Here’s an interesting bit of historical trivia. Way back in the last millennium AC and CP/CAIL ran a triangular route YVR-YXT-YPR-YVR. If they couldn’t get into either YXT or YPR, which was not uncommon in the winter, they would land at the other and bus pax across, both outgoing and incoming. The whole gong show took about 4 hours for a 1.5 hour drive.

(For those unfamiliar with YPR, it’s on an island across the harbour from the city. There’s nothing else on the island except a few squatter cabins. So you have to take a ferry across.)

If you got caught up in this mess one of the following scenarios occurred:

1. You got to your destination on time.
2. You got to your destination airport an hour or so early. If it was YPR you then had to wait for the buses to arrive from YXT, do the turnaround, then take the same buses on the ferry to get to town, so you were actually at least 2 hours late getting to town even though the plane landed an hour early.
3. You had to bus from the airport (or check-in terminal in downtown YPR) to the other airport, in which case you were delayed about 4 hours. If you were planning to leave from YXT but got bused to YPR they made you pay for the ferry.
4. You had to wait about 4 hours for the pax from the other airport to arrive, load bags, load pax, and fly.

This was considered normal operations.