From a mother with two children spending a night on the floor of Toronto Pearson Airport to two siblings forced to say goodbye to their dying father over the phone, flight cancellations and delays continue to cause distress for would-be travellers across the country.
Airports are also reporting increasing claims of lost or missing baggage, holding passengers up for hours on end.
“I was here for four and a half hours yesterday, only to be told that my luggage is somewhere in the airport, but they have no idea where,” a passenger told CTV News at Toronto’s Pearson Airport on Wednesday.
The Greater Toronto Airports Authority attributes baggage chaos to flight delays, cancellations, staffing shortages and temporary mechanical disruptions within the baggage system. They say a baggage service recovery task force has now been implemented to examine and address system failures.
As travel demand continues to surge globally as COVID-19 restrictions ease, airports worldwide will continue to deal with a “hot mess” of lost baggage and passenger frustrations, aviation consultant Robert Kokonis told CTV’s Your Morning on Thursday.
“It’s all about a cascading series of events where one airplane shows up, can’t get a gate and has got to wait at the tarmac for a couple of hours,” he said.
“(This is going to cause) delayed passengers, misconnections, and baggage that does not make it to the travellers’ onward flight. You’re going to have that aircraft that then gets delayed to its next destination.”
Dozens of people have spoken out on social media about losing their luggage at Toronto’s Pearson airport, including one woman who said her bag was lost twice during her journey, resulting in a frustrating “suitcase scavenger hunt” that ultimately proved fruitless.
#Pearson airport today. Some suitcases have been here for 6 days. I lost luggage to my destination and on the way back. At 2am they just sent us all home and told us to send an email. #aircanada pic.twitter.com/26TILoGYE6
Canada’s Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra called passengers’ airport issues “unacceptable” in an unrelated announcement on Wednesday.
“(Airports) know that they need to add more resources, and they are working on that, and we are offering our support to address these issues. But these are unacceptable issues,” he said.
Kokonis says the main reason baggage gets misplaced or misses connecting flights is the ongoing staff shortages at airports.
Air Canada currently has 32,000 employees, versus approximately 33,000 before the pandemic, while operating about 80 per cent of its June 2019 schedule, according to the company’s June release.
The company announced Wednesday that it plans to reduce its flights in July and August as the airline continues to deal with “customer service shortfalls.”
According to Kokonis, reducing passenger volumes is necessary to offer short-term relief until airport operations are back on track.
“Air Canada’s announced schedule reduction of about a 15 per cent cut will relieve some of that stress (on workers) and make sure we’re getting those bags matched up with the passengers to the final destination,” Kokonis said.
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