Transport Committee on March 12th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

That will exhaust this session between 3:30 and 4:30 with Minister Garneau, the Minister of Transport.

We'll now be getting into our second session, with Air Canada, Sunwing Airlines and WestJet Airlines.

I will suspend for five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Perhaps I can reconvene.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

It'll be me and Mr. Davidson.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Okay. We'll start the second part of today's meeting.

We'd like to welcome Mr. Murray Strom from Air Canada, vice-president, flight operations; from Sunwing Airline, Captain John Hudson, acting director for flight operations; and from WestJet Airlines, Mr. Scott Wilson, vice-president, once again from flight operations.

Gentlemen, welcome. I'm glad you could make the time to come out to the committee and give us your testimony. I'm not sure who's going to start, who picked the short straw.

Mr. Strom, you're up.

[Murray Strom, Vice-President, Flight Operations, Air Canada]

Good afternoon, honourable chair, members of the committee. My name is Murray Strom. I'm the vice-president of flight operations at Air Canada and the designated operations manager responsible for Air Canada's air operators certificate to Transport Canada.

I've been a pilot with Air Canada for 33 years and I'm currently a Boeing 777 captain. For most of my 33 years, I've been involved in the training certification of Air Canada pilots, and I've held various positions such as chief pilot on the Airbus A320, 787, 777. I was also responsible for the initial program to bring the Max 737 aircraft to Air Canada.

Before I begin speaking to the certification process, on behalf of Air Canada and our 36,000 employees, I'd like to express my condolences to the family and friends of the victims of these two tragic accidents that ultimately led to the grounding of the 737 Max aircraft. As someone who has spent his entire career promoting safety in aviation, I and the entire Air Canada family are reminded by events like these of the importance of my job and our motto, “Safety First, Always”.

My expertise is in training, inspection and operation of aircraft at Air Canada. It is not in the certification of the aircraft. That is a function of Transport Canada and other authorities such as the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States. I have, however, been involved and worked closely with the certification group at Transport Canada during the introduction of the A330, the 777, the 787, the 737 and finally the A220, formerly known as the Bombardier C Series.

Air Canada presently has 24 737 Max aircraft, of which 22 of these are stored presently in Arizona, and two are presently in Windsor, Ontario, undergoing routine maintenance, and where we are installing dual heads-up displays on all of our aircraft. This is a state-of-the-art safety system that enhances pilot situational awareness and is an added safety system for all of Air Canada's aircraft, which include presently the 787 and the A220.

We have another 12 737 Max aircraft at the Boeing-rented factory in Washington that are ready for delivery, and 14 aircraft that are currently on the factory floor being built. These aircraft were originally scheduled for delivery by July 1 of this year. As of July 1 of this year, we should have had 50 airplanes in our fleets.

Through the certification and introduction of the 737, I can assure you that the aircraft certification group at Transport Canada has been extremely thorough and professional. I would say the same is true for all the previous aircraft introductions that I've been involved in over the course of my career. They are experts in their field and respected throughout the world.

The worldwide grounding of the 737 Max fleet presented and continues to present an immediate operational and financial challenge. Our focus on this issue has always been the safety of our customers and our crew. Following the first accident, Canadian carriers, Transport Canada and other agencies immediately came together and co-operated to ensure the safety of the industry and the travelling public in Canada.

Transport Canada and the three operators of this aircraft have worked as a group to come up with a solution based on the information we had at the time. The sole purpose of this work was to ensure the safety of the Canadian public. This collaboration is still occurring today as we continue to work our way through the process. The 737 has been examined from wingtip to wingtip, nose to tail, by most of the regulators in the world and numerous agencies, including this committee. Once the process is complete, this aircraft will be, in my opinion, one of the safest aircraft in the world.

It is important to remember that accidents like this do not occur for one reason. There are many factors involved. The manufacturer and the regulatory bodies are in the process of doing their part. Rest assured that the airlines in Canada are also doing their part. I will ensure that our pilots are properly trained on all aspects of the 737 Max, both new and old.

I thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions related to the aspects of the certification process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Strom.

