A Month-by-Month Look at What's New at YVR

Vancouver International Airport, as with all top-tier Canadian airports, enjoyed a record-breaking number of passengers last year. In total, Canada’s second-largest airport welcomed more than 22.3 million passengers—an increase of 9.7 per cent over 2015

“This is an exciting time for YVR as we celebrate a record year of growth with an additional two million passengers over last year,” said YVR’s President & CEO Craig Richmond. “We are looking forward to another strong first quarter in 2017, working closely with our airline partners to grow our global network and bring in more travel options and economic growth to our community.”

Read more: Canadian visitation reaches near-record levels in 2016.

While travel from the United States grew by 7.4 per cent and domestic numbers also climbed 7.6 per cent, the true success story was in all other international traffic, which increased by 16.5 per cent last year.

From Latin America, YVR saw a 27 per cent increase, fueled largely by Aeromexico’s increased service to Mexico City. In December, the Canadian government lifted the visa requirement for Mexican visitors, which should grow travel from that country this year.

Asia Pacific clicked in a 15.6 per cent growth, in large part driven by Air Canada’s increased capacity and more frequency from Asian carriers. New service last year included new flights to Xiamen, China by Xiamen Airlines, Delhi, India and Brisbane, Australia by Air Canada and Hangzhou-Qingdao, China by Beijing Capital Airlines.

Traffic from Europe also grew, by 13.5 per cent, driven in part by the arrival of British Airways A380, the largest passenger aircraft in the world. Also contributing to the growth was new service London Gatwick by WestJet and an additional daily flight to London Heathrow by Air Canada.

Read more: Canada’s airports are getting bigger and better

Traffic from the U.S. was stimulated in large part by Air Canada’s expansion of their transpacific hub at YVR, which the airline is promoting as an alternative to catching connecting flights in the United States. is attracting passengers from US cities to connect at YVR onto other international destinations. In fact, some 50 per cent of all passengers through YVR are attributed to Air Canada’s expanded transpacific hub.

And YVR, which has a goal of attracting 25 million passengers by 2020, has a busy year of growth ahead.

Here’s a month-by-month breakdown of what to expect at YVR in 2017.

January, February
* Air North offered four charter flights to Reno, Nev.
* Air Canada rolled out new daily service to Dallas, Tx.

March
* Air Canada will increase its daily service to San Diego; the flight will operate twice-daily starting March 26.
* Cathay Pacific will begin operating the next-gen Airbus A350 aircraft on flights to Hong Kong, The service will grow from 14 flights to 17 flights per week, starting March 28.

April
* On April 30, WestJet will begin service to Hamilton.

May
* On May 1, British Airways will bring back service on the A389.
* Also on the first of May, Air Canada will launch daily service to Phoenix. Additionally, the airline will increase service to Los Angeles from five times a day to six times a day and San Jose flights will start flying three times daily (up from twice.)
* On May 18, Air Canada also launches double daily service to Denver.

June
* June will be another big month for Air Canada out of YVR. Flight updates include the start of seasonal service to Nagoya (four flights per week) on Air Canada Rouge and seasonal service to Frankfurt (daily) on Air Canada. Both flights commence June 1.
* On June 8, Air Canada commences year-round, daily service to Taipei and summer service to London-Gatwick (three times per week.)
* YVR also welcomes new daily service to Hong Kong on Hong Kong Airlines

August
* More large jets are in store for YVR in August, when China airlines will introduce daily service to Taipei on its A350, starting Aug. 2.

For more information, visit www.yvr.ca/en/passengers.