Castlegar Airport (YCG) Information

Where is Castlegar Airport?  

Castlegar Airport (IATA: YCG, ICAO: CYCG), officially West Kootenay Regional Airport, also referred to as West Kootenay Airport, is located 3.7 kilometres (2.3 miles) south southeast of Castlegar, British Columbia, Canada. Castlegar Airport serves the nearby cities of Trail, Nelson and other small communities in B.C.'s West Kootenays. YCG Airport is classified as an airport of entry by NAV CANADA and is staffed by the Canada Border Services Agency.

Castlegar Airport serves about 74,000 passengers per year.

Air Canada Express operates daily flights to Castlegar Airport from Calgary and Vancouver.

Services at Castlegar Airport include:

• Cafe
• Live webcam

 

Note that the airport closes at night, so no sleeping here. It also operates on very limited hours on weekends.

 

Castlegar Airport operates during daylight hours only and is frequently fogged in, due to its geographic location. It's best to plan a cushion of a day or two if any of your travel plans are urgent, and avoid tight connections, especially in the winter. IHT team members have experienced sitting on the first, delayed flight of the day while the flight attendant begged for volunteers to give up their seats for people on their way to connect to charter flights departing from Vancouver.

 

For the curious, here's why: Due to the mountainous terrain impinging on both runway approaches, there is no possibility of a straight-in approach to Castlegar Airport, and the glideslope on approach is set to a steep 5% rather than the standard 2.5%. As a result, the instrument approaches to Castlegar Airport are considered among the most challenging of any commercial airport in North America. A recent CAD 1M program installed six beacons that allow night-time take offs from YCG airport, but this will only be used by air ambulances and medical traffic.

Additional Castlegar Airport information may be found by visiting their official website below.

• Official YCG Castlegar Airport Website