Ghada Alsharif

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Canada’s largest airport says it will be implementing “hard limits” on the number of flights arriving or departing during March break and peak summer hours in a bid to reduce delays.

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), which operates Toronto Pearson International Airport, said in an email that it will also cap the number of passengers that can arrive internationally or depart to the United States through each terminal in a given hour.

The changes will result in flights being rescheduled to keep the number of flights and passengers under the new caps. The GTAA did not respond to an inquiry asking whether this means flights purchased months ago will now be cancelled to meet the new limit and did not provide details on what the caps will be.

Canada’s largest airport says it will be implementing “hard limits” on the number of flights arriving or departing during March break and peak summer hours in a bid to reduce delays.

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), which operates Toronto Pearson International Airport, said in an email that it will also cap the number of passengers that can arrive internationally or depart to the United States through each terminal in a given hour.

The changes will result in flights being rescheduled to keep the number of flights and passengers under the new caps. The GTAA did not respond to an inquiry asking whether this means flights purchased months ago will now be cancelled to meet the new limit and did not provide details on what the caps will be.

“The GTAA has taken decisive measures designed to flatten peak-hour schedules for the March break and the upcoming summer season. These include hard limits on the number of commercial flights that can arrive or depart in any given hour,” GTAA spokesperson Rachel Bertone said. “These slot measures strike a balance between airline requests and the capabilities of the entities across the entire airport ecosystem.”

Air Canada, the country’s largest carrier, said it was adapting its plan to account for the GTAA’s limits.

“We work with our industry partners to meet the requirements of airports,” Air Canada said in an email. “This includes, as in this case, adapting our schedule as required, which we have done,” the airline said, adding “we always notify customers directly of any changes.”

The flight and passenger limits follow a chaotic year for Pearson — last summer the airport was ranked the worst for delays in the world, with thousands of flights cancelled, passengers stranded and bags lost.

A previous report by the Star found that the delays and cancellations were largely due to the fact that airlines sold more seats during the spring and summer than either they or the airport had the staff to accommodate, given lower staffing levels after flight restrictions were lifted.

Airline industry experts say the GTAA’s move to limit the number of flights and passengers during the peak travel season this year is a positive move, but it should have been made earlier to prevent airlines from overselling tickets.

“This is overdue,” said John Gradek, a former Air Canada executive who now lectures in aviation management at McGill University.

“The airlines submitted last fall their operating plan for summer 2023 to Pearson airport,” Gradek said. “It’s interesting that it’s taken the airport authority until the end of February 2023 to institute a revision to that level of infrastructure capacity.

“Spring break happens in 10 days. The flights are already full. Passengers have booked and they have paid their money to the airlines,” he added.

Stephen Tufts, a spokesperson for the Toronto Airport Workers’ Council and an associate professor who studies labour geography at York University, said it appears the GTAA is trying to act proactively to prevent the chaos the airport saw last summer.

“Airlines oversell all the time — that’s part of their algorithms … but what happened last summer is there was pent-up demand for travel,” Tufts said.

“Airlines sold everybody tickets, but they didn’t have the slots, they didn’t have the planes and they didn’t have the people to process them. That resulted in cancellations. So now the GTAA is trying to put limits on passenger flow and slots so the airlines can’t oversell.”

Tufts warned that airlines need to do their part to ensure they adhere to the cap limits to avoid last year’s turmoil.

“Airlines have to still commit not to overselling,” Tufts said. “Hopefully knowing they have a capacity limit put on by Pearson means … they’ll go back and adjust their algorithms appropriately.”

Originally posted on Toronto Star