Next, Mr. Wilson, you're up.

[Captain Scott Wilson, Vice-President, Flight Operations, WestJet Airlines Ltd.]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members. Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today, proudly representing more than 14,000 WestJetters who every day commit to the safety and success of our airline in service of the travelling public.

The grounding of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft in Canada 364 days ago has raised important questions. I commend the committee for having these hearings, for seeking information to support its questions and for its support of our dynamic industry.

My name is Scott Wilson. I currently serve as WestJet's vice-president of flight operations as well as the Transport Canada operations manager. In this role our CEO and accountable executive Ed Sims and I are designates of the Minister of Transport. Together we have a shared duty of care for the safety of the travelling public and are directly responsible for the safety of our 700 daily flight departures.

I'm also a current and active Boeing 737 NG and Max pilot, with 19 years' experience on the Boeing 737 across five variants of the aircraft.

My comments today will reflect the motion passed by the committee to better understand the certification process and the various relationships between regulators. I'll speak briefly today on our observations and interactions as an air carrier through this process.

On behalf of the WestJet family, let me start by sharing once again our sympathies and condolences to the families and loved ones of Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian Airlines 302. When tragedy strikes the aviation industry, we act like a family. We become closer, we support each other and tackle the challenges together in common bond. On matters of safety for the travelling public there are no competitive considerations. Our focus is always to learn from the accident to ensure that we become an even safer industry moving forward.

This commitment has helped ensure that commercial aviation remains one of the safest forms of travel available today. To achieve this objective, we rely on and work closely with a host of regulators and officials, including highly experienced Transport Canada national operations inspectors across the nation who interact with our airline at a technical oversight level on an almost daily basis, as well as officials headquartered here in Ottawa.

Last week you heard from Nicholas Robinson. The committee should know the tremendous work that has taken place under his leadership within the national operations and national aircraft certification teams. WestJet has full confidence in Nick and his team. Their transparency and commitment over the past year has been commendable.

WestJet took delivery of the first Max in Canada on September 29, 2017. Speaking to the FAA certification and Transport Canada validation process, I can only pass on my observations, as the process is rightly independent from the operator, who can only operate the aircraft in Canada upon the successful completion of the validation process culminating in the issuance of a Canadian type certification data sheet.

It is my observation that Transport Canada took a thorough approach with their review and subsequent validation of the Max. Of note, the FAA state certification date was March 8, 2017, followed by the European/EASA validation on March 27, 2017. The Transport Canada validation process was not completed until June 23, 2017.

The Transport Canada TCDS, with the Max incorporated, tripled in size from the NG that it was based upon, highlighting the thoroughness of Transport Canada's validation work and the depth of information added. Transport Canada went outside standard conventions when it also included head injury criteria safety requirements into the Max validation in Canada.

Shortly following the tragedy of Lion Air 610, Transport Canada and the three Max operators represented here today took the unprecedented approach of transparency and commitment to safety by working together on a common, made-in-Canada solution. This approach ensured that we could align to a single standard of safety for the Max fleets across Canada and capture the common attributes the operators share, with the high level of expertise across our flight crews and the strength of our training programs. It also allowed us to work together to quickly ensure the best output to our crews, training for the newly acquired knowledge of the system and the checklist enhancements.

The unique approach across three airlines with the regulator served as a pivotal point, one that we have maintained now for close to 16 months as a strong collaborative safety model, and one that will serve us well to ensure a safe reintroduction of the Max when it is approved to return to commercial service.

If the airspace restriction grounding the Max were lifted today, our pilots would be ready and qualified to operate the aircraft, pending the completion of any final training required by our regulator.

When it comes to training and expertise, our pilots are highly qualified operators of the 737, having safely flown millions of flight hours through our operating history across five successive variants of the 737 aircraft for now 24 years.

Since the Max aircraft was grounded last year, our pilots have maintained currency on the 737 fleet, continuing to safely operate close to 400 daily 737 departures. During this time our flight crews have also been actively engaged in our recurrent training programs, which see our pilots return to the simulator no less than once every six months. Because our training evolves through continuous improvement, we have already incorporated many of the learnings of the past year's events into our recurrent simulator training.

