Full Comment - Airport hell is not going away

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00:01:28.160 Hello, I'm Anthony Fury.

00:01:35.380 Thanks for joining us for the latest episode of Full Comment.

00:01:38.320 If you haven't done so already, please consider subscribing.

00:01:41.480 Canada's air travel experience is a total mess right now.

00:01:45.680 Just how bad has it become?

00:01:47.320 Well, a Canadian press headline from July 6 read,

00:01:50.180 Air Canada, Pearson Airport, again, rank number one in delays worldwide.

00:01:55.740 Worldwide!

00:01:56.260 Like, that means behind airports and countries run by theocracies, third world countries, you name it. 0.85

00:02:03.260 We're number one, in a bad way, worldwide wowsers.

00:02:07.060 Look, we've all seen the pictures of the crazy lines and the baggage pileups.

00:02:10.740 We've heard people's laments.

00:02:12.240 Some of us have even run the airport gauntlet ourselves recently.

00:02:15.420 What we've also heard, though, is the blame game.

00:02:18.520 From the federal liberal government in particular,

00:02:20.640 trying to blame airlines, to blame travelers, anyone but themselves.

00:02:23.960 So what's really going on here?

00:02:26.920 I get that COVID put a spanner in the works, but how are we the worst in the world?

00:02:31.560 Our guest today knows the nitty-gritty of how airlines work and how airports work.

00:02:36.400 Duncan D. was the chief operating officer for Air Canada up until 2013,

00:02:40.580 the second senior-most executive for what was then the ninth-largest airline in the world.

00:02:45.300 He was then appointed by the minister of transport federally as the air sector lead for the Canada Transportation Act Review,

00:02:52.480 which looked at the entire Canadian transportation system.

00:02:55.720 If there's anyone who can help us figure out what on earth is going on, I'm thinking it's Duncan D.

00:03:00.140 He joins us now.

00:03:01.540 Duncan, great to have you on the program.

00:03:02.900 Thank you for joining us.

00:03:04.880 Thanks for having me.

00:03:05.640 I'm happy to be here.

00:03:06.760 This is just quite something.

00:03:08.300 I mean, I've got to ask, when you see all of this happening, do you say to yourself,

00:03:11.800 oh, man, I'm glad I'm not there right now?

00:03:13.540 Or do you say to yourself, I wish I was there so I could fix this?

00:03:18.140 Well, I'm glad I'm not there because of the tremendous heartache that is going on right now at airports,

00:03:25.560 especially with travelers who are missing out on long-planned vacations,

00:03:31.720 families who are missing out on special events, loved ones who are delayed for sometimes days

00:03:40.500 trying to get to see people who they haven't physically seen in two years.

00:03:46.000 So in some ways, I'm glad I'm not there for that on a daily basis because I don't know how I'd handle it.

00:03:53.440 One thing I'm looking forward to hearing from you is the basic how airlines work.

00:03:57.740 You know, my kids have those books that are like how things work and they break it down.

00:04:00.920 And I know a lot of us, we just know our basic traveler-passenger experience,

00:04:04.740 but we're not exactly sure how all these things function.

00:04:07.400 I know it's a complicated system, but I also get the sense that maybe what's happening right now shouldn't be happening.

00:04:14.920 Well, it shouldn't be happening.

00:04:17.060 And unfortunately, it was completely predictable.

00:04:20.260 My first public experience with this was on the 2nd of April, which was a Saturday morning in April,

00:04:26.460 when I was personally in a three-hour line at security at Pearson Airport.

00:04:33.240 And when I saw that line on the 2nd of April, it seriously alarmed me because there should be no lines

00:04:39.680 at any airport in Canada in the months of April or May.

00:04:43.280 These are low travel months.

00:04:44.680 And lineups of that length just shouldn't be happening.

00:04:50.880 And if there were lines, something was clearly off.

00:04:55.400 And so what we're seeing now is the result of cumulative delays that have taken place for the last three months.

00:05:04.200 Three months.

