Deep freeze still causing flight delays, cancellations at Toronto's Pearson airport

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Thousands remain grounded at Pearson International Airport as a result of the deep freeze gripping much of Canada and the United States.

The cold weather is still impacting air travel, mainly because of a backlog caused by hundreds of flight cancellations on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the airport cancelled more than 240 arrivals and 180 departures.

"I think probably the time that you could compare it to is the chaos after 9-11, when you had hundreds of aircraft diverted to Pearson and to other airports across Canada," Transport Action Canada President David Jeanes told CTV News Channel.

"We've had weather emergencies before, but I don't think anything like this that has affected the whole continent all at once," Jeanes said. "Toronto is such an important node that when things go wrong there, they go catastrophically wrong."

More than 600 flights were cancelled during a "ground stop" Tuesday morning, when the temperature felt like -40 C with wind chill. Although the airport is now "fully open and operational," an airport official says, due to the backlog, airlines have been encouraged to reduce operations until they catch up.

"There have been adjustments to the schedules which resulted in a 50 per cent reduction," Shereen Daghstani of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority told CTV's Canada AM. "This could mean cancellations or delays."

"We know that the airlines are working to rebook a significant number of passengers who have missed or cancelled flights," she said.

Long lines snaked through Pearson International Airport as passengers waited hours to rebook flights, get hotel vouchers and claim luggage.

"We haven't seen something like this in almost 15 years," Daghstani said. "The extreme weather has resulted in cancellations that we haven't seen in a very long time."

Many passengers are asking why such a large airport was unable to handle the conditions, considering that smaller airports remained fully operational.

GTAA Communications Director Scott Armstrong told CTV News Channel that part of the problem is Toronto isn't used to cold weather. Airports in cities such as Winnipeg, he said, are better prepared because they deal with extreme cold more often.

"Also, if Winnipeg slows down for two hours it doesn't have the implications and the ripple effect right across the country as it does at Pearson, especially for morning start-up, which is one of our busiest times of day," Armstrong said.

"If those flights don't go out, it causes delays from coast to coast."

The jam at Pearson resulted in cancellations and delays in several cities including Halifax, Ottawa and Montreal.

Learning from Tuesday's chaos, the airport brought in extra staff to help the airlines. "And I know it's frustrating to sit there and think, 'Why can't they just move the bags?' but the scale of the number of bags, the number of flights, the number of things that have to happen for this recovery to go smoothly will take time," Armstrong said.

Canada's largest airport is also being criticized over its methods of communication with passengers during Tuesday's ground stop. Many passengers took to social media, saying they weren't getting enough information from the airport staff.

"In terms of communication, we did use our social media and our website and media to get information out to the passengers. We also had airport announcements going out within the terminals as soon as information became available," Daghstani said. But frustrated passengers told CTV the announcements were just advising patience, not relaying any useful information.

"It's really that two-way conversation that needs to happen and we move forward with assuring we respond to situations and that we are more proactively getting the message out," Daghstani said.

"We can always improve on our communications and we take away some lessons from that."

Daghstani said passengers should look to individual airlines for detailed flight information, instead of the airport: "We work in partnership with the airlines and we get information out about the airport operations, but again we also rely on the airlines to get information out about specific flights and what's happening with baggage and the rebooking process because that can differ for each airline."

How airlines should handle delays

Jane Shapiro, who leads crisis and corporate communications at Hill and Knowlton Strategies, told Canada AM there was more the airport could have done to ease passengers' frustration.

Though the airport used multiple forms of communication, "they didn't do it very quickly," she said.

"I think one of the very first principles of crisis communications is do it fast and do it often. You tell people what you know, as soon as you know it. I think what organizations do sometimes is they think that they should wait until they know more, or wait until they know everything, and I think the GTAA waited a number of hours before they told people anything," Shapiro said.

"What people crave more than anything is just some information."