The Decibel - Your upcoming flights might be cancelled, here’s why

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Experts are anticipating another chaotic season of air travel in the coming months. Along with ongoing labour disputes, Canadian airlines have scheduled more flights for the summer. There’s a catch though: they might not have the crew to staff them.Today, The Globe’s transportation reporter Eric Atkins explains why airlines still might not have enough staff and what we’re in for in the coming months.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Over the past year, we've seen lots of problems at Canada's airports. Delayed and cancelled flights, stranded passengers, missing luggage. Remember all that chaos last year? So normally this is, I've been travelling to Toronto for like more than 50, 20 years. This is the longest I have to wait, and this is the busiest I've ever seen. Because when we came earlier, it was just one person there attending to everyone. But now they increased it to, I think they're having four there now, so it's moving gradually. And if you had to guess, how many people do you think are in this line?

Approximately, say, 100 plus. Dropping off the bags, where the system went down. It was quite a bit of a wait there. So if we came at one and it's now three, that's why we're delayed. And now experts are worried we're going to see that again. There have been ongoing labor disputes. The Union for WestJet Pilots voted to strike earlier this week. That's already causing disruptions. And on top of that, Canada's airlines have scheduled more flights than previous years. But there might not be enough staff to actually run them.

Eric Adkins is the Globe's transportation reporter. Today, he tells us why pilots seem to be leaving the Canadian travel industry and what this all means for the future of air travel in Canada. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Eric, thank you for joining me. Nice to be here. So we're talking to you on Thursday, ahead of this impending strike of WestJet and Swoop pilots. We don't know what's going to happen yet, but what kind of impacts are we seeing already from this potential strike? On Thursday morning, the disruptions have already begun. Last I checked, WestJet had canceled 103 flights across its network, affecting 16,000-ish passengers. And the reason they're canceling today ahead of what could be a strike or a lockout on Friday is because they want to be able to control their fleet.

The union wants its pilots not stranded. The WestJet does not want its planes stranded in Cuba or Mexico. They want to park the planes at their home bases, major airports in Canada. And just to really explain that, why is it bad to have a plane stuck in Cuba if the pilots go on strike? Well, there's no way to get it home if your pilot is on strike. You're going to incur parking fees, which are expensive. You may incur maintenance fees because planes cannot just simply sit there. They have to be run every day.

They have to be looked after. Okay, so this sounds like this is an issue, but the union for the pilots of these planes. What's actually at stake here? What issues are the pilots raising? It's impossible to know everything they're asking for because simply neither side is saying. But the pilots have been clear they want a North American grade contract. Pilots in the U.S. are paid a lot more than pilots in Canada. As a result, WestJet and possibly other airlines are losing pilots. Hundreds of pilots left WestJet last year. The union says about 100 have left so far this year

for jobs elsewhere, most likely in the United States, where they can make about 40% more. When you say losing hundreds of pilots a year, can you put that in context? Is that a lot of people? Yes, because WestJet only has, well, only they have about 1,850 pilots at its mainline WestJet and its swoop discount brand. So yeah, it's substantial. Okay. And so you said that pilots are leaving because they can make more with other carriers. Can you explain why? Why would a US airline pay them so much more than WestJet? Simply, there's a pilot shortage. So Delta, in March, its pilots approved a 34% raise over the four-year life of their new contract. American Airlines, because they don't want to lose pilots to its rival Delta, quickly came out and said, hey, don't worry pilots, we're going to give you the same raise.

There are no secrets among pilots. They go all on the same chat rooms, they find out what the working conditions are like, they find out who's paying what. And it's a highly mobile workforce, by definition. They're quite accustomed to going to other countries several times a day, but it's a highly mobile workforce and they're easily poachable by rivals. Although the pilot shortage, it's a North American-wide and a global problem that stemmed from the pandemic when a lot of pilots were laid off, sent home for the better part of two or three years. Some of them simply retired. Others found new jobs. And those who entered the trade in Canada, it's a slow process because Transport Canada slowed down its licensing processes. So to become a pilot took a lot longer, especially in Canada.

