Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Air Canada notched the worst on-time performance among large airlines in North America in 2023, according to a new report, even as the carrier surged back to profitability.
The country's biggest carrier landed 63 per cent of its flights on time last year, placing it last among the continent's 10 largest airlines. That means roughly 140,000 planes rolled up to the gate late — more than 15 minutes after scheduled arrival.
The score was five percentage points below the second- and third-lowest carriers, JetBlue Airways and Frontier Airlines, respectively.
Canada's other major airline, WestJet, placed seventh in North America with a score of 69 per cent.
"When I joined the industry, good OTP was 75 per cent-plus," said Willy Boulter, a Cirium advisory board member and 35-year aviation veteran.
Targets have gone up since. Delta Air Lines came first with an on-time performance (OTP) of 85 per cent, followed by Alaska Airlines at 82 per cent.
Better technology in areas ranging from jet engines to air traffic control have made on-time goals more achievable than ever, said Boulter.
Other, smaller airlines in Canada and the U.S. may have had worse on-time records than Air Canada's, but weren't included in the report due to their size.
Air Canada said its outcomes reflected challenges that affected carriers across the country last year.
"However, our operation has been consistently improving so that by year-end our monthly on-time performance showed a double-digit improvement over July, a significant increase," said Air Canada spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick in an email.
Forty-nine per cent of Air Canada flights in July arrived late, according to Cirium.
The airline's focus remains on reducing the number of delays and cancellations in 2024, Fitzpatrick said.
In the past, the Montreal-based company has pointed to a shortage of air traffic controllers, bad weather and a network running at full tilt amid high demand, which can mean longer recovery times after a disruption.
CEO Michael Rousseau has acknowledged Air Canada's relatively low ranking, including after a wave of flight delays in June and July.
Despite more staff and revamped technology, the carrier's operations failed to meet "expected levels," he told analysts on a conference call in August.
The chief executive identified "severe weather" — thunderstorms, in particular — and global supply chain issues as among the culprits.
He also acknowledged that high load factors — when all planes are almost fully booked — do result in more "spilling traffic" after flights are cancelled, as passengers scramble to rebook with competitors and may arrive hours or days later than planned.
John Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University, noted that those challenges were not unique to Air Canada, despite its tardier track record. Air Alaska deals with inclement weather too, for example.
Air Canada is "counting on Canadians" to prioritize availability over punctuality, Gradek argued.
"It's more important for us to be able to get a seat to Jamaica or to Dubai or to Bangkok, and the heck with the on-time," he said. "And that's a shame."
Gabor Lukacs, president of the Air Passenger Rights advocacy group, says Air Canada's explanations for its low on-time standing "ring hollow."
“WestJet is flying the same weather, the same air traffic control environments," he said.
The results stem partly from a failure to ensure the number of tickets align with the capacity of the whole flight ecosystem, from airport slots to Nav Canada staff.
“The airlines cannot just pretend that the capacity’s in place," he said. “There are no proper systems in place to rein in airlines that do this type of behaviour.”
The summer travel peak poses a slew of obstacles, as carriers look to maximize their fleets to fly as many customers as possible.
"The harder I work the airplane, the higher the risk that that airplane will have a mechanical issue ... and that these airplanes will not operate on time," said Gradek, who worked at Air Canada for 18 years.
"Delta does value on time performance quite highly. Air Canada does not," he claimed, stating that its last-place results partly reflect business decisions around scheduling and route choices.
Other reasons can account for delays. The cold weather in Canada means planes need to be de-iced as early as October, runways need to be cleared of snow, and landing and takeoff times can be more spread out.
The frosty hurdles make achieving parallel on-time performance north of the border a challenge, experts say.
Over the holidays, however, the fairly mild temperatures across the country meant that most passengers enjoyed smooth sailing. That outcome stood in contrast to the tales of travel nightmares from 12 months earlier, when thousands of passengers saw their flights delayed or cancelled largely due to poor weather.
In peak travel season, some fleets are often stretched too thin to find a backup plane right away, Gradek pointed out.
Strained capacity in the sector extends to labour as well, from pilots to baggage handlers. In July, the International Air Transport Association called out air traffic control organizations in North America, which include Nav Canada, for staffing shortages that "continue to produce unacceptable delays and disruptions."
Nav Canada has acknowledged that occasional delays at the country's biggest airports are related in part to a lack of air traffic controllers. More than 400 new recruits are now in training, with 600 more slated to be hired in the next two years, the organization said.
On average, every minute of delay for one airplane costs the carrier about US$100 on average, according to aviation analyst Tony Brooks, drawing on 2022 data from the U.S. Department of Transport.
"It is estimated delays cost over US$1 billion each year to the industry, a vast sum which could be put to better use towards investment in airline and airport infrastructure," he said in the Cirium report.
Air Canada earned $2.08 billion in profit in the first three quarters of 2023. The resurgence followed 11 straight quarters of losses totalling $10.01 billion between 2020 and 2022, when demand for travel dried up due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 2, 2024.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.