Nav Canada is going ahead with rate reductions and a $60 million refund to customers after it made too much money in 2016. Customers will see an average 3.5 percent reduction in base fees along with a .4 percent temporary rate reduction. Such rate reductions have happened before but the refund is noteworthy. “Higher than expected traffic growth this year has put us in a position to be able to refund $60 million to our customers,” said Neil Wilson, president and CEO. “In the past, Nav Canada has spread the return of previous years’ surpluses, when applicable, by temporarily reducing rates for the coming year. With the unusually high traffic growth, we decided to implement a refund, which will enable our customers to fully benefit sooner.”

Commercial customers will see their rate reductions Sept. 1 but the billing cycle for GA customers begins in March and the rate cut will be on the 2018 bill. It would appear no one’s bill will actually change from last year. Nav Canada did a temporary 3.9 percent reduction in rates last year and the most recent action makes 3.5 percent of that permanent while .4 percent could expire in 2019.