Transport Committee on Jan. 12th, 2023

[Philippe Rainville]

No.

[Deborah Flint]

No.

[Tamara Vrooman]

No.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Rainville, at the outset you surprised me somewhat, because you were quite harsh on the airlines in talking about the lack of communication between them and the passengers. The airports have paid the price and Montréal-Trudeau International Airport has been called a third world airport.

What do you think is the solution? Can you answer in 30 seconds?

[Philippe Rainville]

I would say it's better communication between the airlines and the passengers. We've said it, and we've also said it in our committees internally: we need to improve communications by providing more detail.

Technology is helpful. Some airlines produce reports and will communicate flight delays by text message and so on, which works very well. We need to continue with that.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

As the head of an airport, Mr. Rainville, who are the worst students currently when it comes to communicating with passengers?

This lack of communication means that we end up with far too many passengers staying in airports for far too long, as we saw during the crisis at Christmas.

[Philippe Rainville]

We have said it before: we were disappointed with the services of one of our carriers who, unfortunately, did not communicate with the passengers and, more importantly, took a long time to recover.

We are used to snowstorms in Montreal. We also understand how the networks work. Even if we can't intervene, we generally understand how the networks work. It takes about 48 hours for the system to recover.

Now, when a carrier takes longer than expected to land a plane, and no aircraft is sent to take over, either in Montreal or at the passenger's destination, it creates a lot of unhappiness in our airports. Why is that? I explained it: many people are stuck in the terminal. We are trying as best we can to give them good service. It is a situation that is difficult for the airline employees and for my employees, and above all, very difficult for the passengers.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Another situation we saw was that on the spot at airports, people seem to have a lot of trouble getting answers from someone. People want to talk to someone. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a lot of staff available at the airports.

Does that not seem like a shortcoming, both on the airline side and the airport side?

[Philippe Rainville]

For our part, in Montreal, we have people on the spot, people wearing red jackets who are called ambassadors. These people are omnipresent in the airport.

However, it's nice to have people on site, but passengers still need to get answers. You have to be able to inform people. That is what I explained in my statement. I want us to improve communications so that we have more information and data to pass on to our passengers, particularly by giving them more precise times.

Ideally, we could tell people not to show up at the airport when there is a three-hour delay, for example. But if we have a six-hour delay, let's tell people so they can stay at home. This situation must be improved.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

That's a clear message you're sending to the airlines, Mr. Rainville.

I have another question about time spent waiting in airports, because we know that more snowstorms are coming. Do you think it would be appropriate to set up a team to deal with such situations?

Such a group could include you, politicians, civil servants, airport and government officials; you could get together to try to find solutions more quickly to avoid a situation like the one that occurred in the last few weeks.

[Philippe Rainville]

I'm going to talk about Montreal where, as I said, we are used to snowstorms. We have hardly ever lost access to the runways. In my 15 years of experience at Aéroports de Montréal, we have only lost the runways twice. From an airport perspective, when the snow falls at more than five centimetres per hour, it is technically impossible to do better.

The system's recovery time is something that has been proven. I'm still talking about Montreal. The time it takes us to get the system back—

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

If there are problems at other airports, it affects the Montreal airport, doesn't it?

[Philippe Rainville]

Yes, absolutely. We have internal committees at each of the airports. The mechanisms are already in place. I think everyone will learn from the situation that occurred over the holiday season.

In Montreal, apart from the exceptional cases I mentioned, we have everything we need to be able to deal with this kind of situation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rainville and Mr. Berthold.

Ms. Koutrakis, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to all the witnesses who are with us, this morning and this afternoon.

Gentlemen who represent Aéroports de Montréal, can you comment on the performance of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority and the Canada Border Services Agency over the holiday season? Did you see any differences compared to the summer period?

[Philippe Rainville]

I give them 10 out of 10. The staff of both agencies were on site and the new technologies were operational. I'll be factual: it was perfect. Everything worked superlatively. The customs officers were there. It worked.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

What effect does freezing rain or snow have on passenger schedules? How many aircraft can take off and land safely in one hour in normal conditions on the one hand, and in icy or snowy conditions on the other?

[Philippe Rainville]

Let's start with the state of the runway. It is not the airline's prerogative to decide whether the plane takes off or not, but the pilot's. Since he has control over his aircraft, it is up to him to make the decision. As for what influence this will have on our activities, that is generally up to the individual pilots. It's up to them to make the decision.

Then there is de-icing. This takes as long as it takes and depends on the thickness of the ice cover on the wings. I believe other airports have experienced the same situation. Often, when the aircraft returns to the runway and is about to take off, the ice has continued accruing and the operation has to be repeated. You end up going in circles and it is then better to stop operations than to de-ice for the sake of de-icing.

I can't give you precise figures, but it is clear that these conditions slow down operations significantly.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I'm wondering if the GTAA and Vancouver would chime in on the same two questions.

Did you see a difference in the performance of CATSA and CBSA during the holidays, and how did they compare to that in the summer period?

[Tamara Vrooman]

Maybe I'll take that first.

We did see an improvement in both CATSA and CBSA. We didn't have the CBSA issues in the summer that other airports in Canada had, so they saw consistent staffing levels and service, and CATSA improved significantly from the labour issues that we saw in the summer.

I also would like to take this opportunity to answer MP Doherty's question.

There are 24 Aéro Mag trucks, MP Doherty.

Thank you.

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

Thank you.

[Deborah Flint]

If you're asking for Pearson, the government agency staffing was sufficient and performed very well.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

What would you say is the effect on the passenger air schedule if there is freezing rain or snow? In other words, how many aircraft can safely take off and land in one hour at your airport in normal conditions versus in freezing rain or snow? That's for Ms. Flint or—

[Tamara Vrooman]

Again, for us at YVR, as my colleague Philippe said, it depends on the conditions, but certainly the conditions that we saw, with the accumulation of snow in such a short period of time and the density of it, meant that the time out period maximums were exceeded, so by the time you've de-iced the aircraft efficiently, got it to the airfield, it has exceeded the maximum time that regulations allow for the aircraft to safely depart and it has to go back to de-icing and start that process all over again, so it depends on the weather conditions and the maximum time out thresholds.

[Deborah Flint]

It's a similar answer for Pearson. A decision is made with Nav Canada and others on a real-weather condition basis.