Courtney Burns makes history as the first ever President and CEO of the Greater Moncton Romeo Leblanc International Airport.
Burns previously worked as the Director of Finance and Administration at the Airport since 2017.
“Working at an airport is fascinating,” exclaimed Burns. “Every day is a new adventure. I am constantly learning, in terms of moving into the CEO role. I love to lead teams. Having that opportunity to step into the role as we emerge from the pandemic was just a great fit.”
Burns described a 74 per cent decrease in passenger traffic at YQM for each of the last two years. The hope is that traffic should return to 2019 levels by 2023 or 2024.
There will be more seats this summer out of Moncton than in 2019.
“We welcomed Swoop last week with service to Hamilton and they’re adding Edmonton in mid June,” mentioned Burns. “Porter recently added a direct flight to Toronto Island, and PAL is increasing their frequencies to flights to Newfoundland and Ottawa starting June 10. So, all of the destinations we served before the pandemic are here. Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, and then we’ve added six new routes since pre pandemic. So, things are looking up and I think the recovery forecasts are kind of moving forward into 2023. Whereas for the majority of the pandemic, the thoughts were it would be 2024 before we saw recovery.”
With the pandemic, flights to warmer destinations out of YQM were lost. Burns noted they’re anxious to get winter charter flights with Sunwing and Air Transat back up and running for 2023.