Flew out of the commuter area of Terminal One today, and it left me convinced that Air Canada is the master of its own misery.
It’s clear that the horror stories about lost luggage have led to people relying on carryon. That has led to a huge lineup pre-security at a checkpoint where AC staff measure each piece of carryon baggage. Those bags passing the test are given a red ribbon, which is never checked downstream. The checkpoint was pretty porous, and those of us with Nexus cards were waved around the checkpoint (Nexus is the best travel investment I ever made…it even expedites passage for domestic flights).
The security checkpoint, even with Nexus, was slow going….. again, because more travellers were passing carryon size suitcases through the scanners. Many appeared to have forgotten the carryon regs (liquids in a clear bag etc) and a significant proportion of bags were being flagged for secondary screen. Lots of staff on hand (some appeared a bit inexperienced) but could not keep up with the flow of flagged bags. When the backlog of flagged bags reached the point where the machine pulls them off the belt, the line stopped dead…. no one was getting through, sufficient staff or not.
At the gate, the sole AC gate agent was trying hard but clearly inexperienced and overwhelmed - so passage onto the plane was also slow. And then the real fun began…. there was so much carryon that it could not be stowed, so the flight attendants collected a dozen or so bags to be checked, took them off the plane…. but then each had to be issued a luggage tag and stowed with the checked bags. The gate agent had to run back and forth to the indoors to print tags.
The aircraft for our flight was at gate and available for boarding on time, but boarding was delayed first a half hour due to pilot (un)availability but then by the combined slowness of the gate agent and then the baggage stowage by another 40 minutes. We departed 1:20 late - clearly avoidable delays.
Clearly AC needs to restore passenger confidence in baggage checking, such that a greater proportion of baggage is checked (not everyone flies with carryon only). That would improve the flow at security and also speed boarding. From today’s experience, the carryon volume seems to be what is taxing the system, more than staffing per se.
- Paul
