The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - To Mask or Not To Mask -- That's This Week's Question.

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

I've always been fascinated by air travel and this week some international air travel got me thinking about how it's been impacted by the "health crisis" of the moment. But it also showed me an example of real class by a captain just doing her job.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest edition of The Bridge. For the last weekend in February, the first weekend of March 2020. And it's been an exciting week. As I mentioned last week, I was going to be doing a little bit of world travel over the next few weeks. And I just got back from Europe on this week's travel, which was fascinating for a number of reasons. One of which I'm going to key on for this podcast this week on the bridge. If you've noticed the picture I used on Instagram to promote this week's podcast, you may wonder what I was thinking,

why I used it. I have posted it before on Instagram. It was a picture my sister sent me after she found it going through some old family photos. And I got to say, I don't recall ever seeing it before just these past few months. But I've sure thought about it a lot since I first saw it. It's a picture taken in 1951

by my father of my mom and my sister and I next to a plane, a DC-3, that was about to take off from Penang in what was then Malaya, now Malaysia. And if you've been to that part of the world, you know that Penang is kind of a, in many ways, a resort town right on the Andaman Sea. Beautiful area. But on this day in 1951 at the airport in Penang, it was pretty remote.

Airports weren't that new, for starters. DC-3 was a plane that was, I think, built in the mid-1930s, and it was used on D-Day to move the commandos, the paratroopers, on land before the sea invasion. And the DC-3 is still used today in many parts of the world, including Canada's Arctic. And I've loved the DC-3 seemingly all my life. And when I saw this picture, I realized that my fascination with air travel

probably began on that day. I'm like three or four years I saw this picture, I realized that my fascination with air travel probably began on that day. I'm like three or four years old in this picture. I'm standing there with my sister and my mom next to the engine, well, clearly another era of flight travel, but for me, it's a flashback to that, as I mentioned, fascination with air travel. I've always had it, and I guess I've had it since that day. That was my very first plane ride, and I've traveled hundreds of thousands

if not millions many millions of miles since then in different parts around the world and continue to do so just in the last week or so to Amsterdam and to Heathrow Airport and Inverness in Scotland

and obviously in and out of Toronto a few times. Next week it's off to South Africa, Zimbabwe. So it's, you know, there are lots of places in the world to go and I'm lucky enough to still get to a few of them. I was in the airline business for a short period of time. Before that, I wanted to be a pilot. I grew up wanting to be a pilot. I joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1966.

I was in there for 1966 and 1967. I took flying training and those days the Canadian Navy used to have an aircraft carrier the Bonaventure flew trackers off the Bonaventure and they also flew Seaking helicopters off the back of DDH destroyers

that Canada had and of course we still have Seaking helicopters that Canada had, and of course, we still have Sea King helicopters. And while I accumulated a fair number of hours in the early part of flying training with the Royal Canadian Navy, they wisely decided, you know what, I don't think he's ready to be a pilot on one of our aircraft. And so at 19, I left the Navy, ended up joining Transair, which was a regional air carrier in Western Canada, based in Winnipeg, covered Manitoba, Saskatchewan, northwestern

Ontario, and into the High Arctic. They ended up moving me from Winnipeg to Prince Albert to Brandon to Churchill, Manitoba. And I was in Churchill where I got my break in broadcasting when somebody heard me announce a flight over the public address system. Transair Flight 106 for Thompson-Lapalme, Winninipeg now ready for boarding in Gate 1 in the Churchill Airport. The manager of the radio station in Churchill, Gaston Charpentier, heard me and said,

you know what? You've got a voice that should be on radio. And I started the next night, and that's how my career at the CBC started. Crazy, right? But all connected, still interwoven, to airports. And I keep being fascinated by airports. And have been, I guess, ever since that day in Penang, in Malaya.

