Front Burner - Unpacking Canadian airport chaos
Episode Date: June 13, 2022If you've been to an airport in Canada recently, there's a good chance you've dealt with more than your average level of chaos. Some of the issues include hours-long security lineups, delayed or cance...lled flights, passengers stuck on the tarmac and major congestion at border security. Many say most of the blame falls on two short-staffed government security entities, but some have also pointed fingers at COVID-19 testing rules, airlines and even out-of-practice travellers. Today on Front Burner, we will try to get a better understanding of the mess in Canada's airports right now with the help of two guests. Rosa Saba is a business reporter with the Toronto Star who has been following this story over the past couple of months, and John Gradek is a faculty lecturer and program coordinator for the aviation management program at McGill University.
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Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson.
So if you've been to an airport in Canada recently, there's a pretty good chance you've dealt with more than your average level of chaos.
And if you haven't, maybe you've seen people complaining about it. About hours-long security lines, delayed or cancelled flights, or being stuck on the tarmac waiting to get in to border security.
I go and I see there is a 400-person line with two Air Canada workers. There's a million
cancelled flights. Everyone's just panicking. So I waited in that line about six hours.
Or you might have seen this video of former NHL player Ryan Whitney.
Earlier this month, he got stranded overnight at Toronto Pearson,
which is by far the biggest and busiest airport in Canada
and reportedly has the worst delays in the entire country.
This is the worst airport on earth.
I'm telling you.
Canada isn't alone in this problem.
There have been huge delays in airports in London, Manchester.
I spent my birthday at gate B10 of Manchester airport terminal 2.
I guess probably the worst birthday I've had, yeah, by far.
Amsterdam.
Cancellations, delays, staff shortages and a strike have led to chaos at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.
But according to Duncan Dean, a former chief operating officer at Air Canada,
in other countries, these delays have generally been contained
to a short time frame.
In the UK, for example, the delays lasted more or less around a week.
In the Netherlands, they lasted for a weekend.
In Canada, the delays started in early April.
They continued and persisted throughout the month
of April and May and we're now into June. So Dee says there's this kind of cascading effect
happening where delays in one part of the process are affecting all these other steps. And so in the
case of Canada right now, many of the aircraft, especially those that are coming from international
destinations, they get to the gate
and they sit there because customs does what's called metering which is basically they only let
so many travelers off at any given time so the knock-on effects is you've got aircraft that are
gonna that are delayed to um from operating their next flight You've got crews that are potentially exceeding their legal duty day,
so they can't operate any more flights.
And they've got to be legal
for the entire duration of the next flight,
so they've run out of time.
And then you've also got the regular inspection
and maintenance that aircraft have to undertake
to remain safe.
If they don't have the time to do that,
then it's a knock-on effect for the next morning
because the aircraft is not ready to operate
the first flight of the day,
and it just keeps on going from there on forward.
Dee and many others in the travel industry
say most of the blame falls on two short-staffed government entities,
CAATSA, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority,
and CBSA, the Canadian Border Services Agency. And also on government COVID testing rules,
they say are ineffective and just slowing things down at this point. On Friday, the federal
government announced it would temporarily suspend random testing for fully vaccinated travelers
entering Canada. But the more you
dig into this story, the more it feels like that meme where a whole bunch of Spidermans
are standing outside a van, all pointing fingers at each other. Some industry experts say the
airlines are also to blame, that they shouldn't be booking so many flights and clogging up the
system. A federal minister even said it was out-of-practice travelers
who are contributing to the delays.
Today, we're not going to promise to get to the bottom of this with you.
As you can guess, it's very complicated.
But we will try to at least tease out the different threads
and get a better understanding of the chaos in Canada's airports right now.
I've got two guests to help me do that.
Rosa Saba is a business reporter with the Toronto Star, and she's been following this
story over the past couple of months.
And John Graddick is a faculty lecturer and program coordinator for the Aviation Management
Program at McGill University.
Hi, Rosa.
Hi, John.
Good morning. Thanks for having us.
Good morning.
