Vancouver International Airport outlines $40 million plan to overhaul protocols after Christmas 2022 chaos

Apr 18 2023, 12:05 am

Following the busy Christmas 2022 travel season that was upended by heavy snowfall, Vancouver International Airport (YVR) is promising to do much better, and it has created an action plan of new measures and protocols to help avoid a repeat of the unprecedented chaos at Canada’s second largest airport.

The action plan is supported by $40 million in funding to add new staff, improve training, increase the use of technology and communication, and invest in additional equipment.

YVR has now established a new standard of ensuring passengers on an arriving plane can disembark from their aircraft within 30 minutes from the time of taxiing off the runway.

These new strategies are the outcome of a third-party review by consultancy firms KPMG and Arup that began in January 2023, but some of the measures were already rolled out in time for the February 2023 snowfall, which saw relatively smooth operations.

“Certainly, the weather in December played a huge role in the disruptions that happened at YVR. We’re also seeing a change in labour environment. Before the pandemic, we were very privileged in aviation to have many applicants for every. Now we have many jobs for many applicants,” said Tamara Vrooman, president and CEO of Vancouver Airport Authority, during today’s press conference.

“We need to focus on our people, deepen our resilience with respect to how we train and staff across the ecosystem, including at the airport.”

vancouver international airport yvr emergency operation centre

Emergency operations centre at Vancouver International Airport for coordinating airport operations and emergency services. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

vancouver international airport yvr gate

Domestic gate at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Although the airport did not run out of deicing fluid during the December 2022 snowfall period, YVR now has plans to add deicing fluid storage capacity to improve redundancy, accounting for the likelihood of more frequent winter storm events in the future. Currently, YVR has a deicing fluid storage capacity of 385,000 litres across two different types of fluid, with 11 deicing stands and 22 deicing vehicles.

It will also install real-time weather monitoring equipment, which will allow YVR to receive nano geographic data over conditions and forecasts for the immediate local area. Moving forward, the different entities and groups will use the same real-time weather data to make decisions.

During the review, it was determined that while airside crews plowed the paths aircraft would follow on the tarmac, they did not plow the apron areas where support vehicles would travel, specifically for the vehicles that transport bags, catering, and other operations. Videos posted on social media at the time showed these support and operational vehicles stranded on a layer of snow and ice.

YVR will now hire more staff and improve their training on winter and irregular operations, including scheduling quarterly training exercises with the involvement of not only their own crews, but also airlines, agency partners, and emergency response.

During the 2022 holiday peak travel season, piles of bags accumulated at YVR in a highly disorganized manner from both YVR’s operational challenges and the weather events experienced at other airports on the East Coast. To mitigate such challenges in the future, YVR is introducing “baggage disruption protocols” that will be triggered when passengers arrive at YVR separate from their checked bags during a disruption event, such as harsh weather.

Under the new baggage protocols, YVR will scan all bags into a new system and organize the bags in the storage areas in a manner that makes it easy for airline staff and passengers to recover bags. Airlines are ultimately responsible for baggage, but YVR will now know exactly where it is within their facilities, which will significantly save time for bag recovery and allow airline staff to focus on other aspects of customer service at the airport.

“Certainly what we saw in December was a number of bags arriving without passengers, and that was due largely to weather events in the eastern parts of the country. Normally what happens is passengers come with their bags, and they pick up their bags on the carousel and are on their way,” said Vrooman.

