Sudbury Airport or Greater Sudbury Airport(IATA: YSB, ICAO: CYSB) is an airport in the Canadian city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario and is located 11 nautical miles (20km; 13mi) northeast of the downtown area, on Municipal Road 86 between the communities of Garson and Skead. Although in many contexts the airport uses the name Greater Sudbury Airport, its official name, as registered with Transport Canada and printed in all aeronautical publications, is still simply Sudbury Airport.
The airport is served primarily by regional carrier lines such as Air Canada Express, Bearskin Airlines , and Porter Airlines. It is also a base of Ornge air ambulance service and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment wildfire service.
History
Terminal building and control tower
Sudbury Airport began as an emergency landing facility with a single 6,600ft (2,000m) landing strip for CF-100s from CFB North Bay in 1952.[4]
On February 25, 1953, the Sudbury Airport Committee was formed to lobby and arrange for commercial flights to Sudbury. A second landing strip and a terminal building had to be built and construction of these were completed in 1955. Regular commercial air service began on February 1, 1954, by Trans-Canada Air Lines.[4]
The air traffic control tower was added in 1972 and the terminal building was replaced with a larger one in 1973, which was renovated and expanded again in the early 2000s.[4]
From 1972 to 2000, Sudbury Airport was owned by the Federal Government and operated by the transportation department of Sudbury. On March 31, 2000, the airport ownership and management were transferred to the Sudbury Airport Community Development Corporation (SACDC).[4]
In 2005, Sunwing Airlines offered direct flights to Varadero, Cuba from the Sudbury airport every Wednesdays for the 2005 - 2006 winter season.[5] Other destinations were added in the following years.
In June 2008, under recommendation from Nav Canada following a year-long aeronautical study, the control tower was closed mainly due to lack of traffic. The airport is now staffed 24 hours as a flight service station.
In March 2012, after WestJet confirmed its plans to launch a regional airline, Gregg Saretsky said in an interview with The Globe and Mail that Sudbury was one of the cities where the company was considering expanding its service.[6] However, Sudbury was not chosen as a destination. The manager of the airport suggested in 2014 that the airport would have to see considerable growth in passenger traffic before WestJet would consider returning to Sudbury.[7] In February 2017, WestJet did return to Sudbury using WestJet Encore for three daily flights to Toronto's Pearson International Airport, but stopped again in October 2018.[8][9] WestJet had previously operated flights between Sudbury and Hamilton between 2001 and 2004.
COVID-19 had impact to carrier flights serving the airport post pandemic when other markets had seen traffic volumes significantly recover. With drastic cuts on its regional fleet, Air Canada is down to two direct flights to Toronto Pearson a day with no direct competition. Porter currently operates one flight a day flying to Toronto Island's Billy Bishop Airport.
Airlines and destinations
Passenger
This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2022)
Sudbury had a Non-directional beacon (NDB) that transmited "SB" in Morse code on the longwave radio frequency of 362 kHz.[10](SB which operated at 362 kHz was decommissioned on December 5, 2023)