It's great to have you both. So, Rosa, if I could start with you, can you tell me some of the stories you've been hearing from travelers that you've been talking to about the kinds of delays they're experiencing at Canadian airports?
Canadian airports? Yeah, so there's two main kinds of delays people are experiencing. One of them is for arriving passengers who have got tarmac delays. So you have people, almost half a million
people last month at Pearson alone, who were held upon arrival from international flights.
They're sitting in the airplane, you know, imagine that moment when you land and you can't wait to
get off the airplane and instead you're told you're going to have to wait. So I've heard from people who have, who are sitting in their seats waiting,
you know, maybe for an hour at a time or more as they're letting people off in tens in fifties,
just sort of, you know, trying to try to help with the holdups at the border.
Can't imagine how frustrating that is, especially for people who might have a connecting flight,
right? And, for sure.
And then the other kind of-
Or people with kids, people with kids.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my God.
The only thing worse than being on an airplane with a child is being stuck on the tarmac with
a child.
Oh, I know.
And then the other kind of main kind of delay is, you know, we've all seen the photos and
the videos of long lines snaking through the airport.
So you've got passengers waiting in
those lines for an hour or more. And that's because of the holdup at security screening.
So they're waiting, they've checked into their flight, but they're still waiting to have their
baggage checked. And in some cases, people are missing flights, right? And then all of this is
having a knock-on effect on the actual flights., you go one out of every 20 flights in some cases
scheduled to leave Pearson just being canceled. So, you know, there's kind of a, there's a bunch
of different things that people are experiencing. People are missing events. People are having to
reschedule. People are having to stay overnight in hotels, just like a nonstop barrage of these
kinds of stories. And John, how typical would this level of delay be compared to what
travel is normally like this time of year? Like, is this, is this a lot worse than when it normally
is? I think this year, we've seen it, you know, worse than ever before. You know, one of the
things that you have to ask yourself when you see these types of situations is could this have been
predicted? Could something have been done to basically prepare the airports, the airlines, all the ground handlers and CATSA and CBSA, you know, get their resources in place to be able to handle this volume?
And I think that's the big question we're asking ourselves.
Yeah. So let's dig into that a little bit more today.
It seems obviously the reasons for the situation are pretty complicated.
Airports are complex ecosystems. You've got airlines and different federal bodies and the
airport authority all controlling different elements of the system. So I know a question
like why is this happening doesn't have a simple answer. But Rosa, like I know in your reporting,
you found that a lot of fingers are being pointed at the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, also known as CAATSA. They're responsible for airport security.
So like when you put your stuff on the conveyor belt and they yell at you because you forgot to
put your laptop in a separate bin or they take your sunscreen away. If you can't tell,
both of those things have happened to me. And can you tell me a bit more about the role
of CAATSA here and what's happening? Sure. Yeah. So obviously, these delays have been ongoing for
a while now. And at least in my reporting so far, everyone from the airlines, you know, to the
airport authorities are saying that CAATSA basically failed to foresee this sudden influx of demand for travel. So
obviously, during the pandemic, many people in this industry, including people who do that
security screening were laid off, some of them left. And, you know, this has created basically
a bit of a dearth of workers in this particular area. In a statement, the Crown Corporation in charge of passenger
screening, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority said they are not immune to recruitment
and retention challenges faced by many industries at this time and that they're working to hire and
train more screening officers. But the union of CAATSA... CAATSA actually contracts this work out to third-party contractors such as Guarda World
or Allied Universal. But it is essentially responsible for training and for making sure
that there are enough people doing that. So because it takes a long time to train and it
takes a long time to get security clearance, everyone is saying, CAATSA, you should have
seen this coming.
You should have prepared ahead of time.
Why are they so understaffed?
I've seen some figures, depending on the airport, that they're 30 to 50% understaffed. Like what would explain that?