I can stand and watch airplanes taking off and landing for hours. So why am I telling you all this today? Why is it kind of relevant for this podcast on this day? Well, the airports that I've traveled to and the passengers that I saw and the airport workers that I encountered over this last week or so, in many cases, many cases, are consumed by the coronavirus story. To the point where, well, you see a lot of masks. You see a lot of masks in airports. You have been for a few weeks now, but there are more and more all the time.

Yesterday, I saw a mask on a flight attendant in a flight operating. And I thought, really? I mean, if I'm being told the truth by the medical authorities, masks are only any good for preventing others from getting something you may have. Well, if that flight attendant has something to be concerned about, what's she doing working? Because she's not preventing somebody else from giving her something if the truth's being told about masks.

But masks are everywhere. I've seen in the last week, I've seen masks on part of baggage handlers, customs officials, security officers, aircraft personnel at check-in counters. And it's pretty disarming in terms of the comfort you may feel about walking around in an airport, a very public place where there are,

depending on the size of the airport, but literally thousands of people. And so you start worrying about, especially if you hear somebody cough. Been on a plane lately and heard somebody cough? And the looks everybody gives each other? We've got to be careful here, folks. We've got to be careful about the way we see our fellow persons,

how we react to things like that I heard somebody the other day saying the best thing we could do right now is go out and have Chinese food in a Chinese food section of whatever community you live in because you've got to show support for your fellow citizens and erase that fear that it somehow

if you see somebody of an Asian background my God they must run the risk of bringing towards me the coronavirus. That's not happening. We've got to be careful how we look at this. Obviously, we have to be careful about how we travel. We've got to be careful about where we travel to, and we've got to listen to what people are telling us about the way we should act, the way we should behave, the way we should look after ourselves and those around us.

So that's what I saw out there. And in the next week, going to another part of the world, I'll have to keep all these things in mind as well. Now, from everything I've seen in southern Africa, I think there was one reported case there today, but for the most part, Africa has been, when you look at the maps of the world I think there was one reported case there today. But for the most part, Africa has been,

when you look at the maps of the world and who's got cases of coronavirus and who doesn't, Africa doesn't. And then your people say, well, you know, maybe they're not reporting their cases. Really? It's health authorities who, for their own reasons, are trying to ensure that what is reported is the truth,

is fact-based. So. So. So, interesting to watch how this story is playing out. We've seen what happened to the markets in the past five days or so. A huge crash. And everybody's looking at what investments they may have or how these things have affected their stocks that are held in pension plans that many people have.

So they worry about this. Has the worry gone beyond what's rational. Perhaps. But it's our health. It's your family's health. It's your friend's health. And you want to make sure what's going on around you is something that you can control.

Okay, well, that's the downside of the story of air travel in the last week or so. Last couple of weeks really. But you know, I saw something else this week which to me is the upside. It was a wonderful, wonderful moment. And I'm going to tell you about it right after this. All right, so last weekend, I flew from Toronto to Amsterdam. I was on my way to Scotland, and while that might sound like an odd route,

it actually was the best route to get to northern Scotland, to get to Inverness, where I was flying towards. And fly Toronto, Amsterdam, and then come back Amsterdam to Inverness. And it was quicker than going through London, given the flight times on this particular situation. And so that's the route that we chose. Now, the flight from Toronto to Amsterdam was pretty uneventful, which is, of course, the way you want to fly, in an uneventful way.

You know, before I get to this story, whenever I think about air travel, aside from that picture of me in Malaya in 1951, the other moment that I always think of was, now come on, all you other boomers out there, remember Bob Newhart? Bob's still one of the funniest guys alive.

But his kind of prime spot area for being famous in the role of a comedian was through the 1960s and, I guess, the early 70s. He had a TV show. He had a bunch of things. Before that, he was a stand-up comic. And he had some fabulous albums in the 1960s. And one of the funniest stories that he tells, if you can look it up,

I'm sure you can if you just Google it, Bob Newhart, air travel. You'll probably hear it. It's hilarious. Anyway, I digress. The flight, Toronto to Amsterdam, fine. In fact, it was, you know, about an hour faster than normal because it had a tremendous wind taking us,

tailwind taking us there across the Atlantic. Which meant, obviously, that when we were going to be coming back from Amsterdam to Inverness across the North Sea, it was going to be probably fighting a headwind. So we get to Amsterdam. About, I don't know, a couple of hours between flights. We finally get to the KLM flight that we're taking. Check in.