I'd like to note that WestJet recognizes that at the heart of all safety decisions are people: our employees and our guests. For our well-trained and highly capable cabin crew and pilots, the aircraft is a place of work. We've asked the minister to ensure that labour is at the table and is considered a partner as we go forward. This effort must be collaborative and inclusive. We are committed to honouring that partnership.

I want to thank the committee again for the invitation. I'd be pleased to answer questions with my colleagues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Hudson.

[Captain John Hudson, Acting Director, Flight Operations, Sunwing Airlines]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members of this standing committee.

Firstly, I want to thank you for this invitation to seek information and to perhaps assist in answering your questions relating to aircraft certification in Canada, from one of the three airlines with the 737 Max in its fleet.

My name is John Hudson. I'm the acting director of flight operations at Sunwing. In addition to being a Transport Canada check pilot at Sunwing, I've been there in both standards and technical roles since 2012. I'm proud to be a military veteran. I have been flying Boeing aircraft for just under 30 years. I'm currently flying the 737 NG, as I said, as a Transport Canada check pilot, an instructor pilot and a captain.

My employer, Sunwing Travel Group, is the largest tour operator in North America. The airline doubles in size to 40 aircraft in the winter season to service Canadian holiday travellers and shrinks to half that size in the summer while we send pilots and aircraft to serve our European partners, keeping a smaller fleet within Canada in the summer.

Sunwing is devastated by the loss of life from the two Max accidents, Lion Air 610 on 29 October, 2018, and Ethiopian Airlines 302 on 10 March, 2019. We wish to express once again our deepest sympathies, as my colleagues have expressed here today. This is an unprecedented event in my aviation career and will never be forgotten by all of us in the Sunwing family. I want to make that point.

We took deliveries of our four Max aircraft from 25 May, 2018, to 11 March, 2019, and we had more than 7,000 hours of flight time on the Max aircraft when we stopped flying them. I conducted several of the customer demonstration flights in Seattle with Boeing pilots on the first of our Max delivery aircraft. I currently have about 80 hours flying on the Max 8 itself and have been conducting several post-grounding maintenance flights on our Max fleets. Like all of our pilots and like those at WestJet, we are dual-qualified on the Max and the 737 NG.

In addition to my role at Sunwing, I am humbled and privilege to represent the three Canadian Max-operating airlines for the IATA—the International Air Transport Association—Max task force since May 23 last year. That task force consists of international airline representatives from 11 airlines representing North America, South America, Europe, Singapore and China. It's a truly international group.

I have been asked today to bring my airline's perspective on the aircraft certification process. This perspective is strictly from an operational viewpoint and does not include the perspective from our engineering and maintenance groups. Nor will it delve into the unprecedented economic strain that has been inflicted on each of our airlines.

From the start of the entry-into-service project, Sunwing's interaction was with Boeing directly through a dedicated entry representative. The level of collaboration with Boeing directly was very high, but our initiative to liaise with the American airlines that were taking early Max deliveries and with our European partner, the TUI Group, greatly enhanced our training. Once again it was done in collaboration. Transport Canada national operations was also with us every step of the way as we worked through our entry into service.

For the entry into service pilot training, the Max was a relative easy conversion. Based on what we knew at the time and based on 12 years of operating the 737-800, the NG, there was little difference in procedures and in the pilot-level systems knowledge required. We were aware of the more complex differences confronting engineering in the systems; for instance, new engines, new digital environmental control systems and fly-by-wire spoilers. From a pilot's perspective, though, flying the Max in normal operations was truly like flying the NG.

Following the Lion Air accident and resulting airworthiness directive that Minister Garneau referred to earlier and that my colleagues referred to, we established unprecedented collaboration under the leadership of Transport Canada national operations and the three Canadian airlines operating the Max. This collaboration was a result of the AD that pointed to MCAS activation during an erroneous angle-of-attack event.

