Hi all and another apology for such a long break between posts on here.
As you may or may not be aware, the Edmonton City Centre Airport had one of its two remaining runways closed and decommissioned at the end of July, leaving the transportation hub without its very appreciated Instrument Landing System and one less option for arriving and departing aircraft. The closure is all a part of the Edmonton Airport Authority's plans to close what was once "Blatchford Field" and for years "The Muni", in stages. A group of concerned people and businesses known as Envision Edmonton have been working feverishly to collect enough names on a petition to force a referendum by the citizens of Edmonton in this Fall's Civic Election. Just this week, with only days left to their deadline to reach their required number of signatories, Envision Edmonton announced that they were successful in collecting the 78,000 + names needed to back their quest to let the citizens of Edmonton decide the fate of this once proud airport.
During WWII the Edmonton Airport or Blatchford Field was at one point the busiest airport in the world with hundreds of aircraft arriving and departing each day. The BCATP had a presence here with # 2 Air Observer School and #16 Elementary flight Training School and the one prominent reminder of the BCATP at the airport today is the "Double Hangar" which is home to the Alberta Aviation Museum. Blatchford Field was also a major cog in the wheel that saw thousands of American made warplanes from P-39 Airacobras to C-47's and even a Harvard trainer or three flown through Alberta enroute to the Soviet Union as part of the Allies Lend-Lease program. Edmonton was the last significant stop for northbound aircraft headed through northern Alberta, British Columbia and into the Yukon territory enroute to Alaska for the hop across the Bering Strait.
When the Second World War ended, Blatchford Field was a state of the art aviation installation...for the propeller age. Edmonton had slowly grown around the airport leaving no options for expanding the runways to accommodate aircraft of the jet age. Yet the City Centre Airport (as it is now known) entered the post war era very well positioned to play a very long and valuable role as a commuter facility.
Perhaps all of the modern day hand wringing about which of Edmonton's airports would eventually do what could have been settled more peacefully back in the 1960's. When the Edmonton International Airport opened in their new terminal building in 1963, that was a golden opportunity to prioritize the roles that both the International and the Muni could play in Edmonton's aviation future. For whatever reason, both airports were permitted to operate essentially in competition with one another for passenger routes. The end result was that passengers chose the convenience of the Muni in close proximity to downtown over the significant drive to the then very distant International. Airlines that could operate out of the shorter runways at the Muni did so and longer haul flights gravitated to the International out of sheer necessity. Problem was that feeding larger international flights through connecting domestic and regional flights was impossible as those passengers were landing at the Muni and not the International. The lack of connecting passengers resulted in airlines favoring the single airport in southern Alberta for larger transcontinental and international routes. It got to the point that Calgary gradually snagged just about any advantage that Edmonton ever had at the end of WWII and slowly became the hub of choice for passengers wishing to travel both domestically and internationally in the same trip.
When the decision was made to consolidate scheduled service at the International in 1995 in an attempt to win back passengers and flights that had gravitated to Calgary, that was not an open invitation to plan the eventual demise of the Muni. But clearly, the Edmonton Airport Authority had lost their interest in long term plans for the downtown airport, effectively slowly strangling the place until it looked advantageous to close the facility. Despite the apathy, the airport has still managed to stay quite functional and busy regardless. Imagine how much more traffic there could be going in there if there had been a plan other than slow atrophy?
So what can be done now? Well, I firmly believe that the Edmonton City Centre Airport still has a very important role to play in Edmonton's aviation future. The airport can continue the role it has played for the better part of 100 years as a place for new pilots to earn their wings, a very well situated alternate airport for IFR flights to use on poor weather days, a very enviable location for medical evacuation flights and particularly for organ transplant missions and as a launching place for small charters to the northern communities that played such an important part in Edmonton's title as "Gateway to the North".