Well, first of all, again, COVID layoffs, people leaving, attrition, right? Normally,
if everything is running normally, so like it was pre-pandemic, if somebody leaves,
you're going to rehire, right? Things have been quite unpredictable during the pandemic. And so there was actually, you know, a lot of attrition that was not filled in, essentially. So that's definitely one of the
big reasons. It's also just, it's been a difficult job. And I think, you know, we all know right now,
obviously, employment is at a high, right? It is a workers' market. And this is one of many jobs that, in part because
of the pandemic, is a really, really difficult job to do, right? It's not fun. And especially
when they're already dealing with a shortage of workers, you're dealing with angry passengers,
you've got longer hours. And this is something that it's a little bit harder to tease out,
I would say, but the unions that represent these workers say that the pay is not enough.
And this is something that, again, we're hearing across industries.
A lot of workers are saying inflation is crazy right now.
My industry is crazy right now, and I am not being paid enough.
I understand you've also heard stories of security workers getting poached by other
employers.
I did, yeah.
Yeah, tell me a bit more about what's happening there.
Yeah, so again, like I said, it's a very competitive market right now.
And people who do this security work, they've got a very specific set of skills.
They've been trained to do a very specific job.
And they've also got security clearance that many normal people like me don't have. And so if there are
other jobs that require similar skills and that require similar clearance that pay better or that
offer better hours or what have you, I mean, I can completely understand why a worker would want to
take those. So again, according to the unions that represent these workers, they're getting poached
from, you know, airlines, by airports, and even in Ottawa by
security on the hill, which is, you know, all of these jobs offering, you know, a similar role,
maybe in a similar industry, but apparently paying better.
Okay, so now let's talk about what you mentioned earlier, the flights coming in, the international flights coming in.
This involves another federal agency, the Canada Border Services Agency.
So these are the people who ask you, like, how much money you spent and if you're bringing a snake into the country and and we've heard stories of passengers as we talked about um uh coming in having to wait for two hours or more on the tarmac uh so so Rosa what what is going on there like why are they having to wait
on the tarmac yeah so you mentioned the questions that CBSA has to ask people right there's a lot
more questions they have to ask now
because of COVID, right?
So there are vaccination requirements.
For some, there are testing requirements.
There's mandatory random testing.
You know, there's all this stuff.
There's even, there's the Arrive Can app,
which is supposed to make things a little bit easier
when it comes to, you know, to all these questions,
but some people don't know how to use it.
And so, you know, it definitely varies, But I've seen reports that the time it takes to process someone
with CVSA has, you know, tripled, quadrupled, depending on the situation.
Has the federal government responded to the complaints here, like, that they should have
maybe seen this problem coming, that they shouldn't
have been caught flat footed here by these big crowds, knowing that it may take a little bit
of extra time to process people? I haven't really seen, you know, anything to suggest sort of like
a taking on of the blame, per se. There have been, you know, some announcements recently by the government that are
meant to help and, you know, just sort of temporarily ease the pain. So for example,
in May, the government announced it was going to do a small rollback of that mandatory random
testing I mentioned, just for passengers connecting from an international flight to a domestic one,
which, you know, it wasn't a huge change.
And clearly, they recognize that because less than two weeks later, they announced they were
actually going to temporarily suspend that mandatory testing for all vaccinated travelers
arriving in Canadian airports until the end of June. So they are clearly listening to industry
because they are doing some of the things that industry wants.
As of July 1st, all of that testing is going to be performed off-site, which is another thing that the Greater Toronto Airport Authority and others have been requesting. They have also recognized
the issue with labor, which of course is for departing passengers, but they are supporting
CAATSA in accelerating training. They more, more trainers, more training support,
they've earmarked funding for CAATSA. So they're definitely sort of listening to industry and
putting some money and policy where their mouth is. Okay. And John, let me bring you in here for
a second. I know in May, Transport Minister Omar Al-Ghabra said something about all of this that
seemed to make a lot of people really
ticked off. And can you tell me about that? What happened? Well, I think that he made a statement
that said that, you know, most of the delays that we're experiencing at Pearson were due to
passengers who haven't had much experience in traveling in these different times, in these new
times, and basically said that, you know, it's going to take a learning curve and a bit of time for passengers to get used to the the the processes associated with
air travel second there's issue also of new travelers who have not traveled for very long
that takes taking out the laptop taking out the the fluids all that adds 10 seconds here 15 seconds
there uh the issues of and i think that basically sent the wrong message
to the traveling public and to the industry,
saying, you know, it kind of got people on the wrong foot.
