Banff, Alberta, is a scenic resort town of around 8,000
people nestled in the Alberta Rocky Mountains.
Located within Banff National Park, the stunning scenery, history, and nearby skiing,
makes the area one of the most popular tourist destinations in all of Canada.
For those tourists, the closest major airport with commercial flights is Calgary International,
which is about a 90 minute drive. Therefore, the best way to visit Banff if you’re not from nearby
is generally to fly into Calgary and then take a shuttle or rent a car.
The drive itself along the Trans-Canada Highway towards Banff is gorgeous,
but as you get closer to the town, you may pass one particular rectangular-shaped clearing.
That clearing is actually Banff Airport, a small airstrip with the ICAO code of
Charlie Yankee Bravo Alpha, and the IATA code Yankee Bravo Alpha.
You’d be forgiven for not noticing it, since from the road, the only real indications
that it might be an airport are the two windsocks on either end of the runway.
The runway itself, runway 18/36, is 3,000 feet long, 190 feet wide,
and either turf or snow depending on the season. Maintained by Parks Canada,
and located just to the northeast of the town, the airport sits at an elevation of 4,583 feet.
It’s also surrounded by high terrain, most notably the 9000+ foot Cascade
Mountain directly beside it, so it’s not exactly what you’d call a major airport,
and it’s really only usable by general aviation and helicopters.
Even then, it’s not the easiest airport to fly into. In the Canada Flight Supplement page for
the airport, it mentions, “numerous gopher holes and wildlife on the runway. Moderate to severe
subsidence, turbulence, and wind shear may be encountered. Takeoffs from runway 36 are not
recommended with tall trees and rapidly rising terrain north of the aerodrome”.
However, all of that doesn’t exactly mean that anyone in a 172 can just fly in for the day.
As the many signs at the airport state,
the airstrip is limited to emergency and diversionary landings only.
Any landings that do take place are required to be reported to Parks Canada,
and any takeoffs require prior permission from the park superintendent.
So, as you can imagine, Banff Airport is not exactly a hive of activity,
although it wasn’t always like this.
Banff Airport’s history dates back to the 1930s. Specifically, July 8th,
1932, as the councillors of the Banff Advisory Council “endorsed the application of the Chinook
Flying Service of Calgary for permission of the parks department to build an airport here”.
Following the Great Depression and World War II, Banff Airport was a popular destination
among pilots often flying friends and family on weekend excursions.
The runway itself was also larger than it is now, extending further to the north and south.
Over the decades, the airport continued to see plenty of
use from private aircraft and some small operators such as Inter-Mountain Airways.
Fast forward several decades though, and well, as you might imagine with an airport
in the middle of a national park, its very existence was the subject of controversy.
The idea of closing Banff Airport first came up in 1979,
around the time that the Trans-Canada Highway was being twinned and fenced.
Although the airport did see regular use from local pilots, with a number of structures and
parking spots to the west of the runway and even an Army Cadet camp nearby, Parks Canada
in 1986 felt that ‘the existence of airfields in Banff and Jasper is inappropriate and their
use as emergency landing strips will be reviewed’. In their 1988 Banff National Park Management Plan,
Parks Canada for the first time stated their intention to close and decommission the Banff
Airstrip, in favour of restoring a wildlife corridor at the base of Cascade Mountain.
Local aviation advocates objected to the potential loss of the airstrip as an emergency landing
location, and so Transport Canada and Parks Canada began a monitoring program. This would
help determine the need to keep the airstrip, as well as the one in Jasper further north, for
emergencies. This initially 3-year study began in June of 1989, and was eventually extended to 1994.
Those arguments for keeping Banff Airport open for emergencies
and diversions are entirely valid from a pilot’s point of view.
As an example, if you were flying a Cessna 172 VFR from Kelowna to Calgary through the mountains
following the Trans-Canada Highway, there are not a whole lot of airports in the area to begin with.
Especially for that final stretch after Golden, following the valley,
it would be at least another 120 nautical miles until reaching Springbank Airport west of Calgary.
In your average 172, that’s about an hour or more of flying time in some spectacular,
but challenging and unforgiving terrain.
Because of the unpredictability of mountain weather, especially in certain mountain passes
where weather stations are limited, the more options a pilot can have, the better.
Take Banff Airport away as a potential diversion point if you were to have a mechanical issue
or if bad weather suddenly rolls in and that journey starts to look
a lot less appealing and a bit riskier. Despite that, in November 1995, Transport
Canada issued their findings stating that “… the aerodromes [at Banff and Jasper] do not play a
significant role in ensuring aviation safety in their vicinities” and concluded that “… we
have not found a demonstrable need for these airstrips for emergency or diversionary use”.
Another study released in 1996 on the Banff and Bow Valley area reported
that the airstrip impeded the movement of wildlife at the base of Cascade Mountain,
and recommended that it be closed. So, in April of 1997, Banff Airport,
along with Jasper Airport, were officially closed and slated to be decommissioned entirely.
Before decommissioning could happen though, several aviators disputed the validity of
Parks Canada’s authority to close and decommission the airstrip themselves,
and brought an application before the Federal Court of Canada.
Eventually, it was found that while the airstrip’s closure had been done so legally and fairly,
the actual decommissioning was contradictory to the intentions laid out in the plan from 1988.
As a result, a comprehensive study on the environmental and
aviation safety impact was ordered before making the final decision.
As part of this comprehensive study, an Air Safety Risk Assessment released in 2003
determined that “the proposed Banff and Jasper airstrip decommissioning
and reclamation project will have an impact on aviation safety”
and that it was “reasonable to assume that a serious accident may occur within a generation
of aviation users if these airstrips are no longer available for diversionary use.”
It wasn’t until 2008 that the Government of Canada finally made the decision to
officially not decommission the Banff Airstrip,
and restricted access to emergency and diversionary landings only.
According to that press release, “the Government has concluded that
decommissioning the airstrip would increase pilot
risk and create legal uncertainties regarding the status of the airstrip”.
Similarly, Jasper Airport would also be saved from decommissioning, with Parks Canada
maintaining it for emergency, diversionary, but also some recreational use, unlike Banff.
To this day, Banff Airport is still maintained by Parks Canada, gopher holes and all. Just this
year, the last of the structures were removed from the site, which included two aircraft
hangars and some above-ground storage tanks. All that remains of the airport are the windsocks,
signage, and obviously the runway itself. The loss of any regular operations at Banff Airport
is unfortunate for aviators, but it is still there at least, and hopefully you never have to use it!
So, if you’re an aviation enthusiast and you happen to be visiting Banff, you may not be seeing
much in the way of airplanes, but it may be worth it to stop by one of Canada’s most interesting
and storied grass runways.
Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one!