Flights moved and canceled | Travelers have not finished bailing out at Montréal-Trudeau

The summer season is synonymous with anxiety and discouragement for many travelers due to the chaos at airports. They are not at the end of their sentences, since they risk learning that their flight to Montreal-Trudeau has been moved and perhaps even canceled.

Julien Arsenault
The Press

Queues that seem endless, missed connecting flights, poor baggage management… for several weeks now, the increasing number of unforeseen events has been putting the patience of holidaymakers to the test.

Coming from Germany with his family to Montreal for a three-week vacation, Andreas Sopper returns daily to Montreal-Trudeau in the hope of finding the three suitcases that are still missing.

“Let’s say that’s not what you want to do on your vacation,” he says to The Press, Wednesday, after another unsuccessful check. I spend a lot of time here and on the phone, but we can’t find anything. »

This kind of misadventure is not unique to Montréal-Trudeau. The lack of personnel, both at airports and within airlines, is greatly disrupting the recovery after two years of the pandemic. In Canada, certain measures, such as the obligation to use the ArriveCan application, also make protocols more cumbersome. The Press reported it about a month ago.

Result: Aéroports de Montréal (ADM) is following in the footsteps of other international airports. To get some respite during the morning and evening peaks – when the volume would exceed that before the pandemic – the non-profit organization opts for load shedding. Travelers will pay.

“We are going to temporarily abandon certain destinations,” said ADM President and CEO Philippe Rainville in an interview. We are working with the airlines. We should be able to make announcements over the next few days, if not over the next few weeks. »

Towards the end of July, the situation should improve, he believes.

more questions

Mr. Rainville did not want to advance on the destinations at risk or the extent of the cancellations. The main carriers at Montréal-Trudeau International Airport are Air Canada, Air Transat and Air France. The decisions will come from the companies, says the leader of ADM.

In an email, however, Transat AT claims not to have “been subject to flight reduction requests at this stage”. At Air Canada, adjustments have already taken place at Montreal-Trudeau. The country’s largest airline says this is happening even though it has 32,000 employees nationwide, a level similar to 2019 – before the pandemic.

Robert Kokonis, president of the consulting company Air Trav, is not surprised by Mr. Rainville’s exit.

“We are talking about a cascade of events, says the expert. Companies and airports cannot absorb 90 consecutive days of delays. Carriers have no choice but to cut flights. »

In the airport on Wednesday, travelers met by The Press wondered if the situation would return to normal. Resident of the North Shore, Mohamed Hasnaoui, who was waiting to fly to Tunisia, did not sleep a wink all night after learning the day before that his flight which was to bring him to Montreal had been canceled.

“The flight was scheduled for 5:30 a.m. this morning,” he says. I took the road around midnight from Sept-Îles to be here in time. With Air Canada, it’s not easy. We’re going to cross our fingers to make it work. »

Luggage stacked on trolleys, Olivier Turgeon and Catherine Vaillancourt leave for South Africa for six weeks with their son Octave. The family is crossing their fingers that half of the material will arrive, but their expectations are low.

“Half would not be bad,” says M^me Vaillancourt. We leave with a little concern. We didn’t know if we’d get here in time [trois heures avant notre vol]. We wondered if that was enough. »

Many recruits

Almost everyone in the industry has been singled out over the past few weeks. But hiring doesn’t solve everything. For example, it takes four weeks to train a Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) officer, who checks travelers before they depart.

The number of recruits is a challenge for service providers for airlines – ground handling and maintenance – such as Swissport, one of the main players in this niche.

“The problem is that we have a lot of employees who are new,” says Charles Roberge, CEO of Swissport Canada. Recruitment is going well, but training time is an issue. We have about 40% new, that’s significant. Know-how is a problem. »

After the training, it can take several weeks for a new employee to be “autonomous and effective,” points out Mr. Roberge. It is difficult to achieve an optimal cadence, he adds.