Airports and airlines are gearing up for the prospect of travel snarls over the holidays, even though the forecast looks favourable for now. Environment Canada is predicting bright skies and relatively mild temperatures across most of the country through Dec. 25.
Nevertheless, operators say they are ramping up staffing, rolling out new snow sweepers, readying updated baggage and data systems and doling out advice to passengers on the cusp of one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
But memories of stranded passengers and overflowing luggage halls still linger from last Christmas, when a blizzard blasted Eastern Canada and freezing rain lashed southern BC.
Even more travellers are expected to hit the skies this year, with Toronto’s Pearson airport preparing for as many as 160,000 travellers a day over the coming week and a half.
Both Pearson and the Montreal airport have upgraded their baggage processing facilities and added more staff to crew their snow removal equipment.
US
South of the border, airlines, and federal officials optimistic as travel over Christmas and New Year’s tends to spread out over many days, so the peaks in the US are likely to be lower than they were during the Thanksgiving holiday.
But the debacle at Southwest Airlines over Christmas last year should guard against overconfidence. Just this week, the Transportation Department announced a settlement in which Southwest will pay US$140 million for that meltdown, which stranded more than two million travellers.
So far this year, airlines have canceled 1.2% of US flights, down nearly half from 2.1% over the same period last year. Cancellations were well below 1% during Thanksgiving, according to FlightAware.
“I don’t want to jinx us, but so far 2023 has seen the lowest cancellation rate in the last five years,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday. He added, however, that winter weather “will certainly be a challenge in the next few weeks.”
Cancelled flights surged last year, as airlines were caught short-staffed when travel rebounded from the pandemic more quickly than expected. Since then, US. airlines have hired thousands of pilots, flight attendants and other workers, and the cancellation rate has come down.
AccuWeather forecasters say rainstorms could hit California, the Pacific Northwest and the southern Plains states including Texas later this week, but things look brighter for population centres – and key airports – in the Northeast.
“Last year was a really rough travel holiday,” said AccuWeather’s Paul Pastelok. “This year it looks like milder conditions. There isn’t much snow and ice on the horizon yet.”
Europe
After struggling with cancellations and other disruptions last year, European travel has also been smoother this year and about 10% more people are expected travel over Christmas and New Year’s. On Thursday, high winds from Storm Pia disrupted holiday travel in northern areas of the UK as flights were grounded, train service was suspended or slowed, and ferries stopped running to islands off Scotland’s west coast. The storm was expected to peak on Friday.
In one piece of good news: The volcanic eruptions in southwestern Iceland are not disrupting flights, despite the area’s proximity to the country’s main Keflavik Airport. Experts the location and features of the eruptions on Reykjanes Peninsula make it different from the 2010 eruption of a different Icelandic volcano, the Eyjafjallajokull, which sent giant clouds of ash over Europe and caused massive disruptions to international aviation.