On a cold day in February 1986, a young 19-year old headed down a heated Jetway in Toronto to board a flight en-route to Ottawa. He had chosen Carleton University as the place to study for a Commerce degree, play some university hoops and soak up life in the nation's capital.

Some 48 minutes later the Air Canada jet landed in Ottawa and taxied toward the terminal building. It was a snowy and blustery day. "Thank heavens we don't have to walk through that," the young man muttered. "Oh yes you do," came the polite response from the flight attendant. So yours truly bundled up and trundled down the stairs and across 50 metres of pavement into the airport terminal.

Suffice it to say, it was an enduring but hardly an endearing first impression of Ottawa. A year later, after that frigid walk, the Ottawa airport completed and opened its terminal xpansion, thankfully with covered and weather-ignorant (welcome to the 20th century) passenger bridges. This 1987 building, from an exterior shell perspective, remains in place and basically unchanged today.

So it was with great excitement that I attended the roundbreaking ceremony on May 18th of this year for a new $310 million, 21st century terminal facility. The best news about this expansion is that no taxpayer dollars are involved. It will be totally financed through user fees (like seven other Canadian airports) commonly referred to as an airport improvement fee (AIF).

And kudos to Ottawa for convincing the airlines to add this fee as a line item on their tickets, thus avoiding the hassle one experiences in Vancouver or Montreal where you feel more like a hostage having to pay your AIF in a separate line before you can leave.

As part of the government's National Airports Policy unveiled in 1994, Transport Canada divested its responsibility for the airport by 1997 to the Ottawa International Airport Authority where a private company has managed it, as a public trust to act as an economic lever and generator for our region. Since 1997, $25 million in improvements have been made including improved retail/food concession space, opening a U.S. customs
pre-clearance facility as well as upgrades to the arrivals/departures area and improvements to the parking lot. Today the airport employs some 4,000 people and is responsible for $365 million in direct economic impact alone.

Of course the growth and changes at the airport have mirrored the dynamic growth and changes that have occurred in our economy. A decade ago, Ottawa was still a sleepy government town. Today, telecommunications and optical networking giants along with other high
tech companies, life sciences start-ups and various new
light-manufacturing facilities drive our growth. To add to this mix,
entrepreneurs and consultants provide high value added services to
clients ranging from government to the tech giants to our booming
tourism trade. Other key sectors, as identified by the Ottawa
Partnership (TOP), are equally as vibrant.

But if investors, tourists, and business partners can't get to Ottawa,
our current economic base along with future growth and the consequent
salaries paid not to mention the tax revenues that will be used to fund
everything from hospitals to schools to roads are at risk.

Today the airport serves 3.4 million passengers annually. But the
building and the surrounding precinct (aprons, parking lot, etc.) were
only designed to accommodate 2.7 million passengers a year. The
facility is clearly stressed as seasoned business travelers and
occasional fliers can both attest.

For a four-season climate, the parking facility is out-of-date. But
getting to or from one's car and braving the elements is trivial
compared to the delays experienced after landing or prior to take-off. On weekdays, from six to ten in the morning or between four and seven in the afternoons, the airport's 24 gates are jammed.

With limited room on the apron, departing jets are forced to wait until
others pass or taxi into a scarcely available gate. In a nutshell,
during these times, ground traffic at the airport is equivalent to
pedestrian volumes on Parliament Hill on Canada Day. Moreover, only nine of these gates have passenger bridges to accommodate jets like the Airbus 319, 320 of Boeing craft such as the 737 and 767. And passenger traffic volume is growing between eight and ten per cent a year, compared to the industry norm of two to three per cent.

Thankfully the terminal expansion, slated for Spring 2004 (but I'll bet
it will be earlier, maybe like December 2003) will alleviate these
pressures. A brand new facility with parking almost doubled (the
spaces, not the price), 15 extra gates, a wider apron footprint, better
baggage facilities and expanded passenger lounges will be ready to meet and accommodate Ottawa's present and future growth.

To be fair, this isn't all rosy. Those living near the airport have
legitimate complaints about noise pollution. Construction is running
from 7:30 a.m. to 10 or 11 p.m. most nights, but not until 3 a.m. in the morning (although this happened once and has since been addressed) as some have reported. And yes, the airport is pounding some 1,400 support pillars 80 feet into the ground. Thankfully, this part of the construction (the noisiest by far) is scheduled for completion on or before August 20th.

So I put these concerns directly to airport president Paul Benoit - who lives close enough to the airport that he sometimes walks to work - and he admitted that "yes, the noise is an annoyance." However, he was also quick to point out that the project is still on schedule and on budget. In Benoit noted that fears about a new runway are unjustified, "it's not on, it's not on for another 20 years." The challenge is with gates, volume and growth. The terminal expansion meets and exceeds this challenge.

The airport expansion twists the old "if you build it, they will come"
expression. In Ottawa's case, they've been coming for some time, now we're finally building it.