“[But] passengers came without their bags due to weather disruptions in the eastern part of the continent, so they left YVR without their bags, and their bags arrived subsequently. What happens in that case is bags start to pile up, and while airline staff does an admirable job trying to sort through and find bags when passengers come back, as we’ve all experienced, it can be a time-consuming, frustrating, somewhat analog experience as you go into a big room and try to find the black bag with the little pink tag that is yours.”

vancouver international airport yvr gate

Baggage vehicles at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

vancouver international airport yvr bag system

Domestic bag conveyance system at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

vancouver international airport yvr bag system

Domestic bag conveyance system at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

vancouver international airport yvr bag system

Domestic bag conveyance system at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

vancouver international airport yvr bag system

Domestic bag conveyance system at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

For improving overall operations, the use of the recently created digital twin platform — a virtual replica of the terminal building and airside area — for real-time decisions and planning will be improved and expanded. This includes adding more sensors to feed real-time data into the digital twin, such as deploying digital sensors to measure and track passengers at key areas in the terminal such as security screening. The federal government’s Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) is responsible for security screening, but YVR notes the target is to have 85% of passengers screened in 15 minutes or less.

In addition to the digital twin, YVR will be making investments into a new digital apron monitoring tool for creating a simplified view of where aircraft are located on the tarmac. Vrooman says this will provide a “seamless picture of connectivity” of where an aircraft, ground handling, and towing equipment is for all aircraft on the ground, regardless of where they are in the aircraft journey,” as opposed to the current method of separate tracking systems.

To help meet its 30-minute target of arrival planes reaching the gate for passenger disembarkment, YVR will improve its protocols for maintaining available gates, and establish “hot gates” — empty gates to ensure there are always gates available for deplaning, such as when plates have to return to the gate due to an inability to depart.

Beyond improving operational improvements, YVR will also improve its customer service levels, including identifying and training 25% more employees to be available for in-terminal passenger supports. This will ensure all information counters and busy checkpoints are fully staffed, especially during off- and overnight hours, and weather events or irregular operations.

Increased staffing levels will supplement the staffing levels of airlines. It was noted that some airlines with limited and/or infrequent routes serving YVR do not have major staffing levels, which can contribute to passenger frustration when airline staff is not available following lengthy flight delays or cancellations.

There will be enhancements to communications with passengers at the airport and the general public. The airport will expand the use of in-terminal digital displays to provide timely information updates and ensure passengers are aware of services and supports, and improve the use of its website and social media as information hubs.

In creating its action plan, YVR consulted its operating partners, stakeholders, governments, and 1,500 members of the public, including passengers and their family members affected by the December 2022 chaos.

“The number of length of tarmac delays and the length of time that passengers had to stay onboard aircraft during the December disruption was unacceptable,” continued Vrooman.

“What the review shows is we didn’t have a single coordinated way to know exactly where the aircraft were, which ones were pushing off the gate, what happened when they were delayed pushing off the gate, where the ground handling crew was, and so on.”

vancouver international airport yvr gate

Domestic gate at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

vancouver international airport yvr gate

Domestic gate at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Over the week-long weather event leading up to Christmas 2022, YVR recorded nearly 40 cm of snow, including 24 cm over a 48-hour period on December 19/20. It also experienced its fifth coldest day in half a century, and at times the visibility for one km was zero.

A total of 1,300 flights out of about 4,100 scheduled flights from December 18 to 24 were cancelled, representing a cancellation rate of 32%. Over 180,000 passengers were affected by delayed or cancelled flights at YVR.

On December 19/20, waits for bag recovery reached over seven hours, and 24 aircraft waited for longer than four hours on the tarmac due to the lack of available gates.

There was no single root cause for the disruptions at YVR, according to the airport authority. Passenger and aircraft demand exceeded processing capacity due to the weather conditions, with a vicious cycling in operational mayhem solidifying from worsening delays, cancellations, queues, and congestion of both planes on the tarmac and passengers and bags inside the terminal.

There were also instances of aircraft requiring repeat rounds of deicing after a deiced plane reached the expiration of its “holdover time” — the estimated duration of how long de-icing fluids will be effective to allow for the aircraft to safely take off. Holdover time is highly variable, based on a real-time calculation of the type of precipitation and air temperature. If the aircraft is unable to take off before the holdover time ends, it needs to stay at the airport, adding to the ripple effects of congestion and delays.

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