Ongoing Crisis in Canadian air travel

[rubecube]

Yeah this seems like a massive problem all over North America. I know the airline industry has been warning years about a looming staffing crisis and a pilot crisis, and it looks like the chickens are finally coming home to roost.

Not sure there's a really quick and easy fix for this either.

[Harry Lime]

Also occurring in the UK. A lot of people blaming it on Brexit.

Seems like a combination of an unsustainable business model that makes hiring noncompetitive, and never recovering from the shock of firing all of the unvaccinated people.

[IGGYRULES]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Also occurring in the UK. A lot of people blaming it on Brexit.

Seems like a combination of an unsustainable business model that makes hiring noncompetitive, and never recovering from the shock of firing all of the unvaccinated people.

It's certainly not from firing the very small percentage of unvaccinated people...

Still banging the "we were treated unfairly" drum I see.

Sent from my SM-S908W using Tapatalk

[Johnny Makarov]

A bit of an easy fix. Put back the vaccine mandate to fly and with a booster to boot.

Win-win for everyone!...

[calgaryred]

That's insane we cancelled our Hawaii trip and decided to stay in Canada for vacations this year, cause at the time we had to take covid tests to fly in the USA and didnt want the hassle. Went in mid May to Toronto and the Martimes, will say that it was a fun trip well worth it, and lucky I had great weather. Lines for security were crazy long, I had to plan to be in line alot earlier and treat it like I was flying internationally. The worst airport was Pearson, only had one hick up had to wait for our luggage for over an hour once we landed. Other than that it was a smooth trip reading all these nightmares are just crazy, but this stuff happening all over the world not just Canada, hoping next year won't be as bad.

[speede5]

I feel like there's a little more at play. My cousin just went to scotland and back and security and customs went through everything with a fine tooth comb. Every small bottle in his clear bag got opened and checked which took a lot of time. Customs was opening every duty free bag including opening a brand new sealed bottle of scotch to check the contents.

It sounded like a work to rule action in security and customs. I travelled a ton during covid and security and customs was not at all difficult. What's changed?

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by IGGYRULES

It's certainly not from firing the very small percentage of unvaccinated people...

Still banging the "we were treated unfairly" drum I see.

Sent from my SM-S908W using Tapatalk

If you fire 10% of a skilled workforce, and then don't replace them, you are going to have problems. I understand why companies did what they did, when they did it, but putting your head in the sand concerning consequences for those actions is pretty stupid. The airlines enjoyed the drop in payroll, but a lot of the people that were sent home were the people that were employed in jobs that are not very sought after, like baggage handlers. So, a percentage of this problem is poor administration of staff, and there's no reason to turn a blind eye to that for the sake of posturing.

[cmyden]

Things I've found to be true...

1. Lack of staffing has been the real issue. Not the other factors that many like to blame it on.

Sure, travel restrictions made a few things more inefficient at airports, but now that they are virtually all but gone, I think anyone can clearly see this was never a significant factor. And no, ArriveCAN is not hindering anything.

Hey man, it's the airlines fault for laying everyone off during covid?!

Imagine you're running a business, airline or otherwise. And here's what the demand for your service looks like, relative to a normal month (100%), once the pandemic hits...

2020:
March 2020 - 45% of a normal March
April - 2% !!!! May - 2% June - 5% July - 10% August - 13% September -14% October - 14% November - 13% December - 13%

2021: January 2021 - 13% February - 7% March - 8% April - 8% May - 8% June - 13%
July - 28% August - 42% September - 43% October - 48% November - 51% December - 47%

2022: January 2022 - 32% February - 41% March - 57% -- is it finally over?
April - 65% May - 76% June - 80%

Now imagine it's January 2022 (6 months before today's date). We're still in the midst of Omicron. You have no way of truly knowing when this will finally be over. Demand for your service is 32% of 'normal' and has been hovering somewhere between 13% and 47% of normal for the past 18 months.

All of a sudden in March it appears all this might *finally* be ending. Global travel restrictions are finally being removed. Demand suddenly spikes back up to somewhere between 80% and 100% of normal in a very short period of time.

