Yeah, food beverage was cheap and the alcohol was either free or nominal fee. It’s no longer that case now, right? So that is the question now, if you looked at some of the financials of the publicly traded companies in North America, there was a fair bit of them in North America that lost money in quarter three of last year, right. And now, just this morning, we were talking about our quarter one. Results for some carriers in North America were net losses, right, right.
Chris Glass: 28:19
And, historically, airlines that have done very well are struggling.
Parm Sidhu: 28:24
Costs have gone up and you know it’s like a restaurant in many ways. The demand for eating out is high, but the demand for discounted coupons or app-based discounts or happy hours and Saturday-Sunday brunches is high. But the restaurants want you to come for dinner for four people and drink two bottles of wine and have three course meal and drop 600 bucks right. And that’s the same challenge. I believe some of the low cost carriers and ultra low cost carriers is trying to get people to go up market with revenue. How do you, if costs go up, how do you get more revenue? But that’s where the $49 to $79 fair still stimulates. You put a one in front of that. It doesn’t stimulate domestically the same way. So, which means you know, travel could if we’re not careful.
Parm Sidhu: 29:12
So right now I think there’s many challenges but there’s many opportunities digitalization, couch to couch, integrated, seamless travel options enabling the airlines couch, integrated, seamless travel options enabling the airlines. Airlines will grow if there’s competition and if there’s multi. You know if they see profit right and right now they’re just everyone’s coming out of a little bit of a storm and how do they reset and reconfigure and everything. So moving forward, that is the in the rest of you know it possibly could be a lost decade. Right, with COVID front loaded on the front end of the. Now you got airlines and everyone needs more, you possibly have economic downturn. You know accommodations have gone up very expensive. Right, airfares are competitive in some markets but you know the consumer is facing other challenges.
Chris Glass: 30:01
Do you think the cost increases that we’re seeing and we’ve talked at length about this too in Mexico and in the United States, does it provide an opportunity for Canadians to enjoy Canada again?
Parm Sidhu: 30:12
I think so. I think you know historic. If you looked at it, you know we were leaving the country from November till April 30th because it was cheaper and warmer and you never heard. It was a walletless holiday when you bought an all-inclusive right. But the all-inclusives are changed now too. Try going to a major US city or into a hotspot like Cancun or Los Cabos. It’s very expensive. If you looked at even Hawaii, an average Canadian probably is now priced out of Hawaii. They can only go there if they plan, budget for it and go that way. But you just aren’t going to pick up and go as an average Canadian to Hawaii you might get an airfare, something you plan for.
Parm Sidhu: 30:53
Yeah, yeah, and travel may become one of those things again if we’re not receptive to making the current airlines, making them grow, giving them what they need. You know, our airline partners want to turn planes here in 30 minutes. We’re working with them to turn these things in 30 minutes, right?
Chris Glass: 31:09
Right. I’m seeing ground loading behind me and seeing both doors to get to that efficiency. So it’s cool to see that the resurgence of the quick turn coming back?
Parm Sidhu: 31:20
Yeah, because if you can’t move it, you can’t sell it, and then you can’t if that thing’s not flying, it’s not generating any revenue, right? So you know, we’re all about Canada and we’re all about making travel accessible and affordable for Canadians. We’ve seen it done, we have the data and since from 97 to 2003, the data was stimulation 2015 to 2023, the data’s right in front of us. It’s a significant ride.
Chris Glass: 31:45
We’re kind of coming to the end of our pod for the day, and one thing that I ask every individual guest is where should I be going next on my vacation? And you seem like a very well-traveled human being, so what am I missing? What should I see? Where should I go next? Where should we take the jump seat on the road?
Parm Sidhu: 32:04
The brand is Canada. Everyone wants to always leave Canada or get on a plane and leave. As much as that’s great from an airport perspective, go see our wonderful country, go see the Maritimes, go see Quebec City, go see Victoria, go see Canada. I do believe we have an opportunity to possibly make domestic travel more of a year-round product, as other markets price us out. And if you looked at COVID, what was first? To recover and come back Domestic? We were one of the first airports to come back daily, weekly, monthly, annually, and it was heavily concentrated on domestic travel. So why can’t we make it year-round? Why can’t we go to the Carnival in Quebec in February, if we’re given that opportunity?
Chris Glass: 32:47
Right, so you’re motivating me to stay in our country this summer. So, parm, thank you so much for being open to these conversations, making us such a wonderful guest here at the Abbotsford Airport and being a part of our show. Thank you, chris. Thank you so much for spending some.