00:05:06.180 So help us understand, because to my point about the blame game, there's different elements at an airport.

00:05:11.400 There is the government regulations, the things that the government is most directly responsible for.

00:05:16.900 Then there are the private companies that are the airlines.

00:05:20.680 And then there's these agencies, which I guess report to the government, but they still run their own domain.

00:05:25.460 I mean, how does the who's in charge of what thing unfold here?

00:05:29.400 So that is an excellent question, and it's actually a very, very complicated answer.

00:05:36.320 And in many ways, we've made it even more complicated than it should be in Canada.

00:05:40.280 In terms of the two elements that the federal government is responsible for that are causing a significant part of the delays that we've seen for the last three months.

00:05:52.520 We're talking about air security.

00:05:54.420 So the folks that screen travelers when they board, before they board the aircraft, when they get to the airport.

00:06:03.020 And Canada Border Services, which is the agency that screens travelers when they return from an international destination.

00:06:10.500 So if we focus just on those two elements of the process, because those are the two bottlenecks which started this entire thing in the first place,

00:06:20.840 you've got a situation where the federal government, in the case of airport security, has created really a multi-headed beast in terms of accountability and who's really responsible.

00:06:33.380 So in Canada, unlike in the U.S. and many other countries, we have the regulator, which is Transport Canada.

00:06:40.880 They're the folks that write the rules.

00:06:42.960 Then you've got CATSA.

00:06:44.460 CATSA is the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.

00:06:47.700 These folks, their only mandate is to negotiate contracts with private security screeners. 0.99

00:06:55.500 So wherever you go in the country, a different company is responsible, a different private company is responsible for managing the individuals that perform the physical screening of travelers when they get to security.

00:07:11.880 And so CATSA, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, negotiates agreements with a variety of these private companies.

00:07:23.600 And then these private companies, in turn, negotiate agreements with the various unions that govern the working relationship between the actual screeners and the private company.

00:07:35.340 So in Canada, we've created a system which has multiple heads and because of that, you end up in a situation where no one is really accountable.

00:07:46.340 So a traveler facing a three-hour line at Pearson one morning, who do they complain to?

00:07:52.380 Well, the first line of defense is the private security contractor responsible for the screeners.

00:08:01.460 You go to them and why are we in a three-hour line?

00:08:05.480 They say, well, we've been given the resources that we have and obviously there's not enough screeners here.

00:08:13.460 So you should complain to CATSA. 0.90

00:08:15.460 And so you write a letter to CATSA because nobody knows where they are.

00:08:21.020 And CATSA then says, well, we negotiated these contracts based on the appropriation we received from Parliament based on the standards that were established by Transport Canada.

00:08:32.480 And so they say, go to those groups for your complaint.

00:08:37.320 And so you write a letter to Transport and Transport Canada says, well, the regulations we have in place to govern the standards of the security system at the airports has been established because we want to keep everyone safe.

00:08:49.680 So isn't that the ultimate priority?

00:08:53.120 And then you ultimately have Parliament, which appropriates the money used to screen travelers.

00:09:00.240 So in this instance, who do travelers go to?

00:09:03.860 Where is the blame?

00:09:05.060 And who is held accountable?

00:09:06.340 You literally have finger pointing embedded in the system that the government's designed and to ensure that there is no accountability.

00:09:16.260 So, you know, Anthony, we're faced with a situation in Canada in many ways of our own making.

00:09:22.280 And that is a very, very long answer that is uniquely Canadian.

00:09:26.040 Because if you ask me who's responsible for security in the United States, I would say the Transport Security Administration.

00:09:32.360 And that's where the buck stops.

00:09:34.180 In Canada, we have no idea.

00:09:36.340 Now, Transport Canada recently sent out a press release trying to explain away the problem as, and I'll quote,

00:09:42.660 In Canada, June 2022, air departure traffic was 58 times higher than it was in spring 2020.

00:09:49.980 In comparison, global travel volumes are up more than eight times since the low point during the pandemic.