You *wish* you would have had a crystal ball in January 2022 to give you at least 6 months to prepare for this. And even that's a stretch for one of the most complicated supply chains in the world.

Realistically, you would have needed that crystal ball in June 2021, a year ago, when demand for your service was 13% of normal, to be prepared to operate at 100% of normal in June 2022.

That would be a pretty bold gamble for any business to take in June 2021.


2. As much as many would like to make this a 'Canada' issue (using it as an excuse to make it political or bash their own country), this is a global issue.

Here's what the Lufthansa executive group (Germany) sent out to customers the other day, similar to Air Canada's recent e-mail:



If *Germany* can't keep things running efficiently right now, you know every country is struggling with this.

-

[iggy_oi]

cmyden’s post is bang on.

This isn’t just about the unvaccinated employees who were let go, if it were you’d likely only be seeing similar delays at airports to what people typically experienced at peak times such as around Christmas.

When you lay off huge portions of your frontline staff(vaccinated and unvaccinated) due to the industry essentially being put on hold, those workers aren’t going to just sit around waiting to get called back to work when they can go out and get a job that pays the same elsewhere because they have bills to pay. They get comfortable at their new jobs and then decide not to go back to an industry still shrouded in uncertainty.

What you’re left with is a massive shortage of workers in an industry where even at the best of times hiring a single employee isn’t as simple as doing an interview and telling them they can start tomorrow, it can take weeks or months at minimum for security reasons. I don’t work in the industry but have close ties with some people who do and they all say the same thing.

[ah123]

We are travelling to England next weekend, and we are getting ready for this trip and trying to plan a quick pivot to local driving trip. As if international travel isn’t enough work

[Locke]

I should have learned on my trip to Cuba but I didnt and I paid for that on my trip to Paris.

I am abstaining from air travel until the industry gets its crap together.

[cmyden]

List of routes impacted by Air Canada's frequency cuts: https://www.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/...justments.html

[FurnaceFace]

Anecdotal, but my wife’s friend flew from Europe to Pearson a couple days ago. She said to her Pearson seemed like a regular busy day. She didn’t notice any extreme long lines. She did have to recheck bags and go through security again like a regular.

[chemgear]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1542679081661173761

[cmyden]

Originally Posted by FurnaceFace

Anecdotal, but my wife’s friend flew from Europe to Pearson a couple days ago. She said to her Pearson seemed like a regular busy day. She didn’t notice any extreme long lines. She did have to recheck bags and go through security again like a regular.

The third thing I've learned to be true...

3. Looking at Mainstream Media / YouTube / TikTok / Facebook / Twitter headlines can make a person think they are 100% guaranteed to be involved in airport 'chaos' or 'crisis' (their 2 favorite descriptors).

The headlines about Toronto Pearson can make Canadians think *every* Canadian airport will be a similar nightmare which is certainly not the case.

Even at Toronto Pearson, which seemingly has an 80-85% market share of Canada's airport issues, it's pretty random and to a degree, luck of the draw.

Here's the most recent comments from travellers passing through or departing YYZ this week...

"Flight attendant here.. T3 is a gong show most of the time specially on arrival, worse than T1"

"I flew out last week Tuesday morning 10am flight with Westjet. Got to the airport at 7:30am. Got through customs within minutes. Came back a week later and same smooth process."

"Since Wednesday, some of the T3 flights are now departing and arriving from the infield terminal, I order to help managing the overcrowding."

"I flew to the UK with west jet T3 it was brutal."

"I just got back on Thursday. Literally 30 seconds for customs and in an uber 20 minutes later."

"Never show up 3 or 4 hours early. There will be enough people who do that and then there's a log jam. I've shown up 2 or less every time (travelled 6 times so far this year) and never had an issue. Choose odd days to fly out instead of Monday mornings or Friday evenings."

