Quote:
Originally Posted by Acey
To some degree. YYC is privately run and has to pay abusrd rent fees to the government, so are forced to pass on that cost to travelers else they'd be bankrupt. The US sees airports as a public necessity as opposed to a source of federal revneue, so they are not operated this way.
This article says it well:
tldr: YYC is getting scammed by the government, so YYC is forced to scam you |
But did YYC have to pay for the airport up front. From what I could glean they pay about $50MM annually in rent. If we assumed a 30 year amortization that would have about a present value of only $1.1B which is way less than cost to build an airport. Comparing to say Denver where the airport is owned by the county, it is not funded by tax revenues, it is financially self sufficient, so someone has to pay for that, the debt servicing in 2024 for DEN was about $600MM which is much more than the rent YYC pays (Albeit, DEN does easily twice the revenue as Calgary)