NOT DONE WITH THE SUN
Falling loonie forces Canadians to change vacation plans,
The shuffle off to Buffalo to catch a cheap flight on a U.S. airline is losing its shine, thanks to a lower loonie.
“We have seen an impact, but it’s difficult to quantify the exact number,” said Pascal Cohen, senior manager of marketing at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
That’s because no data is collected on citizenship, when passengers arrive to catch their flight.
However, airport officials do conduct licence plate surveys at the parking lot at the Buffalo airport. Previously, when the Canadian dollar was at par with the U.S. dollar, as many as 40 per cent of vehicles were Ontario plates. These days, the airport estimates it is about 15 to 20 per cent fewer Ontario plates.
Cohen says overall passenger volume at the Buffalo airport is up 1.9 per cent, year over year, which could be attributed to an improving U.S. economy.
It’s unclear whether Canadian airports will enjoy a bump in traffic as travellers choose to fly from home airports. Pearson airport says passenger traffic on transborder routes are up this year, but can’t attribute that to a shift in travel patterns.
Sunwing plans to operate direct flights to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and Cancun, Mexico, from Buffalo, beginning in January for the second year in a row.
Canadians can pay for their vacation packages in Canadian dollars, while Americans can buy their holidays in U.S. dollars through a sister company, Vacation Express.
At the airport in Niagara Falls, N.Y., which offers service to cities in Florida on ultra-low-cost carriers Allegiant Air and Spirit Airlines, Canadian passengers used to make up well over 80 per cent of travellers, but now it’s dropped to the “upper 70s,” Cohen said. “It’s almost an exclusively Canadian airport,” he added.
In fact, Spirit Airlines actually advertises itself as the Niagara Falls/Toronto airport on its route map and New York’s Plattsburgh/Montreal airport.
“We have seen no change in demand from our flights servicing Canadian passengers,” Spirit spokesman Stephen Schuler wrote in an email, noting flights from both airports are very full.
But executives at Allegiant Air acknowledged on its third-quarter earnings call last month that it has been negatively impacted at border airports that cater to Canadian passengers, because “the value proposition” has declined.
Aspokesperson said in an email that the weak Canadian dollar has certainly provided new challenges in marketing to Canadian travellers, but insisted low fares were still a draw, noting no major changes have been made to its schedule.
Plattsburgh airport is seeing a drop in passengers, but “it’s nothing as devastating as people would assume given the exchange rate,” said airport spokeswoman Kristy Kennedy, estimating there has been about a 5-per-cent drop.
Kennedy argued that the airport is still attractive when compared to Canadian airports, given overall lower taxes and fees. Canadian airlines and airports have long complained about government policies that make it more expensive to fly from domestic airports including charging airport rent and fuel taxes.
Studies show that an estimated five million Canadians travel to the U.S. in search of better fares each year.