Air Canada’s hope for recovery foiled over delays at ‘airports’

Bloomberg

Air Canada’s hope for a strong recovery in 2022 has been foiled by chaos at Canada’s biggest airports.
Travellers are back in big numbers as the summer vacation season kicks off. But Toronto’s Pearson International Airport has descended into scenes of long lines and a sea of luggage, and the nation’s largest airline is paying the price.
About 65% of Air Canada flights tracked by FlightAware.com were delayed over the weekend, again making it one of the worst-performing airlines in the aviation website’s daily rankings. More than half of Pearson departures — for all airlines — took off late on those two days, the site said. Nearly half of departures from Montreal’s Trudeau International were delayed on Saturday.
Like other large carriers, Air Canada has cut back its summer schedule, canceling about 9,000 flights to relieve pressure and improve operations. Investors have been unimpressed: the shares have fallen 23% in three months for the second biggest decline in the Bloomberg Americas Airlines Index. Air Canada is worst performer in that index since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.
Travel bottlenecks are a problem globally as airlines and airports struggle to hire and train enough people to handle a wave of passengers who want to fly after two years of Covid restrictions. British Airways last week scrapped another 10,300 flights; Deutsche Lufthansa AG, EasyJet Plc, Delta Air Lines Inc and other carriers have made similar moves. It’s all leading to a lot of finger-pointing as airlines, airports and governments seek to shift blame.
Air Canada says it has 32,000 employees compared with 33,000 prior to the pandemic, yet is operating only 80% of its June 2019 schedule. Despite that, it still faces a shortage of baggage handlers and other staff, said Cowen Inc analyst Helane Becker.
It’s been a long process of hiring workers after Canada kept Covid-19 travel restrictions in place longer than the US did, forcing Air Canada and other employers to constrain their capacity growth last year.
“It just isn’t that easy to turn things around,” Becker said. “There is a fair amount of new employees, so there’s a learning curve.” She thinks that delays and cancellations could continue until the middle of next year.
Ahmad Rawanduzy’s daughter arrived in Toronto from Frankfurt, Germany, through an Air Canada connection in Montreal and could not find her luggage. Three days later, they received a text message saying that her bags were at Pearson airport. Upon arrival, they were informed that the bag was still in Montreal without a tag.
Rawanduzy, who lives in a city about 45 minutes away from the airport, said the process is frustrating because of “the traveling chaos, the price of gas, and paying for parking for a few hours at a time.”
The delays have heaped pressure on the federal government, which has been criticised for being too slow to handle
passport applications and hire security staff to deal with
passengers. Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said in a statement that nearly 1,200 screening officers have been hired since April and asserted that things are getting better.
At Pearson, 79% of travellers got through security lines within 15 minutes during in June, Alghabra’s office said.
Rising cases of Covid-19 are exacerbating the problem. Short-notice schedule changes sometimes happen because members of the flight crew are forced to isolate with virus symptoms, a positive test or because they came into contact with an infected individual, Air Canada said in an email to a customer that was seen by Bloomberg.