City seeking answers on weekend of air travel woes in and out of Prince Rupert

"We the city may not have been directly at fault in any of that, but it's our airport. 

I take it personally, I take responsibility. 

We need to make sure that the service in and out of our airport, is as high a service as we possibly can have and we won't settle for anything less" -- Mayor Pond speaking at Monday's Council Session to recent service issues at the Prince Rupert Digby Island Airport.

The topic of air travel through the Digby Island Airport gained some significant attention at the Monday City Council session, with Councillor Gurvinder Randhawa raising the issue following a weekend of cancelled and diverted flights that left many travellers to and from Prince Rupert frustrated.

We highlighted some of those travel issues at the end of February.

February 28 -- Air Traveller challenges today as snow once again reduces operations in Vancouver 
February 25 -- As Northwest comes out of Snow event accessing travel information has been challenging

Mr. Randhawa kicked off some lengthy discussion to the theme with a comment on the weekend of air woes and questions as to why despite fine weather in Prince Rupert that the cancellations happened.  

As well the councillor reinforced the need for the City to find out more about aviation issues to the community.

"The airlines missed some flights, people missed their flights, some missed their work, appointments .. I would like more reliable air service here"

Air Canada's Magical Mystery 
flight of last weekend, one which
Mayor Herb Pond was on
(image from Flight Aware)

From there, the session featured some travel reviews from Mayor Pond who had seen his flight disrupted by the situations of the weekend, as well as to offer up a look at how the City is responding to the situation.

"I happen to have first hand knowledge as does Councillor Forster ... in that I was returning from the RBA lobbying effort in Victoria and got on my plane in Victoria on Friday only to find out that my flight to Rupert had been cancelled and I was booked for Saturday ... 

I got on the plane on Saturday and had the pleasure of flying all the way up to Rupert and circling at 10,000 feet and landing in Sandpit, refuelling and flying back to Vancouver 

And Air Canada even sent me an email, I kid you not, saying thanks for choosing them on my flight to Sandspit ...

 And Councillor Forster never did come back she's still in Vancouver because it became impossible to get back in time and do what she needed to do.

On a more sort of focused note ... before my return I charged the Acting City Manager, Director Miller to find out what on earth is going on. 

She's done a ton of work on it, she's not done. But I can tell you she has phoned everyone you can phone, including the owner of the United Ramp Services company and our MLA has been actively engaged on this file.

It was an absolute failure, I mean there are weather issues and we accept that living in the North but this was beyond just weather, it all had implications  on health care in that medi-evacs were limited in their ability to fly.

So all of that is being worked on aggressively and we look forward to reporting back to you at a future meeting.

Councillor Randhwa observed that not everyone can fly out of Terrace and how there is a need for reliable air service out of Prince Rupert.

Mr Pond noted that as Mayor he accepts responsibility for the issues at the airport

"We the city may not have been directly at fault in any of that, but it's our airport. 

I take it personally, I take responsibility. 

We need to make sure that the service in and out of our airport, is as high a service as we possibly can have and we won't settle for anything less"

Councillor Niesh observed that an Airport Authority meeting was scheduled later in the week, which could provide for more information on the issues of recent weeks.

"We were actually supposed to have an Airport Authority meeting before this meeting, which would have given you a little bit more information, but it's actually tomorrow night. 

So by the next meeting I'll actually have a little bit more informational as far you know some of the issues that have arisen lately"

Councillor Skelton-Morven offered up some thoughts on the macro-economic issues of aviation over the last few years, including the labour challenges facing airlines and associated services.

 Some of the challenges of the weekend made it into the discussion pages of the YPR Social media stream, which noted of local issues as partially responsible for the recent issues.

click to enlarge

Considering the range of areas of note on aviation issues for the airport, Council should probably make sure that Ms Miller's report on the situation is made available for the public to review.

As well, as the Mayor noted beyond the inconvenience for commercial travellers, there is the issue of the health related travel requirements that must remain reliable.

Towards more information for the public, Council should make a request for the Airport Manager to attend their next Council session to provide a full overview of recent issues and  provide some extensive background on the current state of affairs at the airport.

Learning of the recent challenges only because someone asked on a social media platform, isn't really the best way to provide for confidence in travel through the local airport.

Such situations can only serve to drive more travellers to the Terrace airport, something that the City should be working hard to stem and reverse so as to keep the local airport viable.

The Discussion on Aviation issues in Prince Rupert starts at just after the 29 minute mark of the Council Video.

Further notes on Monday's Council Session can be reviewed here.

A wider overview of aviation across the Northwest is available here.