00:09:55.080 And airports across the world are feeling the impact from too many flights, didn't know there could be too many flights, to not enough staff.

00:10:01.660 There is no single reason for these delays.

00:10:04.220 So, that's, you know, kind of their answer.

00:10:06.880 Oh, there's a lot of stuff going on and no one's really to blame.

00:10:09.440 What do you make of that as the sort of driving rationale?

00:10:12.380 Is that basically an accurate explanation that things have just yo-yoed up and down and, well, they can't really deal with it?

00:10:18.780 I think really it's a bizarre explanation.

00:10:20.900 How many businesses on the planet, let alone Canada, compare their current activity to the depths of the pandemic?

00:10:29.540 If you take a look at what's happening in air travel in Canada, let's just use the Minister of Transport's, Federal Minister of Transport's own words.

00:10:37.920 The Federal Minister of Transport said back in May that he had 90% of his pre-pandemic staffing at CAATSA.

00:10:48.260 So, the screeners, he had 90% of his pre-pandemic staffing.

00:10:52.580 He also said in that same interview that he had less than 70% of the pre-pandemic passenger traffic.

00:11:00.780 So, passenger traffic is indeed higher than it was during the depths of the pandemic.

00:11:07.020 Why?

00:11:08.620 Because during the depths of the pandemic, borders were closed and there were restrictions on travel.

00:11:16.880 Those restrictions were lifted.

00:11:19.020 So, to try to compare what's happening now to what happened during the depths of the pandemic is really curious.

00:11:26.500 And then his own comments where he said that he had 90% of his pre-pandemic staffing.

00:11:32.980 So, what he's effectively said is he has more staff now processing fewer travelers than he did before the pandemic, which would be the normal comparison.

00:11:44.600 And even then, he now says, in fact, that he needs more staff.

00:11:50.220 So, the question the minister needs to answer is why did CAATSA become so inefficient over the course of the last two years, where in the past they were never a great agency, but at least we didn't see the delays we are seeing now.

00:12:05.620 But the situation is such that he's got more staff processing fewer travelers and the delays are, as you said in your introduction, record-breaking, not in North America, but are on the planet.

00:12:19.580 So, Duncan, when we think about really long lines, we think of, I don't know, our experiences at the grocery store where it's like they don't have enough tills open and you're getting frustrated and people are starting to make some comments.

00:12:30.300 And then eventually the manager notices and then you hear in the PA, can Bob and Shirley please go to the counter?

00:12:35.860 And then they open two more registers and then, oh, things start flowing again.

00:12:39.240 And, you know, I understand how problems arise in these scenarios.

00:12:42.200 What I think a lot of people are having difficulty understanding is how is this airport situation persisting for so long and for weeks?

00:12:49.500 Like, surely there are quite a few people who are paid big money to solve these problems.

00:12:53.880 So, just do it already.

00:12:56.260 Well, not only are a lot of people paid big money to solve this problem, but Canadian travelers pay the highest air security surcharges on the planet on their ticket.

00:13:06.440 So, Canadians have the privilege of paying the highest security charges for what, for the last couple of weeks, has been the world's worst on-time performance for air travel.

00:13:18.000 And so, what does that mean?

00:13:21.060 The situation at a grocery store, like you described, is a perfect analogy.

00:13:26.740 Because at a grocery store, if you have huge lines, you're able to redeploy staff and get those lines moving much more quickly.

00:13:34.880 If you don't have enough staff, you try to hire new workers to come and help you out.

00:13:41.520 So, the federal government has talked about adding first 650 new screeners, and then it ballooned to 850, and then now 1,000, after they said they didn't have a staffing problem.

00:13:54.560 So, they finally realized it was a staffing problem after several weeks of denial.

00:13:59.120 The problem, though, is that every worker at an airport needs to be screened before they're able to have a security badge to work at an airport.

00:14:09.540 You see them whenever you go through an airport that every single person that is an employee has a badge around their necks, saying that they're entitled to be in the secure area.

