Canada’s big pensions are ready for airport privatization. Are Canadians?

financialpost.com:

The check-in area of London City Airport, about a 30-minute Tube ride from Canary Wharf, looks much like any midsized hub in North America. There are queues of passengers waiting to check bags, busy shops and restaurants, and a duty-free shop.

But unlike virtually all North American airports, London City, which now flies more than 3.4 million passengers per year to destinations from the French Alps to Ibiza, isn’t owned by a local government, a not-for-profit entity or even a British company.

Rather, it’s majority owned by some of Canada’s largest pension plans, which snapped up their stake for about two billion pounds in 2016 as part of a consortium that includes the infrastructure arm of the Kuwait Investment Authority.

Since the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo) and Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) got on board, London City has spent tens of millions of pounds to build new aircraft berths and a parallel taxiway, and completed a major upgrade of its departure lounge, boosting its capacity by 30 per cent.

In 2021, it replaced its aging 30-year-old analogue air traffic control tower with a fully remote digital tower, a first for a significant international airport. And the adoption of new scanning technology has reduced line-up times for passengers by 50 per cent on average, with the airport boasting in an April 2024 news release that it can get business and leisure passengers “from the entrance to the gate in 10 minutes.”

While the airport has clashed with nearby residents and local governments over some of its expansion plans, it has racked up accolades from travellers, including being named the best airport in the United Kingdom by Conde Nast Traveller