Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and honourable members. We're very pleased to be here today to have a chance to comment on Bill C-310.
It was my intention to allow my colleague Brigitte Hébert, director of operations of the NACC, to open with a 10-minute statement. She'll do that, but with your indulgence, I'd like to take the opportunity to add some facts to the debate that has begun here on a specific issue by the previous witness, and that would be concerning Air Canada flight 32 from Beijing to Toronto. Let me take just a few minutes to clear up what happened in that particular case. Then we'll move on to our comments and, of course, I'll be happy to take your questions.
Air Canada flight 32 was inbound to Toronto to land. Nav Canada, because of inclement weather conditions, shut down a runway on which it was supposed to land. It could not land on the other existing runways at Pearson, and as such circled in an attempt to at least wait for conditions to improve. They did not.
The captain therefore made the decision, in consideration of the safety of all aboard, of course, to head to his alternate, which was Ottawa, and to land. Ottawa of course accepted the flight.
The problem with Ottawa is that Air Canada doesn't operate 777s, the largest aircraft in their fleet, into and out of Ottawa. As such, they did not have on that night the ground equipment necessary to tow the aircraft in and out of the gate. So the aircraft had to make some special manoeuvres to sidle up to the gate, if you will. That took a little bit of time. They were able to get some air stairs and get the passengers out.
The passengers had to clear customs, as per Canadian law. Customs officials were not expecting that flight at that time of day. They don't usually handle flights that big with that number of people coming off at the same time. They had to scramble to get people to get those people cleared. So there were additional delays as a result of customs clearance procedures.
Once cleared, those passengers were offered coupons for meals and beverages. Air Canada was able to rebook at least 100 of those passengers onto earlier flights departing from Ottawa, on regularly scheduled flights from Ottawa to Toronto, including a group of 40 who were connecting on a flight to Buenos Aires. Air Canada held the flight leaving from Toronto to Buenos Aires in order to ensure that these passengers made their connection. The rest of the passengers were able to fly back on the 777. However, because of flight duty time restrictions, the captain and the co-pilot who brought the aircraft in from Beijing had to basically desist for the rest of the day, because they were past their duty time. In the interest of safety, they could no longer operate. Another crew was brought in. That plane eventually got back to Toronto.
Those are the facts of Air Canada flight 32. I just wanted to put them on the record.
I pass the floor now to my colleague Brigitte.