00:14:17.940 Well, the same people managing the security for travelers are the same people managing the security for airport employees and the screeners themselves.

00:14:29.260 And so, what does that mean?

00:14:31.120 Well, it means that a security screener in the pre-pandemic days was waiting about a month to get their background checked so that they can be provided with this badge.

00:14:41.640 Now, it takes them a month before they're even able to get an appointment with Transport Canada to complete the security checks, and several months after, before they get their badges.

00:14:54.180 So, you've got a situation where the bottleneck is doubled.

00:14:59.460 The same people responsible for bottleneck one, which is the screening of travelers, happens to be the same agency responsible for the screening of the screeners themselves.

00:15:10.100 And so, you have a situation where even if you wanted to deploy more staff today, and you were able to hire and train that staff over the next couple of weeks, there is still a third layer before the staff can actually be deployed.

00:15:27.460 And unfortunately, the people responsible for getting those staff in place in the third layer are responsible for the delays we're already seeing, and they're not moving quickly enough to get those barriers removed.

00:15:40.560 Wow. I mean, to what degree? Well, you used the phrase early on, predictable.

00:15:44.420 I mean, we obviously shut down so much of travel, so we had to scale down massively, and there are all these ripple effects that happen.

00:15:51.720 But I know the airlines were looking forward to scaling back up again.

00:15:55.640 Why was it not anticipated, oh, hey, we're going to have to do all the logistics that are consistent with a scale-up?

00:16:00.740 Well, that really is the reason for my personal frustration with what's been going on, because it puzzles me that the airlines filed their schedules last fall for this coming summer.

00:16:14.720 They started selling seats for those flights earlier this year, if not the end of last year.

00:16:21.640 They communicated with the airports, the agencies, the government as to what they were anticipating for the coming summer peak.

00:16:30.740 In fact, internal documents that were reported in the media in Ottawa indicated that the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, in their planning documents, showed that they anticipated a three- to four-fold increase in the number of travellers, 2022 versus 2021.

00:16:51.900 So they knew there was a huge pent-up demand for travel, a potential increase of between three and four times in comparison to 2021 and 2022.

00:17:04.940 And for some reason, they decided to do nothing.

00:17:07.540 But the final warning came in early April of this year, when alarm bells were being rung.

00:17:14.980 I was one of the very early alarm bell ringers, but other industry groups also joined the chorus.

00:17:23.800 They asked for plans.

00:17:26.540 They asked for changes.

00:17:29.240 And the Minister of Transport's very first response, and I believe listeners will remember this, was to blame out-of-practice travellers for the lines they were seeing at the airport.

00:17:40.080 You don't know how to take off your shoes anymore.

00:17:41.640 You've forgotten how to do that.

00:17:42.780 Right. And, you know, the thing, Anthony, that I think has happened is not that we have out-of-practice travellers.

00:17:49.160 We have out-of-practice screeners, and we have out-of-practice government bureaucrats. 0.98

00:17:54.080 They seem to have completely forgotten how to get things done.

00:17:59.360 And if people have any doubts as to whether or not that's only happening with the airports in this country, they just have to look at the passport office, where the lineups are equally bad.

00:18:09.320 And they've been bad for much longer than they have been at the airports.

00:18:13.440 The crisis at the passport offices started almost six months ago.

00:18:17.620 The crisis at the airports started about three months ago.

00:18:20.920 And yet, we have governments that's the only solutions they can come up with are solutions which are frankly creating other problems.

00:18:29.360 What about this idea of pausing random testing?

00:18:34.640 Okay, we're no longer going to randomly test vaccinated travellers.

00:18:38.820 Just a bit of a timeout, and it's set to return, okay, well, middle of July.

00:18:42.380 Man, are you going to have your problems fixed by middle of July?

00:18:44.960 That's really only days away.

00:18:46.980 At the same time, a lot of voices in the airline industry saying,

00:18:49.780 Can we just drop all of this stuff entirely right now?

00:18:53.080 To what degree are these COVID rules the primary challenge here, secondary?

