COVID has left much economic devastation in its wake, especially for the travel, hospitality, and tourism sector. As the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, regions and countries when into lock down, and companies quickly transitioned to remote work (and remote business meeting), and air passenger traffic plummeted. Airlines and airports lost upwards of 95% of its business in a matter of days as a result of a drastic drop in demand. Globally, many nations have attempted to cushion the impact through various support and liquidity programs, to varying degrees of effectiveness.
On this episode, Bob Sartor, President & CEO of the Calgary Airport Authority, joins this episode’s host, Adam Legge to give us an inside look at how airports work and why they are so important to our economy.
We also discuss the extent of the impact that COVID has on the organization’s business and the state of Canadian airports today and the genesis, implementation, and hopes of the Government of Alberta and Canada’s International Border Testing Pilot program.
And we’ll explore how we get people traveling again, the general future of the air travel industry, and the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.
In This Episode:
- Airports—how they work, why they are important, and their pre-COVID economic impact
- Behind the scenes of the Calgary Airport Authority and the organization’s vision for growth and becoming a world-class hub of air travel
- Impact of COVID on airport operations, the response from the Calgary Airport Authority, and response from the federal government
- What will be needed to get passenger traffic back to pre-COVID levels, both in Canada and internationally
- The initial impact of the testing pilot program
- Protocols the Calgary Airport Authority has implemented to keep passengers safe and enhance the experience
Resources Mentioned:
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