See also:

Overflights Counted by Monitors
 
Community Population Size
 
Road Traffic

Arctic Borderlands Ecological Knowledge Co-op

What is happening?

• The Tuktoyaktuk airport has the highest number of flights among these communities although annual numbers have been dropping since 2001. The number of flights to Old Crow has been steady over the last ten years and averaged about 1,500 flights per year.
• Flights to Aklavik increased noticeably in 2001. Prior to this Aklavik had a boom in aircraft activity during the 1980s.
• The Fort McPherson airstrip has the lowest level of flight activity among these communities although the decrease in landings in the mid-1990s may simply reflect the lack of airport personnel to gather data (see Technical Notes below).

Why is it happening?

• The peak in aircraft movement at Aklavik during the 1980s and the increase seen in 2001 may be associated with oil and gas exploration activity in the Mackenzie Delta.

Why is it important?

• Some wildlife are sensitive to aircraft disturbance so monitoring this indicator may help identify concerns if there is an increase in activity.
• Measurements of aircraft activity related to industrial development or tourism can be used as a measure of human activities in an area.

Technical Notes

• These data were obtained from a regular Transport Canada summary (Table 15 in TP 577) and represent the total number of aircraft movements.
• Cut backs in the hours of airport observers in some years affected data collection at some airports. At Fort McPherson, there were only 8 days of data collected in 1997, 265 days reported in 1999 and over 300 days reported each year since 2002. As a result flight movements may be under represented at Fort McPherson.
• In 2005 most of these airports had fewer days of aiprort observers and this helps explain why the number of flights dropped at all stations.