00:18:59.220 Where do they fit in all of it in the bottleneck process?

00:19:02.300 So earlier, we talked about two different bottlenecks.

00:19:05.220 One is security, which has nothing to do with COVID checks, thank goodness.

00:19:10.280 And we talked about international arriving travellers having to go through customs.

00:19:15.300 And that is where the second bottleneck is taking place.

00:19:19.380 And that second bottleneck is almost entirely related to the COVID pandemic checks that are still going on at the airports.

00:19:28.720 The airport authorities have identified those processes as contributing to a quadrupling of the amount of time each and every traveller takes to be screened at customs compared to what they were being screened at before the pandemic.

00:19:44.600 Quadrupling, wow.

00:19:46.020 Quadrupling.

00:19:46.540 And so unless the government either makes the process simpler or they add a requisite number of resources, meaning staff, to process this system that they decided and designed would be used for international arriving travellers,

00:20:07.260 then they're inherently accepting that there will, in fact, be tremendous cues.

00:20:11.840 And so what you've got in the case of the pandemic inspections still going on at the airports is when you have a quadrupling in the amount of time for each and every traveller.

00:20:24.600 So a person would normally be screened within 30 to 60 seconds pre-pandemic.

00:20:30.240 That is now ballooned to upwards of four, sometimes even five minutes.

00:20:35.060 When you end up with that situation, unless you make up for that inefficiency by adding a similar number of staff, in which case you'd be talking about quadrupling the number of agents that you have to do this,

00:20:47.240 then you're basically, it becomes a pure mathematical equation.

00:20:50.760 You end up with huge lines, huge delays, and in the case of Pearson and Montreal, their buildings were never designed for that type of a delay.

00:21:02.340 And so the only answer they've got to do things like meet national fire code restrictions is to keep aircraft off the buildings at the airport.

00:21:15.140 So aircraft are being told to stay on the tarmac in what is used during the wintertime as a de-ice pad,

00:21:23.480 and they sometimes stay there for upwards of three to four hours after they've landed before the travellers are allowed to get off the plane at the airport where they join a two- or three-hour line.

00:21:33.700 People sitting in an airplane for three hours just because they don't want to violate the fire code by having too many people in a hallway.

00:21:39.740 Too many people in the hallway, too many people in the customs hall, and I think travellers probably don't look around very much when they get off the plane and into a customs hall,

00:21:51.760 but we're talking about massive convention-like rooms.

00:21:55.000 You know, these are not small, tiny little cubicles.

00:21:57.800 We're talking about massive rooms that because of the delays, the quadrupling of the time it takes to inspect each and every traveller, is overcrowded.

00:22:06.680 So could you imagine an overcrowded Toronto Convention Centre where they basically stop people from entering because things are proceeding so slowly inside?

00:22:17.820 It's hard to imagine. It is really quite remarkable that we're seeing all of this.

00:22:22.480 We'll be back with more Full Comment in just a moment.

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00:24:13.880 In your estimation, do we need these COVID rules right now?

00:24:17.520 A lot of people in the industry have said, let's pretty much just do away with all of them. Should we just do that?

00:24:21.880 Well, look, I am not a medical doctor. I happen to be a dad of two medical doctors.

00:24:27.300 But if I look at what's going on right now, there were four very well-renowned infectious disease physicians who came out about 10 days ago to say, let's just end these inspections.

00:24:44.040 Because they really add nothing to our understanding of the pandemic in Canada.

00:24:49.920 So whether or not I believe that they're useful, these infectious disease doctors have basically come out and said, no, they're no longer useful.

00:24:59.220 And as a layperson, I have questioned the usefulness of an inspection for a two-dose vaccine where the second dose is almost or over a year old.

00:25:11.840 So you have a situation where part of the delay is a customs officer in Canada being mandated by the government to verify the vaccination status of a traveler where the first dose is for sure a year old and the second dose is very likely at least 10 or 11 months old or even over a year old.