When those of us in the standards and fleet management groups looked at the AD, we saw that it revised a document called the “Aircraft Flight Manual”, which is essentially a certification manual and is not directly used by the flight crews. It did not address our own pilot manual—the “Flight Crew Operations Manual”—directly. It left the airlines open to possible different interpretations among ourselves for our respective operations.

That was the point of the collaboration. In our collaboration, we felt it was extremely important that we as a group get the runaway stabilizer procedure correct when we changed it and aligned, and that there be no difference among the three airlines in the way this non-normal event was to be conducted, if necessary. What this unprecedented Canadian collaboration demonstrated was the absolute commitment to safety that the airlines and our regulator in Canada possess.

Early on November 8, 2018, Transport Canada approved our made-in-Canada solution, and we were operating the Max that day with the new checklist. We did and still do firmly believe that these actions significantly mitigated any residual risk surrounding MCAS and runaway stabilizer events on the Max.

Since the Max airspace closure, we have continued and expanded upon this collaboration. However, there have been significant challenges in obtaining timelines and even agreeing on development of the road map for return to service. These mainly surround conflicting information occasionally between the airlines and Boeing—we deal directly with Boeing on a weekly basis—and sometimes between the airlines and Transport Canada and among the Max-operating airlines themselves. We have weekly technical calls with Boeing and periodic meetings with Transport Canada, sometimes with small conflicts in information concerning on which we have to collaborate, regroup and make sure that we're aligned. I don't have a solution to this issue, but occasionally it makes it difficult for the airlines to react.

Last fall and last week, Transport Canada's national aircraft certification, national operations, and standards and the airlines held a Webex meeting at which Transport Canada national aircraft certification explained in very appropriate detail their past and current issues, in addition to several possible Canadian-only changes to both procedures and training when the return-to-service airworthiness directive is published.

We now know approximately what to expect when return to service comes, depending upon the outcome of a couple of meetings. The joint operational evaluation board report and a couple of other events have to happen.

Those of us who operate the NG will also have to react to several changes for that fleet as well, as an outcome. This is now more than a Max issue; rather, it's a 737 issue in some respects. WestJet and Sunwing will have to overcome that to make sure we're all aligned.

In summary, while Sunwing cannot comment significantly on the initial certification process of the Max, I hope I have given you a perspective on the absolute common thrust of “safety first” that all of Transport Canada and the three Max airlines represented here share, and on the way this thrust has been demonstrated in a collaborative and coordinated manner thus far during our return-to-service effort.

I now look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Hudson.

Mr. Bachrach.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Chair, this is a point of order. We spoke briefly, and I indicated my desire to bring forward a motion related to the study currently under way. I wonder whether you will welcome it at this time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Go ahead.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I move:

That the committee formally request that representatives from The Boeing Company appear before the committee with regard to the on-going study concerning the aircraft certification process.

I bring this motion forward because of the scathing report by the congressional committee on transport to which I referred in my previous questioning and because I believe that Boeing is a central party in the issues we are studying and that the families and all Canadians deserve to hear directly from the Boeing company.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Do you have a date by or on which you would like to see them?

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

It would be at the soonest possible opportunity. I'd look to the clerk to suggest a possible date.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Caroline Bosc]

In these cases, it's typically good to have a date, a deadline, if you want them them here by a certain date.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

We're living in some pretty unusual circumstances right now, so putting a precise date on it, I believe, may be challenging. Let's say within two months.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have some comments as well, I believe.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

If Mr. Bachrach had not moved this motion, I would have tabled a rather similar one. I therefore fully support his motion.

I very much hope that the people at Boeing will understand that people from all over the world travel on these planes and that the consequences are not just in the United States, but all over the world. It is simply a matter of respect to come and answer the questions of the members of the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Mr. Doherty.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Chair, I think perhaps, if we can go to a vote on this and then let me move the motion that I have, it might help.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

What did you want to look at? Did you want to look at the possibility of amending the motion?

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

You know what my motion is.

With all due respect, I agree with Mr. Bachrach that it is germane to this conversation and to the study that we attempt to get Boeing to appear before....

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

You're saying, then, that you don't want to amend it but want to have a separate motion.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I'll have a separate motion.