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By Anna Guy------------------------------------------------------------------

Ask anyone, anywhere in the world about Niagara Falls, and they’ll most likely know exactly what you

are talking about.

Such was the experience of Len O’Connor. While he was working for aviation contrac-tors with the United Nations in Northern Africa, people would ask him where we

was from. When “Ontario” and “Toronto” failed to elicit much familiarity (just as I had to Google Oran, Algeria), O’Connor would mention “Niagara Falls”, and everyone would know exactly.

The world-famous Niagara region is ser-viced by the Niagara District Airport (NDA), where O’Connor is the CEO. The airport services approximately 36,000 move-ments annually, and, thanks to an vibrant tourism industry, population growth, and

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increased business interest, that number is growing.

Niagara’s biggest neighbour is Toronto. With six and a half million people within less than 2 hours driving distance, the Ni-agara Region is ideally located; it’s close enough to conduct business, but far enough to get away from it all. Its wine region, theatre, and, of course, the Falls themselves, are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the area offers.

DAILY FLIGHTS TO TORONTOWhich is why the Niagara District Airport and FLYGTA, recently introduced a regular service from the downtown Billy Bishop Len O’Connor, CEO

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Toronto City Airport to the Niagara region. What typically takes an hour and a half to drive, can now be accessed in a 12-minute flight for $159 return.

“When they started, you have to be able to show them there is a market here, which we did through market cases and surveys here and Toronto. Nine months ago, we started with two flights a day, five days a week,” says O’Connor. The response has been so positive that the schedule has been increased to four flights a day, seven days a week.

“The demand is there,” says O’Connor.

“What we have noticed is a lot of people are moving to the Niagara region, and a lot of people in Toronto will retire in Niagara-On-The-Lake.” The flight into the NDA will make it easier for this growing demograph-ic to still access friends, family, and favou-rite haunts from their old neighbourhoods.

SOANThe NDA is one of ten members of South-ern Ontario Airport Network, also known as SOAN. The Southern Ontario airports will benefit from the increased economic op-portunity and air travel demand facilitated by the mega hub. “There will be significant growth over the next three decades—one

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of the fastest in north America—and with that comes a demand for air travel,” says O’Connor.

It is estimated by 2043, the region will fa-cilitate 110 million passengers annually. The NDA will participate in completing a catchment and demand study of the re-gion to identify opportunities for future point to point growth in leisure, business aviation and short-haul markets at regional airports.

“We believe it is essential to prepare for this growth by use of capacity because we already have transportation option to link

the regions and support the local econo-mies,” says O’Connor. “That is important and a big move for us and we just keep moving it forward.”

The next step is to open the scheduled ser-vice to Montreal, then Ottawa, and then into the trans-border market with flights to and from New York City.

ATTRACTING BUSINESS“When I came in here, the commission mandate was to operate the airport as a viable commercial entity, with its primary purpose being meeting the needs of com-mercial and corporate aviation within the

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commercial service area of Niagara Re-gion,” says O’Connor. “This includes at-tracting aviation-related businesses to lo-cate at the airport, supporting local area industrial growth by facilitating access by corporate aviation and encouraging com-mercial passengers, and air freight servic-es to the extent that markets for these can be developed. And that is what we have done.”

The airport has been approved for a so-lar project through the Solar FIT program, and in 2018, Transport Canada will be con-structing a new flight service station at the airport. There will also be a new Airport Maintenance organization (AMO) building built equipped and able to maintain jets and large aircraft.

www.niagaradistrictairport.ca

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