Airport Supports Businesses and Jobs
10 November 2015
Nanaimo Airport is renowned for supporting local businesses and creating jobs, as well as connecting the central Island to the rest of the world .
But it’s also becoming known as something else that’s vitally important to our communities: a thriving business centre.
Your airport has grown into a workplace that supports more than 1,300 direct and indirect jobs. Within the next five years, that number is projected to hit over 2,000 jobs.
Right now, airport operations provide an economic contribution of almost $100 million to the region. The total includes wages paid by the many businesses that call Nanaimo Airport home, plus the goods and services they purchase, largely from local suppliers.
We’re very much like a mall, in that we provide the space and our business partners employ their own staff. All of the firms here bring a commitment to serving the needs of our customers.
They also have another thing in common: they’ve prospered during the unprecedented growth the airport has experienced in recent years. FedEx and Enex Aviation Services, for example, both expanded their operations in 2014 to keep up with surging demand.
Our partners run the gamut from large organizations — such as Air Canada and WestJet, which fly hundreds of thousands of passengers every year — to small businesses, such as Connections Cafe, which provides food service in the terminal for all passengers.
We work with charter flight operators, couriers and freight shippers, three car rental agencies, ground transportation firms, and a flying school that opened in 1990.
But it’s not just businesses that make their home at your airport.
We’re also proud to be the base for several community groups that enrich our Island.
The Nanaimo Flying Club, the 205 Collishaw Nanaimo Squadron of Air Cadets, and the local branch of Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA).