In its latest weekly 'self-report' card, federal government ministers related to air travel and airport performance have indicated that, by their own reckoning, on-time and cancellation performance at Canada's major airports have pretty much returned to normal.
The Minister of Transport, Omar Alghabra, the Minister of Public Safety, Marco Mendicino, and the Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance, Randy Boissonnault, issued the update 07OCT for air travel performance during the week of 26SEP to 02OCT.
New pax protection rules are one month old
These new government reports some one month after the federal government’s updated Regulations Amending the Air Passenger Protection Regulations took effect on 08SEP. Under the new rules, airlines are solely responsible for compensating pax for delayed and cancelled flights, even when the cause is not within the airline’s control.
As Open Jaw has reported, Canada’s carriers have asked the federal government to institute service standards for other entities they say should also bear responsibility for flight delays and cancellations, including security and border screening and airport operations.
Cancellations
On-time performance
There's a similar story for timely departures, too. In that same week, according to the ministers' statement, over 91 per cent of flights from the top four airports left on time, or within one hour of their scheduled departure.
"This is a significant improvement from under 75 percent for the first week of July and is approaching the pre-pandemic levels in September 2019 where 95 percent of flights were on time, or within an hour of scheduled departure," according to the ministers.
However, as Open Jaw reported in SEP, aviation experts have accused Ottawa of exaggerating airport performance by using non-standard, basically made-up metrics.
But industry experts note that an hour late is not “on time.” Former operations chief at Air Canada, Duncan Dee, told the Globe that the one-hour metric is “misleading and farcical,” adding, “It’s not something that’s done anywhere on the planet.”
The internationally-accepted standard measurement of an “on-time” departure is within 15 minutes of a flight’s scheduled time, he explained.
James Hetzel, an analyst with Cirium, an aviation analytics company based in Britain, agrees, telling the Globe, “Delays greater than 15 minutes are considered a long delay and have consequences on downstream flights.” At that time, according to Cirium the actual on-time performance of Canada's busiest airports was much, much worse (by 30 per cent in some cases) than Ottawa’s reported "86 per cent."
So it's not clear at this point what a 'true' reading of on-time performance at Canada's airports is today based on an industry standard of 15 minutes, rather than Ottawa's non-standard metric of one hour.
Holding of aircraft at YYZ
According to the ministers, the number of arriving international flights being held on the tarmac at YYZ has decreased dramatically since MAY.
For the week of 19- 25SEP, no international flight arrivals were held on the tarmac, as compared to the peak of 373 during the first week of May.
Passenger security screening wait times
For the week of 26SEP to 02OCT, the government says that 91 per cent of passengers at Canada's four largest airports were screened within 15 minutes, representing an improvement from 79 per cent during the first week of JUL 2022.
