Billy Bishop Toronto CIty Airport, the downtown airfield that handles regional flights on turboprops, reported a 17.5% increase in annual passenger traffic as travel continued to rebound from the pandemic.
The number of passengers passing through the airport climbed to 2.036 million in 2023 from 1.732 million in 2022, Jessica Pellerin, Billy Bishop's manager of media relations and public affairs, said in an email. The airport remained Canada's ninth-busiest after Halifax Stanfield International Airport, which served 3.579 million people in 2023. Passenger traffic at Billy Bishop was below the 2.800 million high reported in both 2017 and 2018.
Billy Bishop, known colloquially as the "island" airport because of its location on land 800 feet off the shore of Lake Ontario, is banned from serving passenger jets. The airport's main tenant is Porter Airlines, which flies to a dozen Canadian cities and several U.S. destinations using De Havilland Dash 8-400 turboprops. Porter also began operating from the city's main airfield, Toronto Pearson International Airport, in early 2023 using Embraer E195 E2 jets.
Pearson, Canada's busiest aviation facility, is one of the few major airports that hasn't reported its passenger traffic for 2023. In 2022, Pearson served 35.6 million people. Billy Bishop is named for a World War I Canadian flying ace.
--HBB
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