If you are Air Canada management wondering about ways to cut costs, improve efficiency or, heaven forbid, increase customer service, I have good news for you: I know what the problem is. The problem is with your operations. Airport operations are currently being run by either the willfully ignorant or completely incompetent. One of the two. With my new job I was sent to Winnipeg for two one week excursions, and both times I flew from Victoria to Calgary, Calgary to Winnipeg, and back Winnipeg to Vancouver, Vancouver to Victoria. The first time there was smooth...no complications, weather was good, etc. On the way back the airplane was late arriving to Winnipeg due to "unforeseen delays" by an hour, which didn't affect my schedule since I had to wait a few hours for my connecting flight in Victoria anyway. My second trip, however, was a different story.
Victoria to Calgary, again, was smooth. Victoria almost always has great weather, and it was only lightly raining when we left. When we arrived in Calgary, however, it was the middle of a snowstorm. This was mid February, mind you, not at all unexpected for a winter stricken hell hole like Alberta. Leaving the Calgary airport was delayed because we had to wait to get de-iced...sensible and a necessary precaution. What happened next confused the hell out of me. After de-icing and driving around the 'strip at a snails pace, we wait in line for our turn to take off....for about an hour. At the end of this hour, snow falling just as hard as when we arrived, the captain makes an announcement - we will need to de-ice the plane again, but because we have been idling so long, we also needed to refuel. With groans and contemptuous remarks, the passengers resign themselves to their fate of being trapped in Calgary on a hallway with wings and chairs with nothing they can do but groan. Another hour later, we are finally airborne - effectively doubling our 2.5 hour flight. One thing lead to another and it was midnight by the time I got to my hotel, starved from not being able to access real food all day because I have been at airports, yet being trapped in a city where restaurants don't stay open past 12.
Looking back at the situation, it makes no sense to me. The ground crew at the Calgary airport were supposedly caught "off guard" by snow...falling in February...in Alberta. Really? Air Canada, in business since 1936, has never implemented any preparedness protocols for snowstorms in one of the snowiest populated places on Earth? On top of that, they decide to de-ice the plane, then leave it in the queue while crossing their fingers that, despite seeing how many planes are in line to take off, and how long each take off is taking, hopefully maybe they will perhaps get the chance to lift off before snow builds up on the plane again. Can't this be easily solved by creating a system where planes are de-iced just before they take off. Sure it may slow things down a tiny bit, but it would easily prevent these rediculous delays. I also find it strange that one hour of idling burns enough gas that a plane is no longer safe to make a 2.5 hour flight. I always was under the impression that planes had massive amounts of extra fuel to ensure they could stay in the air much longer than they needed to in case of emergencies, even enough to fly all the way back to their point of origin.
Now I'm going to put passenger convenience aside in my argument. Sure, people were pissed, but considering Air Canada has a near monopoly on flights in Canada, it's not like people can show their contempt by using someone else's services. What boggles my mind is, with all the complaints from Air Canada about how flying isn't profitable with rising fuel costs, and threatening unions because they want decent wages, they are still not able to cut costs that are easily avoidable. Hey, here's an idea guys - instead of demonizing unions and trying to pay your workers sweatshop wages, why not try and eliminate easily avoidable massive costs by actually running things smoothly? When our flight was delayed, fuel was burned, the plane was de iced one extra time, and you had to pay all of your staff involved overtime for all the extra time involved. Not to mention the effort rerouting the plane and trying to fit it in at new departure and arrival times, no doubt interfering with other flights to some extent. To an outside observer like myself, it looks like no one is overseeing the smoothness of overall flow from departure to arrival, as well as planes getting to where they need to be in a timely manner. It looks like pure, unbridled incompetence, and it is costing everyone a lot of money.
That was the worst of it. But then guess what, on the way back, the airplane was delayed AGAIN arriving in Winnipeg due once again, on the very same day of the week, just two weeks layer, to "unforeseen delays". Hey guess what, by the time this happened, even I had foreseen it was going to be delayed. The entire experience just left me feeling that pretty much no one at Air Canada with authority cared whether or not massive amount of resources were wasted with bumbling, or that people would be inconvenienced by flight delays. People arriving in Vancouver missed their flights, and Air Canada happily paid for their hotel rooms and taxis to wait for the next flight in the morning. Hopefully their were enough extra seats on their flights the next day, or else what would they do, send a whole extra flight to make sure people were able to complete their trip?