So it sounds like the results that we're seeing now, there's a little bit that we can tie back to the pandemic and all the disruption we saw there. And of course, since the pandemic, we have seen a lot of travel disruption. We've talked about this before on the show with you, Eric. But the airlines have been saying that, you know what, this summer, it's going to be different than the past year. They're more prepared. Is that true, Eric? What have you been hearing on that front? It's hard to know. As you know, summer travel restarted last summer, pent-up demand, and it simply overwhelmed the airports and the airlines. There weren't enough staff to serve everybody because, as I said earlier, most people got laid off. A lot of them found new jobs, and the ones that came back to work, some of them were inexperienced. Or the government agencies that screen passengers for security and baggage were understaffed. Then at Christmas, there were two major snowstorms that affected most of Canada. And we saw a repeat only for different reasons. Tons of canceled flights. Lots of people had their Christmas plans disrupted, canceled, they were stranded. So this time, the summer, the airlines and the airports and the government agencies that serve those, they say it'll be different. Who knows? We'll see. We do know there are a lot of

inexperienced staff working in a lot of these jobs. I'm talking about baggage handling, screening passengers. So although they may have the same numbers, the level of expertise is not there and they remain vulnerable to simply jumping ship. Baggage handling is not a highly paid job, nor are the jobs of screening passengers, people and luggage. They're vulnerable to being poached by other industries outside the aviation business or simply the one that runs across the hall. Yeah. And I know that airlines have also been saying they've increased the number of flights this year compared to last year, so they can get people to where they want to go.

Can you, I guess, walk me through those numbers, Eric? What's going on there? Well, the airlines are trying to catch up and make up for lost time after being largely shut down for two, two and a half years in the pandemic. In July alone, compared to the same month last year, Air Canada earlier posted a schedule that was 7% bigger. WestJet was slightly bigger with 4%, but 9% more seats. So bigger planes. Porter, which has a new fleet of Embraer planes, a much bigger jet, was offering 14% more flights. And Flair, notably, is offering a 30% increase in flights and seats compared to last year.

So do the airlines have the staff to run these flights? They say they do, but part of the problem is a lot of this staff is inexperienced. So things will go more slowly. If things go wrong, they don't have a backup. At the same time, demand is probably stronger than ever. Those who didn't travel last summer, even those who did and it went badly, want to travel again this summer. So demand is going to be super strong. The planes are full. Airlines will have fewer backup planes if things go wrong. So the margin for error is small. It's hard to know. All it takes is one disruption in one place. And then

that crew doesn't get to its next flight. If that flight arrives late, the crew that is handling the baggage is probably on another flight. So that delayed flight, those people have to wait, and it cascades down the line. So a delay or a cancellation in one place has ripple effects throughout the network. Yeah. And I think a lot of us are very familiar with this kind of thing from last year, right? One flight gets delayed and everything down the line gets delayed. It gets really frustrating for people trying to get to places. It snowballs. Help me understand this, though, Eric.

Why would the airlines schedule flights that they potentially might not be able to staff, might not be able to run? Well, they want to see what demand is. And the only way to see what demand is, in their mind, is to put everything on the shelf, put it up for sale, see who buys it, and then revisit. What they don't want to do is be too conservative and not offer enough flights to make their summer profitable. And that's allowed? Can they book people even if they might not be able to operate those flights? I've checked with the regulators a few times lately, and there are no laws against either overbooking a flight, selling more seats than exists on a certain plane, or selling seats on flights and or planes that effectively don't exist. There are rules about canceling that flight, but you're certainly allowed to overbook, oversell your schedule.

Okay. So what happens to a passenger? So let's say I booked a ticket on a flight, they can't operate that flight. What are my options at that point? If they cancel on short notice within a couple of days, they're required to give you a refund or rebook you on one of their flights or a competitor's flight. If that flight has an international leg, there are also requirements with regard to how they treat you. And that could involve compensation, lodging, food. Some of those rules apply in Canada as well, but it depends on the reason for the cancellation, whether or not it is within the airline's control or outside the airline's control. And if it's not short notice, like if it's a couple of weeks out, is there anything different that happens? They can just reschedule your flight.

