Key Points:
About 200 flights delayed over Canada Day holiday weekend
Shops and services extended hours
Nav Canada addressing shortage
A shortage of air traffic controllers caused more than 200 flight delays at Vancouver International Airport over the Canada Day holiday weekend and they are expected to persist. The airport authority placed the blame squarely on the lack of staff cutting arrival traffic by about two-thirds at peak times on Saturday and Sunday. Controller shortages have been cited for clogged airports across the country, but Vancouver has been especially troublesome. Nav Canada acknowledges that it’s short of controllers but did not take all the blame for the weekend problems.
“Air traffic delays can occur for a range of reasons—weather being the most frequent—but also runway construction, infrastructure maintenance, surges in demand and personnel resourcing,” Nav Canada said in a statement. It appears most passengers eventually got where they were going. Canadian and U.S. Customs stayed open late to process delayed passengers, and some stores and food services extended their hours. Staff-related delays began showing up in the Canadian system about five years ago and are now commonplace. Nav Canada says it’s doing its best to hire and train new controllers. “Staffing progress is being made across the Canadian system, and we’re seeing encouraging signs in many areas,” the not-for-profit company said in a statement.
What’s with the new “Key Points” stuff? It’s ugly (because it’s all bold) and distracting (because I have to scroll past it to read the actual story). Can we just have real journalism without some AI-generated header?
From Russ:
Not AI generated. I wrote them all. It’s a technique to grab the attention of search engines to help ensure our stories retain their prominence there. The journalism is unchanged. It just has to be packaged differently these days.
Interesting. The very system that privatization advocates in the US think is so great are having staffing issues just like in the US does now!
Overpaid controllers decided to take the long weekend off.
Time to do what Reagan did; fire them all and start over!
(decades in the industry)