"We flew out this morning also for Montego Bay! We got to the airport at 3:15 and breezed through everything……"

"it’s actually not departing that's the issue, but arriving is a continuing problem for some. My daughter however arrived a week ago today (Saturday) at 6:30 am and she was through so fast that she had to wait for me to pick her up!"

"And my mom arrived Thursday night of this week, and no problems, so perhaps things are slowly improving."

"On Thursday…. it took my colleague 12 hours to travel from Montreal to Toronto - it was insane. Super long security lines, bag check chaos, delays to weather, lack of flight crews, lack of gate crews, and no baggage service… bring patience - this was domestic. "

"I had no issues at T1 or T3, departure and arrival."

"It's getting better , Flew to LAX for a 10:30 am flight - got there at 7:30 - whole process only an hour - came home yesterday 2 hr flight delay in LA - into Pearson T3 at 8:15 am zipped through customs and had to wait maybe 20 mins for bags to be unloaded. "


The only consistent patterns I've seen are...

- Terminal 3 has been worse than Terminal 1
- Arrivals are worse than departures. Flights that arrive later on on the evening have less complaints.

Anecdotally, the number of people complaining about YYZ has dropped considerably in the last week or two. But it's possible people just gave up complaining (The first half of May felt like the peak for complaints). And it feels like there are more people posting that they were surprised they didn't go through anything too hellish.

[Northendzone]

As per the Trudeau government we are in a climate crisis and given that, we should not fly until there is electric air planes made out of bamboo

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

As per the Trudeau government we are in a climate crisis and given that, we should not fly until there is electric air planes made out of bamboo

Balsa or Bust!

#TeamBalsa

[activeStick]

Hopefully, YVR has beefed up security at domestic baggage claim because anyone off the street can access the area.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1542783952976596992

[Johnny199r]

My mom travelled from Halifax-Toronto-Winnipeg this week on Air Canada on June 30th.

Her early morning flight from Halifax to Toronto was delayed several times before leaving about 3-4 hours late. The reasons for the delays kept changing. Passengers were assured "they would be rebooked on new connecting flights in the air" lol @ that!

When she arrived in Toronto, flight attendants told everyone there would be a group of Air Canada employees waiting to assist them with rebooking missed connections just off the deplaning area. When the passengers got to those employees they were told "not our job, we cant help you".

Everyone then got herded to an Air Canada customer service line that was over 200 people deep. This was at about noon. She estimates that it probably would have taken her until the evening to get to the front of the line.

After waiting in that line for a while, my mom's friend told her about a different Air Canada customer service counter tucked away in an obscure part of the airport no one knew about.

She went to it and got lucky. it was true. It existed and there was no line. She was placed on the 8pm flight (she was originally due in Winnipeg at 11:30 am) and she was also put on standby for two earlier flights including one at 4pm.

Her friend she was with could not be placed on standby because she had checked luggage (don't check luggage because you WILL lose it, and you can't get on standby in case of cancellations!) My mom was smart enough to only bring carry on.

She shows up at the gate for the 4pm flight. On the App she is #9 on the standby list. The flight is delayed by an about 60-90 mins. She manages to get on the flight with about 15 others on standby. The gate agent told her most people on standby will get seats because so many on each flight are missing their connections.

My mom gets really lucky and makes it to Winnipeg at 8pm. If she was stuck in that other lineup, she would have been waiting until the next day, if she was lucky.

There are no hotel vacancies near the airport at all. Airline staff mostly aren't even giving out hotel vouchers, not that would help with no vacancies.

My mom said it was like hunger games in the airport. Overwhelmed families with kids having breakdowns, elderly people bewildered etc, people crying and freaking out.

She was glad she brought a wireless travel charger for her cell phone with her so she didnt run out of battery.

Calling Air Canada or Westjet won't help as it's usually impossible to reach an agent, and if you do, it's probably a minimum of 5 hours on hold now at least.

Do not count on reaching your destination this summer without big delays. Do not check luggage. If it's a short weekend getaway, don't bother.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

As per the Trudeau government we are in a climate crisis and given that, we should not fly until there is electric air planes made out of bamboo

****ing groan.