WATER NOT ASKED FOR: AIR TRANSAT GROUND CREW

Ground crews working two Air Transat flights that faced high-profile tarmac delays this summer say the pilots didn’t tell them, nor were they aware, of imminent fuel needs aboard one of the aircraft, nor were they asked for water for the passengers.

One of the two international flights ran out of fuel during the hours-long delay, causing a shutdown of the air conditioning system, leading to rising cabin temperatures, a child vomiting before making it to the aircraft bathrooms, tensions over lack of water and a 911 call from one passenger.

Representatives from First Air, the ground handlers for Air Transat at the Ottawa airport, say they did order fuel, but it wasn’t possible to get it to the aircraft because they were parked on the taxiway at the far end of the airport.

Owen Prosser, a First Air ramp coordinator who worked the Air Transat flights, says the pilot of the plane that ran out of fuel never told him how desperate the situation was.

“I never received any phone calls from the captains,” Prosser said. “He never told me he needed fuel. He did tell me there was a dog in the (cargo) pit that needed water.”

Customs agents opened the cargo hold and gave the dog water during the delay.

The captain said he considered keeping passengers aboard the delayed aircraft to be the lesser of two evils.

Allowing passengers to disembark would have only made additional delays more likely, as opposed to the 30 minutes he was repeatedly told it would take to refuel, Yves Saint-Laurent told a Canadian Transportation Agency hearing in Ottawa.

What’s more, it would have taken additional hours to get everyone off the plane and then find a fleet of buses to transport them to a hotel for the night or to Montreal, the plane’s destination.

Denis Lussier, who was piloting the other flight, said he, too, was repeatedly told the wait to refuel would only be 30 minutes. Both pilots cited a series of circumstances beyond their control — other planes jumping the refuelling queue, as well as delays getting and connecting external power generators — that only made matters worse.

Saint-Laurent said he would have made different decisions had he known the delay would last more than three hours. Nonetheless, he said, most passengers expressed their gratitude to him after they arrived in Montreal.

“The next day, I saw what I would call the media circus,” Saint-Laurent told the hearing.

“I was shocked, surprised because I would say that most of the passengers who left the aircraft in Montreal that night said, ‘Thank you.’ ”

Saint-Laurent then paused for several seconds, before quietly saying he had nothing more to add.

Thursday’s testimony marked the end of two days of hearings to determine why the flights — one from Rome, the other from Brussels — sat on the tarmac for almost five and six hours, respectively, with passengers not allowed to disembark.

On Wednesday, a number of people who were on board the planes testified they would have given anything to be allowed off the planes, even if it meant additional delays or a two-hour drive back to Montreal.

The hearings are aimed at establishing whether Air Transat broke its tariff agreement with customers about when they can be let off a flight due to a tarmac delay — a rule unfamiliar to the pilots who have final say.

An airline executive said eight flights were delayed that day for more than three hours, and none of the flights diverted to the national capital decided to unload their aircraft. Yet Air Transat was singled out, likely because of the 911 call, said Christophe Hennebelle, vicepresident corporate affairs.

“If there had been better co-ordination and better communication between the players, this might not have happened,” Hennebelle said.