00:25:32.980 And we all know about the diminishing effects and usefulness of vaccines after a certain period of time.

00:25:43.100 And yet the government still wants to know whether somebody got their second dose sometime in May or June 2021.

00:25:50.280 And so whether that's useful or not from a scientific perspective, I'll let the scientists opine on that.

00:25:57.180 But it's certainly not useful in terms of travel restrictions when it's causing a fourfold increase in the amount of time to inspect each and every traveler.

00:26:07.100 And listeners might not appreciate why it's taking that long.

00:26:10.440 But when you ask a traveler to provide their vaccine certificate, Canada took several months to come up with its own plan for what a vaccine certificate should look like so that they would look the same in New Brunswick as they do in British Columbia and in Ontario.

00:26:26.420 And in Quebec.

00:26:28.080 Well, the world has a cacophony of these certificates and multiple languages.

00:26:34.200 They also use vaccines that are completely different than what we've got here.

00:26:39.000 There are vaccines from China, vaccines manufactured in Cuba or in Russia.

00:26:44.340 And so when an officer has to scrutinize a document that is not standardized in any way, shape or form with vaccines that are not well known in Canada, you can quite easily see why it's taking them four times longer for every traveler to be processed.

00:27:01.360 Now, Duncan, I had to chuckle when the government made great fanfare saying we have a big announcement.

00:27:07.280 We're going to solve all of this.

00:27:08.380 How are we going to do it?

00:27:09.500 We're putting together a committee.

00:27:12.020 Ten cabinet ministers are all going to come together.

00:27:14.520 It made me think, well, how many liberal ministers does it take to change a light bulb kind of question here?

00:27:19.660 I thought, wow, is this really the thing that's going to solve the problem?

00:27:23.060 Bringing in people to have meetings and invariably write different briefing notes and a report and then have a meeting to discuss the report.

00:27:28.940 I mean, what are the productive pathways forward here?

00:27:31.740 I feel like committees really are a slowdown, not a speed up.

00:27:36.100 Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head.

00:27:39.360 Only Ottawa thinks yet another committee is the way to solve a problem.

00:27:44.580 And to reinforce the point you've just made, one of the things that the committee has come up with as part of their mandate to shorten the lines at the passport office is to issue a request for proposals urgently

00:27:57.780 because they need more chairs at the passport office.

00:28:01.460 So, you know, they're not talking about increasing the number of staff at the passport office, increasing the number of counters that are servicing Canadians at the passport office.

00:28:10.760 They need more chairs at the passport office.

00:28:12.980 So go to the chair store.

00:28:14.240 90 minutes.

00:28:15.280 I'll get reimbursed by petty cash.

00:28:17.160 Exactly.

00:28:18.320 And so if you can just think about what's happening at the airport, the initial response that the airline and airports used to try to cope with three and four hour lines at security is to ask travelers to show up three or four hours earlier for their flights.

00:28:39.460 So that's a great solution in the short term to eliminate these three and four hour lines up at security, but they create a whole host of other problems at the other end.

00:28:50.900 And so, you know, these task forces and these committees that Ottawa loves creating, you know, first of all, they create these task forces after the public finds out about the problem, not when the problem is first identified.

00:29:06.040 And they point to the task force as their action plan for getting things resolved.

00:29:12.260 But, you know, they've done nothing for five months.

00:29:15.300 So what is a task force going to do at the passport office?

00:29:19.440 They haven't done anything for three months at the airport.

00:29:21.900 And so a new task force is supposed to figure out what to do at the airport.

00:29:26.200 And so it's an exercise in frustration, but it would be much funnier were it not for the fact that travelers are really suffering here.

00:29:36.040 You not only have these delays and disruptions at the airport, you also have travelers who have who are completely missing their property.

00:29:43.140 You know, these are travelers who check their bags in, likely with valuables in them or at least emotionally valuable souvenirs or things that they really treasure, suddenly disappearing into thin air because of the tremendous delays and cancellations we're seeing at Canada's airports.

