Vancouver International Airport

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Vancouver International Airport (IATA: YVR, ICAO: CYVR) is located about 15 kilometres driving distance from downtown Vancouver, British Columbia on Sea Island in Richmond. It is the second busiest airport in Canada, with non-stop flights daily to Asia, Europe and Mexico and the Caribbean. There are also many non-stop flights within Canada and the United States. The South Terminal serves regional airlines which fly mostly within British Columbia.

Passengers travelling through YVR are required to pay an Airport Improvement Fee that is included in the price of a ticket.

On flights originating in Vancouver, like at many other major Canadian airports, passengers bound for the United States go through U.S. customs and immigration prior to boarding their flights. The flight is then treated, for most practical purposes, as a domestic US flight.

Vancouver International Airport has three terminals: The domestic terminal, which was constructed in 1968 and recently given a top-to-bottom renovation; the International Terminal, which was newly constructed in the early 1990s, and the South Terminal, which is a portion of the original terminal that is still in use. The International and Domestic terminals can effectively be considered to be one building divided into two sections, while the South terminal is located in a remote part of the airport.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the closure of North American airspace forced Vancouver International Airport to be part of Operation Yellow Ribbon because it was the only major Canadian airport on the West Coast that could handle large aircraft. This resulted in a huge volume of trans-Pacific traffic being diverted there—34 flights carrying 8,500 passengers from Asia to destinations on the United States West Coast and points beyond. One of the aircraft diverted was an Air China 747 from Beijing to San Francisco escorted by two U.S. F-15s onto the airport's north runway, purely due to a communication problem. Even though Vancouver International didn't register the highest number of flights relative to other Canadian airports involved in the operation (Only Halifax and Gander registered more than Vancouver International), it registered more passengers than any other Canadian airport involved in the operation. The airport's handling of the operation won them the 2001 Airport Management Award from the B.C. Aviation Council.

In May 2005, the federal government, who own the land, announced that they were cutting rent costs by 54%. The rent reductions will cut the cost of the lease by approx. $1.1 billion Canadian over the term of the lease, which ends in 2052. Currently, the airport authority pays about $80 million CAD each year in rent.

TransLink is building the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver Line, an automated metro line which will be attached to the city's existing SkyTrain system, and will connect the airport to downtown Vancouver and Richmond; it is scheduled to be completed in 2009. As well as rapid transit, rennovation plans have been announced for the international terminal. The rennovations will include nine gates and several examples of beauty in British Columbia, including a stream in a proposed pathway and fish and jellyfish tanks. The domestic terminal is also to be refurnished.

Vancouver International Airport/Airlines and Nonstop Destinations

FBOs

There are several fixed base operators that service aircraft at Vancouver International Airport:

External links

Category:

Airports of British Columbia