A St. Martins woman who often sees her husband off at the Saint John Airport for work wants to know why flight prices to the same destinations can vary so much at airports across the province.
Deborah Plester and her husband, Alan, moved from the United Kingdom to the village outside Saint John 11 years ago and almost immediately got accustomed to a long-distance marriage.
"We moved here for an easier life, a simpler life, but it's been hard," Plester said Tuesday in an interview with Information Morning Saint John. "My husband had to go out west … so you live apart a lot of the time."
Because of that, Plester said, she spends a lot of her time researching and booking the best flights.
And what comes up time and again, she said, is higher airfares coming out of Saint John.
Better prices, less time together
At last check, she found it was $100 more expensive to fly out of Saint John than to take similar flights in Moncton and Fredericton.
"I've done a distance check in case Saint John is further away, but it's not as far away as Moncton as the crow flies," Plester said.
"So there's got to be a reason why Saint John is more expensive. Sometimes it's might be $50, $60, $70 but it's still more money."
Plester said they have left the city to take advantage of the better prices, but the extra travel time adds up.
"When your partner leaves, you don't want to travel an hour-and-a-half to another airport, drop them off and travel back," she said. "It really is a heart-wrenching experience every time.
"You have to leave earlier, so that's less time you have as a family. And it's three hours extra at the end of the duration, life is too short for these little times you miss out on things."
'Changes by the minute'
Saint John Airport CEO Derrick Stanford said he has heard concerns about varying prices "on a fairly regular basis," but passengers have also told him flying out of Saint John can be cheaper.
"It all depends. I've been to airline offices on the floor where people do pricing. It's a lot like NASA, instead of monitoring astronauts you're monitoring websites, and fares, and sales and capacity.
"It's a complex business. It changes by the minute, not by the day, or the week or the hour. The airlines have very complex, robust pricing calculators and they're always on the move."
'Price buckets'
Supply and demand is the biggest factor, Stanford said, with the airports in Fredericton and Moncton offering three daily scheduled carriers versus two in Saint John.
"It's like a series price buckets," he said. "As one bucket fills up, all the best prices in one bucket are gone, then they start selling the next bucket.
"Moncton and Fredericton have more seats available, so it takes longer to sell out each bucket there."
In September, Saint John added Porter Airlines as a second carrier. Since then, airfare prices have dropped 10 to 20 per cent, depending on time of day and the destination. It's also boosted its available seats for sale by 16 per cent, said Stanford.
But the airport's passenger volume is still not reflective of the area's population. Recently released passenger figures found about 550,000 passengers should be flying out of Saint John, but only 48 per cent — or 264,000 — are actually doing that.
Stanford said so-called passenger leakage, in which flyers from one market use an airport in another, remains a challenge for attracting new airlines.
"I get that pricing variety is a reason for the leakage, we know that. We're very much hard at work to address it," he said.
In April, the Saint John Airport announced it was getting $20 million in upgrades and safety improvements. That will include repairs and rehabilitation, and new lighting on the main runway.
Cracks in the pavement and the drainage system will be fixed, and runway end safety areas will be added.
"So creating a safe, robust and secure air facility is priority number one," Stanford said.
"Priority number two is adding more air carriers to the Saint John airport."
The federal government is contributing $10 million for the airfield modernization project, the province $4 million and the airport $6 million.