00:30:04.080 Now, Duncan, I know you've referred to how this has been inevitable sort of a few months back based on planning for the summer's travel season.

00:30:11.180 Also, when I look back to headlines, for instance, one from January 2021, CBC headline, ailing aviation sector pleads for aid as Ottawa considers new travel restrictions.

00:30:23.200 Industry and union representatives telling MPs about sector specific concerns.

00:30:26.920 It goes on to predict how there will be an atrophying, a yo-yoing of the workforce as people go in different directions, potential brain drain from air traffic controllers who I guess are in high demand and ours are well trained here.

00:30:39.980 So maybe they can get money, more money at a different country.

00:30:43.580 To what degree are these two-year-old, one-year-old, 18-month-old schisms at play now as well?

00:30:49.140 Well, I mean, are they directly resulting in what we're seeing today?

00:30:55.600 Yes, but not as greatly as the problems that were identified three months ago.

00:31:02.460 The difficulty with the industry in Canada in terms of the assistance received from the government was, yes, these were significant levels of assistance in terms of dollars.

00:31:15.920 But the federal government waited way too long to actually do anything about assistance in the industry, whereas the U.S. and several countries in Europe provided their industry with huge infusions of support very, very early on and continued throughout the process.

00:31:34.960 Canada waited so late that only a handful of Canadian airlines actually decided to even access that aid because it was so late in coming.

00:31:44.360 WestJet, for example, has not accepted a single cent from the federal government in terms of the aid because it just came too late.

00:31:51.940 And WestJet said, look, I mean, we can't use your money to fix anything anymore.

00:31:57.900 Air Canada took the aid and quickly repaid it after a couple of months and never even accessed the bulk of it because they decided that there was no need to do it because the aid just arrived way too late.

00:32:09.800 And as you pointed out in your question, one of the challenges faced by the industry at that point were, like in every other sector of the economy, very senior and experienced staff who were looking at the pandemic upheaval in front of them and basically deciding that, you know, do I still want to be a part of this?

00:32:32.940 Should I not just take my money and run and retire and decide that now is the time for me to go?

00:32:39.020 And that's true for pilots.

00:32:41.120 It's true for air traffic controllers.

00:32:43.460 There was a wave of retirements.

00:32:46.060 And, you know, young new workers entered the industry.

00:32:50.360 Absolutely.

00:32:51.560 But you and I both know that experienced workers are worth more than a brand new rookie who's still learning the ropes.

00:32:59.320 And so that's part of the problem that we're seeing today.

00:33:03.420 Is the airline sector less safe now because of those dynamics?

00:33:07.820 Well, I've got to say the one thing that we can count on in Canada is a very, very strong safety culture at every airline that operates in this country.

00:33:18.280 And I would also say that that's the case for the regulator.

00:33:21.340 So when you look at safety records anywhere on the planet, Canada stands head and shoulders above most countries.

00:33:30.740 And that's because of the culture of safety we've got at the airlines, at the airports, and at Transport Canada.

00:33:38.020 And that's why right now you're seeing things like maintenance delays.

00:33:42.540 You know, when maintenance delays are announced, it's because an airline has not signed off on the airworthiness of a particular aircraft.

00:33:52.480 That somehow there's something that's going on with that particular aircraft that needs to be repaired before it's allowed to operate.

00:33:59.440 And that's one thing that Canadians should be proud about.

00:34:02.960 And that's one thing that hasn't diminished, at least as far as I can tell, during the course of the pandemic.

00:34:09.380 Well, that's at least nice to have some positive notes from all of this.

00:34:13.440 Duncan, I got to ask before we go, if I can have you break down what your specific action plan would be for the resolution here, a prompt resolution.

00:34:24.040 I know you were previously appointed to the review of the Canada Transportation Act review.

00:34:29.660 So let's say you're someone who's appointed, you get the phone call.

00:34:32.720 All right, Duncan, we need you to solve this where we're creating this position or whatever, a quick resolution team here.

