National Airports System
Airports in Canada / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Canada, National Airport System (French: Réseau national d’aéroports, NAS) is a group of major airports defined in the National Airports Policy published in 1994. It was intended to include all airports with an annual traffic of 200,000 passengers or more, as well as airports serving the national, provincial and territorial capitals.[1]
All airports in the NAS, with the exception of the three territorial capitals, are owned by Transport Canada and leased to the local authorities operating them.[2] The three territorial airports are owned and, with the exception of Iqaluit Airport, are operated by their respective territorial governments.[3] Iqaluit is operated by Nunavut Airport Services, a subsidiary of Winnipeg Airport Services Corporation, which in turn is a subsidiary of Winnipeg Airports Authority.[4]
As of 1994, the 26 NAS airports served 94% of all scheduled passenger and cargo traffic in Canada.[1]
Due to very close proximity to Canada's east coast, the airports on the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon (an overseas collectivity of France) cooperate with Canada on air travel via several major Canadian airports.[5]