Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Air Canada went through the holidays very well prepared. We were fully staffed, our people were trained and our schedule was prudent. We also had a great deal of resiliency built in. As an example, we set aside 15 aircraft—including wide-body aircraft—that were not scheduled to fly, but could be used for recovery or redundancy.
As a result, we operated nearly 1,000 daily flights on average. An Air Canada plane took off almost every 90 seconds of every day of the holidays, and we did this despite the extreme weather.
How extreme was it? In Vancouver, four-foot icicles formed on aircraft and bridges, making it almost impossible to move customers. In Calgary, at one point, it got so cold that de-icing fluid was not able to be used to remove contamination. In Toronto, certain airport baggage systems started to freeze.
Across the continent, we faced the types of delays and slowdowns familiar to anyone who travels in harsh winter weather. Because we are a network carrier that operates interconnected flights, severe weather can drastically impact our schedule and our movement of people and their baggage.
A delay in one part of the country has a knock-on effect across our network. For example, aircraft can be scheduled to fly from Toronto to Calgary in the morning, then on to Vancouver, and then to a southern destination later that day. However, if it is held up by weather in one place, it is late for its next flight, or its final flights may be cancelled if the crews go over their legislated duty day.
In such situations, we prioritize international flights, which are more difficult to recover because of the long flight times. Overall, we operated 98% of our international flights during the holiday period. Our ground operations can also be affected, because the employees' work schedules are tied to the planned operating schedule. This in part accounts for misconnected and delayed baggage.
We move bags parallel with our customers, but if a flight is delayed, bags can misconnect. They also accumulate in airports, because our ability to move them on the next flight is limited on those later flights, given that they're full during the holiday period.
Finally, I'll say a word on customer communications. During a storm, with its unknown duration and impact, it's not always possible to immediately re-book customers. We must wait until the weather improves enough that we can assign aircraft and crew. Still, even at the peak of our bad weather—December 23 to December 27—Air Canada re-booked more than 107,000 customers who were affected by flights.
We also implemented a very flexible re-booking policy. We gave refunds and waived fees for our customers who chose not to travel. It's noteworthy, though, that the vast majority of customers chose to not re-book and travelled as planned, even when they understood their travel might be slower than normal.
I'll pass it to you, David.