00:34:38.900 We're going to give you as much authority as you conceivably can have over the different elements at play.

00:34:43.740 What do we do?

00:34:44.620 How do we expedite this?

00:34:45.940 Well, Anthony, the difficulty we're facing now is that 15% of the summer peak is now behind us.

00:34:54.600 We've only got about 60 days left in the summer peak and the clock is ticking.

00:35:00.100 So any solution that is put forward now has to be activated with a push of a button.

00:35:06.960 So I would focus on the things that can have an overnight impact on the lines, the cancellations, the disruptions that we're seeing.

00:35:17.120 In terms of inbound arriving international travelers, the quickest and most effective thing the government could do if they're not willing to cancel these pandemic checks altogether is just to suspend them for the rest of the summer.

00:35:32.140 Stop doing the arrive can app, stop doing the return of random testing on the 14th of July, stop verifying vaccination status.

00:35:44.120 We wouldn't be alone in stopping that.

00:35:46.860 Most of Europe and the United States have either done that or they've outsourced the verification of that to airlines, which have used electronic ways of verification.

00:35:56.980 You can't get a boarding pass for a flight to the United States unless you've uploaded or verified your vaccination status online with the airline.

00:36:09.440 But once you get to the customs officer that's admitting you to the United States, they don't bother with a secondary vaccination check the way Canada does.

00:36:19.500 So let's stop that now and you will see an immediate improvement in the lines at International Customs for arriving travelers.

00:36:30.660 In terms of the security lines, the immediate thing that can be done is listeners may not know that pilots and flight attendants are screened just like average travelers.

00:36:44.000 So the people that operate your aircraft are the ones that you can trust your lives with when you take a flight.

00:36:53.180 They are screened just like you and me.

00:36:56.440 Their liquids are measured.

00:36:58.720 Their shoes are taken off.

00:37:01.500 And so those things require resources at both Toronto and Montreal airports.

00:37:07.240 There are special rooms dedicated just for the screening of crews.

00:37:12.260 If we cancel that and join the rest of the world, there are many countries in the world in canceling that, you free up resources to send to regular screening.

00:37:21.980 You mean the rest of the world doesn't actually screen the pilots?

00:37:24.800 In many, not all countries, but for example, in the United States, pilots and flight attendants are treated as part of the air security system.

00:37:36.060 So they're known as known crew members because their backgrounds have been checked before they're even provided with their badges to operate the aircraft.

00:37:44.940 You know, there's an absurd little thing, Anthony, that listeners may not know, that the one thing that sits behind a pilot in the flight deck is a fire axe.

00:37:57.960 So a pilot getting to the airport, going to a security screener is checked for the length of their Swiss Army knife blade and how much mouthwash they've got in their mouthwash container.

00:38:16.660 They get through that screening and they pass it with flying colors, they get to the flight deck of an aircraft and sitting right behind them is a fire axe.

00:38:27.580 Here's your weapon, sir, should you choose to use it.

00:38:30.080 Exactly. And so this is theatrics.

00:38:33.400 We are not making the air system safer by spending very scarce resources on screening people who, if they wanted to do something nefarious, don't need the permission of a screener at the airport to do so.

00:38:48.960 And the great thing about the system in Canada is we've done a very, very good job of screening these pilots, both at Transport Canada and at the airlines, to make sure that they are people we can count on with our lives when they're operating the planes.

00:39:08.560 Duncan D., this has been such a fascinating conversation, so many details that we really couldn't get from hardly anybody else.

00:39:14.820 So I thank you so much for joining us today, and I know you've been an advocate for getting these messes cleaned up promptly, so I know Canadian travellers, thank you as well.

00:39:24.920 Thank you so much for having me.

00:39:26.820 All the best. Have a great day.

00:39:28.500 Thank you.

00:39:28.940 Full Comment is a post-media podcast. I'm Anthony Fury. This episode was produced by Andre Proulx, with theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:39:39.220 You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

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00:39:50.860 Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - July 11, 2022

Airport hell is not going away

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