A new expansion coming to the Halifax airport would bring more international flights and trade to the province.
Construction is already underway, and Joyce Carter, CEO of the Halifax Stanfield International Airport, said it should be done by the end of 2025.
She said she’s “very excited” for the announcement, because of the economic growth it can bring to Nova Scotia.
“For us, the economic benefit to the community — of both cargo and passengers and the jobs it’s going to create — is really what our mandate is,” said Carter.
A globe inside the Halifax Stanfield International Airport is pictured on June 26, 2024. (Jacob Moore/Acadia Broadcasting)
The government announced Wednesday that they would give $8.3 million to the project. In total, it costs $18 million.
The airport needs more space because they’re getting more international flights, more than double what they had before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to airport spokesperson Tiffany Chase.
Bigger planes, more shipping
The new addition would bring in more flights, but also bigger flights, wide-body passenger planes, which can carry more goods in the belly of the plane.
The current construction phase puts $29 million into the economy, and creates about 140 jobs, “directly and indirectly,” according to an email from spokesperson Leah Batstone. Direct jobs are the construction workers on site, and the indirect jobs are goods and services necessary to support the construction workers, for example.
It will take some time to attract larger planes and organize for more goods to ship in and out of the airport, but the airport estimates it would reach its full potential 10 years from now. Then, the project would have put $800 million into the economy and have created about 4000 direct and indirect jobs, wrote Batstone.
This rendering shows what the Halifax airport expansion could look like once it’s complete. (Halifax Stanfield International Airport)
The airport couldn’t yet provide a number of how many employees would work in the expanded area.
The larger planes also come with some environmental benefit. Right now, trucks often take goods from the Halifax airport and drive them to another one, like Montreal, for example, and then they’ll be transferred onto a plane and shipped somewhere else, said Dean Bouchard, vice president of airport planning.
With the wide-body passenger planes, those trucks could be cut out altogether, he said.
In an email, the airport said flying cargo from Halifax, instead of trucking it, would reduce shipping emissions for the airport by about 11 per cent by 2035, when the expansion reaches its full potential.
Streamlining connecting flights
Chase also said the expansion would help passengers catch connecting flights much quicker.
When people arrive from an international flight to Halifax, they have to go through customs, leave the secured area, and re-enter through customs again to catch their connecting flight.
When the project is done, Chase said people will get off their international flights and they’ll be able to stay in the secure area.
“When this facility is fully up and running, it’s a much better experience,” said Chase.
MP Sean Fraser announced the government would spend $8.3 million on the airport expansion project on June 26, 2024. (Jacob Moore/Acadia Broadcasting)
Sean Fraser, MP for central Nova Scotia, said he’s been working with the airport authority on this for years.
The airport can now start recruiting those larger planes because they announced the project, which was “the real win,” said Fraser.
He added that people should expect a lot more traffic in the airport once the project is done.
“Jobs in Nova Scotia — hard to be anything but happy about an investment like that. It’s the main reason I ran for politics in the first place, and I’m going to be thrilled to see more jobs come as a result of this announcement,” he said.