So, and I think that, you know, to Rosa's point,
I think that, you know, the government is really reacting,
you know, and they're basically trying to say,
okay, if you think some of these issues
or some of these measures are onerous and causing all of this conflict at the airport, you know,
let's get rid of them. But this testing, this post-arrival testing is not even part of the
bottleneck at the airport. You don't hold people on planes because you've got to go through
post-arrival testing. That testing is after you go through the CBSA process.
So, you know, they're slowly, you know, weaning away some of these practices,
but it's not going to solve the problem of people parked on airplanes.
Yeah. So, I mean, the announcements that they have made,
how much of a difference do you think that they'll make?
Because if you're listening to people like conservative leadership
candidate pierre polyev who released like a pretty slick video this weekend where he mostly blames
the delays on covid restrictions talking about waiting four hours at this toronto international
airport pearson mostly because the prime minister continues to impose unjustified vaccine and other COVID-related restrictions that the world left
behind long ago. For example, processing time... Like he thinks that's like basically one,
almost 100% of the problem. Yeah, I know. The question is, these COVID restrictions are not
new, right? They've been around for a while. Everybody that's involved in processing passengers
at the airport knows these processes and it does the job that they have to do to implement these processes.
The issue is really, you know, the volume of passengers that are coming through the airports.
And yeah, we basically were able to handle, you know, all of the questioning and do all the processing and get people through the airport, both departing and arriving with smaller volumes.
Now that the volumes are there, we're in a mess.
And, you know, then that's my hypothesis that, you know,
we basically have to turn our eyes on the airlines
who basically are throwing a whole bunch of capacity into Pearson Airport
when they know that Pearson cannot handle,
given the current processes and the current staffing.
And I think that they're just overburdening the system.
And airlines are there to make money.
And the more passengers they carry, the more money they make.
And whatever happens at the airport, they can blame whoever they want for that inconvenience at the airport.
But that seems to be the modus operandi of the airline industry in throwing passengers and saying,
well, you want traffic,
you want tourism, you want hospitality businesses to flourish. Well, here they come. And oops,
the airport can't handle it. So blame the airport, blame the government for altered practices. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.
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for Couples. Just to push back on that for a moment, we talked to Duncan D about this, and he said in his personal experience when he was COO at Air Canada.
The commercial side of the business, so the folks that plan the flights, submitted their routes to the operating side, which is me.
And we would then forward it to the various airports and agencies that would be responsible
for supporting that route. It happens on a quarterly basis, and it's fine tuned every month.
So every month, there's a brand new forecast based on bookings that have come in. And so
flights don't just start in March for the summer, simply because you need a whole lot of time to
train pilots, make sure you've got enough pilots, you've got enough flight attendants,
that you've got slots in foreign airports, as well as domestic airports. It's not something
that, oh, Air Canada can add in March for June. He said that like, like the government
would have seen this coming.
And he's right.
I think that, you know, the whole point of view of when does an airport actually see what the airlines are planning to operate at any one given point in time.
And in a summer schedule, you know, the airlines basically provide schedule information
to the airports in October of the previous year.
So in October of 2021, Air Canada,
the rest of the carriers at Toronto Pearson Airport presented a schedule. The schedule they
presented last fall for summer 22 is nowhere near the capacity that's being flown today.
And I think, as Mr. D has said, the airlines do adjust their schedules. And yeah, in March,
the tsunami of travel started to show up.
And then the airlines reacted.
And Air Canada was in a lucky position of having a lot of pilots and airplanes hanging around.
And they threw all the pilots and flight attendants into the mix.
And they're flying a lot more airplanes.
And so if they can fly, sure, they will fly.
But the question is, should they fly?