So either same day or next day or something, like there's no guidelines around that? Yes. The rules are much more lax if they do it two weeks ahead of time. We'll be back in a minute. So we've talked a little bit about the flight disruptions with WestJet. Are we seeing any other signs of chaos these days, though, more broadly, Eric, like beyond the cancellations ahead of the potential strikes? It's been fairly smooth. But in the spring, there were a lot of cancellations that basically most of the airlines, because again, they put more flights on the shelf than people wanted. So they started pulling back. Porter canceled a lot of flights in the spring. It's got a new fleet of larger Embraer planes that it's trying to fill. People aren't buying

enough seats. So they were canceling planes on those. Porter also had trouble finding enough pilots, qualified pilots, it said, to fly those planes. So yeah, there has already been some disruptions. Flair famously had four of its planes seized in March after it missed lease payments on those four planes. So their schedule was disrupted. We know that airlines have been struggling since the start of the pandemic. So financially speaking, what kind of positions are airlines in right now? The shorter answer is we don't know because most of them are privately held. Air Canada and Transat are the only two publicly traded airlines in Canada, if you don't count Canada Jet Lines. Air Canada is making a tiny profit. For the past two quarters, it has made a small amount of money. And Air Canada's

losses alone are almost $10 billion over the past three years in the pandemic. So they've got a big hole to climb out of. Transat is still losing money. Last I checked, the way an airline pays for its losses, losses become debt. All the airlines are carrying a lot more debt than they used to. What about government help? Are airlines getting any help from the government in Canada and then also in the U.S.? Is there a difference there? Yeah, the U.S. government gave their airlines aid almost immediately in the pandemic.

Canada waited a long time. I think it was a couple of years into the pandemic before Canadian airlines got help. And they got different kinds of help. They didn't get as much help. It was in loans, not grants. Air Canada has foregone most of its government aid with the exception of, I think it was a couple billion to repay refunds to customers. Transat has taken a fair bit of government aid and continues to draw on its government line of credit. WestJet refused to take any government aid because they didn't want the government to have a say in any of its operations. The government attached strings to some of the aid, including senior salary. And in Air Canada's case, it invested in the company itself. The government owns shares in Air Canada as a

result of the aid it provided. Okay. So what does this all mean for people who are planning to travel in the next few months? What should they expect? Get there early, call ahead, make sure your flight is okay. Travel light if you can. Take a carry-on. Don't check your bag if you can help it. That's where a lot of people are seeing the difficulties, though, right? Getting their baggage after they've flown. Yeah. Yeah, there's getting you there, and then there's getting your luggage there and back. Two separate things on the same plane, but as we know, it's another area in which things can go wrong.

Do you think things will ever settle down back to how they were before the pandemic for airlines and air travel? Eventually. Everybody said in the beginning of this that the recovery in aviation demand, financial stability, that sort of thing, would happen by 2024, which, you know, is less than a year away. So hopefully this time next year, there'll be less to talk about. The debts that airlines took on won't be gone by next year. So certainly their financial stability will be a bit more tenuous, and there will likely be fewer airlines this time next year. What do you mean by that?

Well, everybody has said that Canada has too much capacity and too many airlines. We've already seen one vanish. Sunwing was recently taken over by WestJet. And there's other ones, including Flair. It had trouble paying its bills. It lost some planes. It's privately held, so we don't know the situation. But they've demonstrated that they've already had trouble making a go of it. Porter has expanded with all these big new planes. But there are questions about whether it can keep going with such a large fleet. Not the viability of the overall company, but its expansion plans.

Why would it take so long for the airlines to get back to normal after the pandemic? Well, demand would have to fully recover. They would have to fully recover their operations, the airlines themselves, have a stable workforce, stable labor negotiations, labor contracts, stop the attrition to other airlines, for instance. And then they've got to get on top of their debts. They're all paying more in interest and in loan payments. They've got to find a way to run their operations profitably while covering that. Eric, I wonder, I mean, you're the transportation reporter. If airlines become kind of increasingly expensive and unreliable and we keep seeing this kind of chaos,

do you think people are or are people starting to actually look at other options like taking the train instead of flying, if they can. In Canada, there are a few other alternatives to airplanes, simply because of geography. You can take a train Toronto to Montreal, and it's pleasant, nice downtown to downtown. I recommend that actually. But you can't take a train to Calgary from Toronto. I'm not sure how long it takes. It's several days. So in Canada, there are a few alternatives to planes, which is why the aviation industry is so important. And that's why it's so important that it operates properly. Eric, thank you so much for joining me. Okay, thanks. That's it for today.

I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our interns are Our producers are David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer. And Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.