Who ever is to blame, it's a mess of an airport. Where are all the Pearson airport cheerleaders now??? I said over a month ago this airport is nothing but a train wreck.
Unfortunately the travelers will and are taking the blame out on the poor workers. The workers are just trying to get by like a lot of us. Blame politicians and management for this mess.
Deborah Flint took charge of Canada’s busiest airport just before COVID-19 hit. Now she finds herself leading Toronto’s Pearson airport through a new crisis
www.theglobeandmail.com
It is not a question of being a cheerleader but it is not a train wreck for the reasons I mentioned before. Quite honestly, Whitney sounds like a snowflake. Six years ago, I was coming back from Manila with my wife after burying her father. We left MNL at 03:30 for Busan Korea and made into into Busan around 06:00 I think. The fog rolled in and we had the creeping delay. Finally left Busan in the late afternoon bound for Beijing where we were to connect with Air Canada to Toronto. I knew it would be tight making the AC flight but I didn't count on AC giving our seats away since there is a longer cut-off time in Beijing than other places. We were stuck until the next day since the Vancouver flight had already left. OK, rather than whine about being stuck I chatted up a baggage agent and asked to use her computer so I could book a hotel in central Beijing. I'd been to Beijing twice before but my wife had never been so I decided to make lemonade out of lemons and at least show her some of the highlights of Beijing since we had just under 24hrs to kill. I could have just stayed in the airport like Whitney and whined but instead I had a great night in Beijing, slept in a relatively comfortable bed, showered and showed my wife Tiananmen Square and a couple of other places before heading back to the airport.
The point is that stuff is going to happen. You can whine about it like Whitney or do something of your own accord. I guess all those charters and executive terminals spoiled him compared to the rest of us
Hoi Polloi.
By the way, have you seen what has happened in AMS of late? KLM actually flew airplanes empty back to AMS on their European sectors this weekend (I think Saturday) since they couldn't handle any additional passengers. I know you referenced ATL earlier but did you know that Delta had to scrub more flights on Memorial day weekend than they had to the entire summer of 2019? Have you checked out the lines at Manchester? We are still in a pandemic and where staff with a minor cold would report for duty in the past they cannot do that in the time of Covid-19. Last time I checked neither Westjet nor Air Canada or other large carriers were ferrying empty jets because Pearson couldn't handle it.
Irrops, or irregular operations suck and i have been their both operationally as staff and Manager and as a passenger. If you're passive then you are going to get screwed. Have a plan and work the tools at your disposal. A general tip that I try to follow when possible is to book kick-off flights also known as the first flight of the day. The airplane is likely going to be in your departure city from the night before and even if it goes to crap at least you have options throughout the day to get to where you are going.
Case in point: I remember the summer of 93 when I was working on the ramp at T3. I had a noon to 23:30 shift on Mondays and the last flight of the night for me was an AA DC-10 that used to route PHX-ORD-YYZ. In the twelve weeks I had that Monday shift, I think I worked the flight once because of storms in Chicago or other delays. This hardly ever happened to the first Chicago inbound that arrived at 09:20.
Coincidentally, I had a brother return from Tampa on AC a couple of weeks ago and he said it was literally 20 minutes between stepping off the airplane to the time he was getting into his car.
I don't know why people think that weather won't slow things down in the air like on the ground. Just because it is a clear and sunny day in your departure city, it could be storming like hell in the city where your airplane is coming from earlier in the day. Pearson is not the horror that people make it out to be. I call snowflake here people. Stuff happens. Build a bridge and get over it.
Anyway, that's all I am going to say about it.