Communication ‘debacle’
Pilot of Air Transat flight tells hearing tarmac delay was lesser of two evils
The captain of one of two Air Transat flights that was forced to sit for hours on a sweltering Ottawa tarmac last month said Thursday he considered keeping passengers aboard the delayed aircraft to be the lesser of two evils.
Yves Saint-Laurent told hearings in Ottawa that he decided to keep passengers on the plane because he believed allowing them to disembark would have caused hours more delays, as opposed to the 30 minutes he was repeatedly told it would take to refuel.
Those hours would have been taken up with first getting everyone off the plane, then finding buses to transport them to a hotel for the night or to Montreal, the plane’s ultimate destination.
The 30-minute refuelling time frame kept being extended, Saint-Laurent testified. What’s more, a series of circumstances beyond his control — other planes jumping the refuelling queue, other planes blocking the taxiway and bad weather — only made matters worse.
When the ordeal was over, however, most passengers expressed their gratitude to him after they had finally arrived in Montreal.
“The next day, I saw what I would call the media circus,” Saint-Laurent told the Canadian Transportation Agency 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.’”
Thursday’s testimony came on Day 2 of hearings to determine precisely why the two Montrealbound flights — one from Brussels, the other from Rome — sat on the tarmac for almost five and
six hours, respectively, with passengers not allowed to disembark.
One of the two international flights ran out of fuel during the hours-long delay, causing the air conditioning system to shut down. The ensuing heat soon led to mounting tensions, a child throwing up on board and — ultimately — a 911 call from a passenger.
The airline and airport officials have been blaming each other for the incident, which is now subject of a class-action lawsuit. The hearings are aimed at establishing whether Air Transat has broken its tariff agreement with customers.
Matthew Jackson, Air Transat’s director of flight safety, said it would have been a “very big challenge” to get more than 300 passengers off either of the flights while they were stuck on
the taxiway.
To do so would be an indication of “an emergency situation” like a fire or bomb threat, “and it would have shut down the airport,” Jackson said.
The two flights were diverted to Ottawa due to weather on July 31, along with about 20 other planes in an incident that appears to have taxed airport resources in the national capital to their limit.
Owen Prosser, a ramp co-ordinator who worked the Air Transat flights, said he had never experienced such a mass diversion of planes, calling it a “debacle.” Fuelling teams ran out of fuel on several occasions.
Among the planes was an Airbus 380, the largest plane to land that day.
The need to find a place to park
that Air Emirates flight forced crews to move the two Air Transat planes to the airport taxiway, where they could be neither refuelled nor serviced. As a result, they ended up being among the last planes to be refuelled.
Normally, refuelling during a diversion takes place on a first-come, first-served basis, said Saint-Laurent, who was flying the aircraft from Rome. He said he saw a number of planes being refuelled even though they landed after his.
Once finally able to refuel, Saint-Laurent said he vented his frustration on a ground crew worker, who threw up their hands, claimed it wasn’t their fault, and blamed the airport for issuing an order to fuel other planes first.
The airport has denied ordering special treatment for other planes.