More and more people are crossing into the U-S to take advantage of cheaper airfares.
The Conference Board of Canada estimates at least about 150-thousand people are doing that in the Vancouver region.
Researcher Vijay Gill says it doesn’t appear to be just people who live near the border doing it.
Gill says people are actually driving by Y-V-R to get better deals across the line.
And that could have much bigger consequences with Vancouver being Canada’s gateway to Asia.
“If YVR, it’s position starts to get weakened as a hub airport overall, that’s going to affect people flying through the airport to get to these other markets. I mean, you’re not going to build a fly-through-Bellingham to get to Shanghai, right?”
He adds fees and taxes are often blamed for higher airfares in Canada, but says differences in wages, aircraft prices and more in the U-S are also problems.
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