RE:An analysis of the current mayhem at the airports
Great summary of situation. And then Canada specific, add in two airheads, Justin and Omar, plus the CBC bubbleheads and you've got a massive SNAFU. But AC solves big problems, they will work it out.
thinkyourmoney wrote: This is not just an analysis of AC and its hubs in Canada. I am sure it is clear to everyone that this is a global situation that is affecting every major international airline in the world. However, I will focus on the Canadian dilemma starting with where it starts.
The first point is that the current operation for AC is up 400%YOY. What operation expands that quickly without some major hiccups?
The first drag on the smooth return to operations is in (2) Canada Customs and Immigration. That department leaving customers stranded on airplanes is nothing new. Even in pre-covid times they could leave passengers on in bound transPacific flights for an hour if the plane got a tail wind and arrived an hour early. In the current situation, processing time has gone from an average 22.5 seconds per pax to an average of 4 minutes per pax. A quick bit of math says that if that processing time stays the same, airport staffing for customs and immigration at the airport has to increase by a factor of 10.6 times the pre-covid staff.
The thing is if people who are connecting are delayed in customs it messes up the whole hub and spoke operation because it will no longer work with pre-covid connection times. Hence the airlines have tried to expand the connection time window in their schedules. However, changes are limited due to the fact that slot times on flight paths and gates are booked months in advance. The dynamic to this is that a lot of connecting passengers enter Canada on early morning flights to make their connections to the big/big money flights crossing the oceans or delivering connections to flight from overseas flights to Canadian/US destinations. If these connecting passengers miss their designated flights, the days operation will never recover its stability. The impact goes on for days.
3. Manpower...It starts at security. The airlines had staff trained and ready to go. AC's stafff is 10% higher than pre-Covid for the amount of capacity being used. The folks at Airport Security were caught asleep at the wheel. They could see the schedules. It was clearly published that Canadians were planning to travel. People have 3 years of holiday money saved up and they are determined to travel this summer. Omar just had to do the Algebra.
Covid adds a manpower dynamic to this in that it is reported that the latest variant has a 10% infection rate in the Ontario population. That means that 10% of the workforce is going to be booking off sick on any given day. Airport employers need to have a 10% float of workers just to keep staffing for a normal operation.
Here's where it gets messy. As I mentioned, delays start out of the international connection immediately in the morning. You used to be able to get through the YYZ operation pretty smoothly on most days until early afternoon. Now it hits the fan first thing in the morning. You have delays. Delays cause more delays which spreads through the whole system. In the morning you start with an opertional plan. You are scrambling from the very start of the day. Then manpower and equipment starts getting wasted. Planes wait for a gate, wait for crew upstairs and downstairs to be there at the same time and wait for unloading equipment to free up. If delayed, the flight waits for loading, waits for connecting passengers (maybe) and waits for crews up and down to dispatch it on departure. Operations planners are robbing Peter to pay Paul all day and this situation is so dysfunctional you cannot plan ahead by much. The luggage systems are another logistical disaster in a world all of its own.
Covid is something very new to the aviation world. SARS was a warm up and nobody heeded the warning and had even an inkling of a plan to deal with something bigger. The best philosophy is that it what we are dealing with is eveybody's fault and nobody's fault (Margaritaville).
I have a lot of experience in travelling. Here is the one thing I have learned. I feel really bad for those who have to interface with the public. The reason they turn off at sad stories or anger is that they have seen ever manner of sand box behavior even if they have been on the job 6 months. Here is a hint. Treat them nicely as they are the ones who know how to solve your problem. If you are at that counter they give you that there are two people who are interested in solving your problem. Engage in sandbox antics (pre-5 year old behavior) and you highly risk losing one.
The press is no help. They are the king of the castle in the sandbox crowd.