And can the system accommodate
the flying that the airlines are putting together? And the answer, very obviously,
at Pearson is no, the system can't handle it, and that there's too much capacity being thrown
at Pearson, and it's causing all kinds of grief, both departure and arrivals.
Right. And not to belabor this point too much, but I guess I'm just wondering why no one saw that coming back in, say, January.
I think it seemed pretty obvious to a lot of people that travel would go wild this summer once mandates were lifted.
And Rosa, do you have anything to add there?
Yeah, just to add to that. I mean, you know, CAATSA says that it did foresee this. Right.
So it's not saying, oh, no, we got caught.
They're saying that they did start hiring and they did start training a while ago.
And I think that, you know, that kind of comes back to the point of, are these jobs attractive?
Like, what are they doing to actually, you know, bring people on?
I mean, if they did start hiring and training and trying to
attract people months ago, great, but clearly it wasn't enough. So I do think that there's that as
well. And also going back to COVID-19 rules, something I learned recently is that around 10%
of security screeners and border agents are actually off the job because of vaccine mandates,
which of course many employers have put in place for very good reason. But we are starting to see some major employers like the
big banks lift those mandates. So I'm sure that this question is going to come up again, you know,
should we lift those mandates for security workers if it would mean, you know, a significant influx
of people for peak season? Right. This was also a drum that Pierre Paglia
was banging on in this video as well. And I'll just, I guess I'll just say none of us in this
conversation are obviously public health experts. So like, we're not here to kind of discuss
the health merits of whether or not that would be a good idea.
Yeah. And to your point, I mean, again, public health experts are saying
we should keep doing testing.
We should keep having vaccine mandates, et cetera.
This is just sort of what we're hearing from industry.
John, in addition to the measures we've already talked about, what else do you think could change to help deal with the problem here?
Well, I think, you know, going back to the phenomenon itself and the congestion phenomenon that we see at Pearson, I think that, as Rosa probably knows far better than I, it's not just a Pearson problem.
It's basically a problem that's been showing up at airports around the world. And for those of us
that watch the airlines industries,
in Europe, you see Amsterdam, Schiphol Airport, you see London Heathrow, Manchester,
Lisbon, these lineups are all over the
place. And the carriers have
responded. KLM, like we see,
you know, at KLM, Lufthansa have all reduced their flying as a result of all of this congestion.
And they've admitted that, you know, there's an airport issue, but there's also an airline issue
is that they don't have the people to fly and properly provide service to the passengers.
When you look at Pearson and you see the stories
about baggage and the baggage belts and all of that baggage hanging around, waiting for, you know,
waiting for passengers to pick them up, you know, just because people have waited five or six hours
for their bags and they've lost patients and they've gone home and now the bags keep accumulating.
So, bags is not an issue with CBSA. Bags is not an issue with CAATSA. It's an
issue with the airline staff on the ground to be able to let stuff around. So I think that, you
know, until we get to a point where we have the right resources, whether it's CAATSA, whether
it's CBSA, whether it's airline staff, this problem will continue. The idea of cutting back on flights
seems like it could be very unpopular
considering a lot of people
have booked off vacation time
and are probably looking forward
to like a holiday
after two years of the pandemic.
Yeah, I think, you know,
it's not a question of canceling
the booking that you already have.
It really is don't offer the booking
in the first place
and basically hold back on the capacity
so people aren't having expectations of being able to fly.
And that, you know, if you don't offer the service,
just because the airlines can fly,
does it mean that they should fly?
Or, you know, what should the airlines do
to basically reduce the congestion at the airport?
And I think it's those types of questions that haven't been asked.
And the minister, you know, rightfully said, it's not going to be up to me to tell the airlines to cut back their schedules.
And the airlines have to do it on their own.
They have to be grown adults and really understand that, you know, they are part of the problem.
And they have to understand that the airports can't handle all of the demand that's being made of them by the airlines and by the passengers they're carrying.
Okay. John, Rosa, thank you both so much for this. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson.
Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow.
Thank you.