223 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 10 KINGSTON AIRPORT Located in an area renowned for its scenic beauty and a tourist draw in its own right, Kingston Airport takes pride in its role as a gateway for such a spectacular corner of the province. Owned and operated by the City of Kingston, this hub of aircraft activity recently enjoyed a facelift of more than $16 million in major renovations, including in 2019, a 1,000-foot extension of its main runway to accommodate larger aircraft and a 40-percent expansion in the size of its airport terminal, according to Kingston Airport Director of Strategy, Innovations, and Partnerships Craig Desjardins. We recently spoke with Desjardins and with Kingston Airport Manager Aron Winterstein. They told us all about the current excitement of positive activity at the airport, originally built in 1940, serving the city of some 132,000 people. “It’s the regional airport for southeastern Ontario,” Winterstein informs. “Currently, we’ve got general-aviation flights coming in, in the form of private charter jets, military cargo flights, and medical aviation and private flights. We’re working right now to regain our scheduled commercial air service operations, which got paused by Air Canada in 2020.” He adds that the airport has a runway that is 6,001 feet long and a hundred feet wide. Aircrafts serving hospitals and other medical purposes (transporting patients, live organs for donations, and so on) make regular use of the airport. There are several important medical facilities in the area, including those affiliated with Queen’s University and one serving Indigenous communities located in Ontario’s remote rural areas. Kingston, as Desjardins points out, is quite the medical hub. When COVID hit, as Desjardins elaborates, Air Canada, which had flight service coming in from Toronto, opted to pull out of Kingston. Today, he adds, airport officials are looking to find a major carrier that will come back to fulfill that role as the facility proves its renewed resiliency, vitality, and viability. This
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