It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a ... Canadian
One in three passengers going through Buffalo's airport calls Canada home
July 04, 2009
Steve Buist
The Hamilton Spectator
BUFFALO, N.Y. (Jul 4, 2009)
Dan Porta is standing next to the shelter, waiting for the free shuttle bus that will take him from the parking lot to the terminal of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
The pack of Export A smokes in his hand is the dead giveaway.
Porta's a Canadian but that hardly makes him unique here at the Buffalo airport.
Look up and down the parking lot rows and it's easy to spot car after car after car with Ontario licence plates.
On this warm, sunny day, Porta is flying to Chicago to attend a business exposition.
Why Buffalo and not Toronto's Pearson International as a departure point?
Simple, he says.
"My Southwest flight to Chicago is $59.99, taxes included," he said, pausing to take a drag on his cigarette. "It's $69.99 to return, taxes included.
"Last week, just to park at Pearson for six days cost me $128. That's a return flight to Chicago here.
"I prefer Buffalo," he added. "The airport is very, very straightforward. You're not walking for miles."
Canadians are flocking to Buffalo in growing numbers to take advantage of low-cost U.S. carriers and the airport's convenient layout.
"It's just so much easier and it's much cheaper," said Kim Blair, who lives in Fort Erie and just returned from New York City.
About one of every three passengers flying in and out of Buffalo now is Canadian, up from about one in four passengers just a couple of years ago. At peak holiday times, such as March break, the proportion of Canadians rises as high as 40 per cent.
Last year, the Buffalo airport handled about 1.8 million Canadians, according to the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which operates the airport.
By comparison, about 546,000 people flew in and out of Hamilton's international airport last year.
"It's all based on price," said Doug Hartmayer, director of public affairs for the NFTA.
"It's very advantageous to come down and save $300 or $400 a ticket, have the convenience of parking literally almost at the front door of the airport, and getting in and out very easily," he added.
The growth in Canadian traffic is a direct result of the Buffalo airport's strategy to transform itself into a haven for low-cost carriers.
During the mid-1990s, according to Hartmayer, Buffalo was ranked the second-most expensive U.S. airport for flights.
Now, Buffalo is ranked the ninth-least expensive airport in the U.S., according to a U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics survey.
There are 112 daily flights at Buffalo, compared to the 10 or 15 a day, for example, at Hamilton's airport, depending on the day of the week and season.
Nearly half of the passengers in and out of Buffalo fly on low-cost carriers Southwest Airlines and JetBlue, both of which arrived around a decade ago.
"Some of our biggest fans are Canadian customers," said Sebastian White, spokesperson for JetBlue. "The volume of Ontarians we push through Buffalo every day is just astounding, when you think about it."
White said that when JetBlue recently introduced new flights from Buffalo to Florida, the company noticed on the very first day that a third of the passengers were Canadians.
"You cross the border (to Canada) and your ticket price instantly skyrockets due to all the airport fees and landing fees and taxes that our customers don't have to incur when they fly out of Buffalo," White noted.
Surveys of Canadian passengers by the Buffalo airport shows that they're being drawn from Toronto and beyond.
Edmund O'Keeffe is one of those Torontonians flying out of Buffalo, although not necessarily by choice.
He works for Cott Beverage Company and needed to fly to Atlanta on business.
From Toronto's Pearson airport, the cost would have been $1,400. From Buffalo, it was $432 Canadian.
So Edmund was told to hit the highway.
"We're in cost-cutting mode at our company," said O'Keeffe, "and this saves $1,000.
"It's a pain in the neck," he added with a sigh. "You never know how long it's going to take crossing the border."
Cameron Doerkson, an airline industry analyst for Versant Partners, said he's seeing similar migrations of Canadian air travellers from Montreal to Burlington, Vermont, and from the southern B.C. mainland to Washington state.
"Price is obviously one of the major factors," said Doerkson. "I think the other thing is perhaps access to more destinations from certain U.S. airports relative to what you might get locally in Canada."
One advantage for Canadians flying from Buffalo to another U.S. destination is that the flight is domestic not international, which means lower U.S. fees and taxes - which are already cheaper than Canadian equivalents.
"It's a concern to all Canadian airports in terms of our competitiveness with U.S. airports," said Richard Koroscil, president and CEO of John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport.
"We have an uncompetitive fee and tax structure in Canada that makes it more difficult for any Canadian airport."
Koroscil said Buffalo's growing popularity has a much greater impact on Toronto than Hamilton's airport.
"We don't have a lot of product going into the U.S. whereas Pearson does," said Koroscil. "So it's more of an effect on them.
"Our product is primarily domestic as well as international, so we in fact draw from the Buffalo market for international," he added. "We get a number of Americans that will come up and take advantage of that.
"It's good proximity for them and the fares are pretty good."
Buffalo's popularity with Canadian travellers provides the low-cost U.S. carriers such as JetBlue and Southwest with the best of both worlds.
Their flights operate as domestic routes within the U.S. but they're attracting Canadians without having to establish an international operation.
"It's a nice deal for them," said Peter Belobaba, a professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in airline issues.
Belobaba is a Canadian, from Waterloo, so he understands the issues on both sides of the border.
He suspects Air Canada has made the strategic decision to seek out higher-paying business and first-class passengers and leave the cheap flights that appeal to price-conscious travellers to the low-cost carriers in Buffalo.
"At some point that strategy breaks down," said Belobaba. "At some point, if the shift continues, the carriers at Toronto have to wake up and say 'Wait a minute, we have to do something here,' either by lowering fares or offering other incentives."
He said he wouldn't be surprised to see a discount airline, such as JetBlue, begin operating a New York-Montreal or New York-Toronto service.
"There's a case where Air Canada definitely would not stand by," said Belobaba.
"Air Canada historically has been very effective at defending their own turf."
sbuist@thespec.com
905-526-3226