We get on the plane. Everything's on time. We get on the plane. Everything's on time. We get on the plane. And then there's clearly a delay of some kind happening as the minutes tick by past the moment when it was supposed to depart. Not a lot. A couple of minutes.

And I'm looking up as I love to do at what everybody's doing. The flight attendants, the technical people who are coming on and off the plane, those who have boarded the baggage or those who are boarding the meals. And the pilots and the crew from the cockpit. Everybody had been moving kind of in and out.

And suddenly you heard the little click on the PA system. And this woman's voice comes on and says, Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm so-and-so. I'm the captain of your flight to Inverness. And I suddenly notice that, in fact, the captain is standing at the front of the plane looking at us, not in the cockpit.

She's not in the cockpit. She's standing in the aisle at the front of the plane, looking out towards the passengers. I thought, well, this is different. And she says, I just wanted to explain to you what's happening. And the explanation she gave was that because the headwinds were quite strong, it was impacting the number of runways that could be used at Schiphol Airport, the airport in Amsterdam,

and therefore there was kind of a lineup for planes to leave, and you had to get your slot approved before you taxed away from the building. So she explained this in a calm and rational voice and then explained that we were going to have to wait about a half an hour before we'd leave. And she also explained that the flight to Inverness was going to take longer than normal. Because of those strong headwinds. She talked, I guess, for maybe five minutes, explaining all this. And it was terrific.

People sort of kind of hung on every word. And the scene of the captain standing there with us in our kind of section of the plane where the passengers and the flight attendants were. And then she did something else. She said, because we've got a bit of time, I'm going to walk around the cabin. And if any of you have any questions, don't be shy. And so she started walking up the aisleway.

And I guess people were so surprised, they didn't know what to do. But when she got to where we were, I can't remember what it was, Rule 13 or 14, I sort of put my hand up and I said, Captain, could you just tell me whether this is typical? Is this ordinary or is this just something you personally do? And she said, well, it's kind of a mixture of both. You know, we're encouraged to make ourselves more informal in our way we talk with passengers. And to me, this is a great way of doing it. And I know some other KLM pilots do the same thing. And I said, well, you know, I'm not a kid. I've seen a lot of planes and

plane travel over the years. I didn't tell her about the flight in Penang. Maybe I should have. But I didn't tell her that. But I did tell her that I'd never seen something like that before, and I thought it was terrific. And a lot of airlines could learn from her and from what other KLM pilots seem to be doing, that it made them very approachable, and it made everybody else feel very comfortable with a full understanding of what was happening. So she seemed to appreciate that and walked back to,

eventually back to the front of the aircraft. Not before, though, taking a couple of kids up to show them the cockpit. And I thought, you know, this is great. There used to be a day, you know, before 9-11 where kids going to the cockpit in flight wasn't unusual. It didn't happen a lot, but it wasn't unusual. But this was unusual. I'd never seen this before. And I would strongly recommend to other airlines, including those in our country,

that they think about this. Make their captains more, I don't know, presentable to the public. And their situations more understandable. This was not an unusual situation, but if you'd heard it from a disembodied voice inside the plane, it might have set some people off a bit, make them feel a little bit uneasy. Well, that didn't happen here. This was a nice moment, touching moment.

So that's my little story about air travel. The good, the bad, the... Well, I don't think I told anything ugly. We don't want it to get ugly. But I do want you to have a great weekend if you're listening to this on the weekend. And next week, well, who knows where I'll be

when the bridge comes tumbling out. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you again in, what do you say, seven days? Thank you.