Article about the disaster that was YVR over the holidays

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... port10-ATL

PETER CHENEY
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
January 10, 2009 at 1:11 AM EST
For professional airline pilots, each airport has its pluses and minuses.

Toronto's Pearson International has a good control tower and long runways, but the skies above it are the most congested in Canada.

Hong Kong's legendary Kai Tak (now closed) forced pilots to thread their jets past mountain walls and apartment balconies.

Then there's Vancouver International Airport, which gets great reviews – unless it snows. “When it comes to snow, the Vancouver airport gets a black mark,” a senior airline captain said.

Although pilots have talked about Vancouver's snow-clearing problems for years, they finally came to public attention over the 2008 holiday rush, when the airport was hit with near-record snowfalls that wiped out critical aircraft guidance systems and stranded passengers for days.

More than 1,000 flights were cancelled as airport crews fought a losing battle with the elements.

The Christmas travel disaster and the looming Winter Olympics have now put snow at the airport on the top of the agenda. Like all major Canadian airports, Vancouver is operated by a private consortium, and has no legislative oversight of its snow-clearing equipment. Although airport officials defend their operation's performance during the holiday storms, they acknowledge that changes are needed, particularly in the area of aircraft de-icing.

“Clearly, there was a breakdown in that area,” said Rebecca Catley, director of communications for the Vancouver Airport Authority.

Pilots agree. But they believe the weather problems extend far beyond the de-icing facilities.

“They can't handle it,” the senior airline captain said of Vancouver's snow-clearing capabilities.

His sentiments were echoed by other pilots, who e-mailed each other horror stories of diversions, cancellations and impassable taxiways. (One summed up the Vancouver airport experience as “a gong show.”)

The debacle involved the kind of snow the city hasn't seen since 1964: nearly 90 centimetres fell on the airport during the 2008 holiday period. “Obviously, the volume of snow and the length of time we experienced it was unprecedented,” Ms. Catley said. “We are pleased with the way we responded. People did an amazing job keeping the airport open. … There were a lot of unsung heroes.”

The professional pilot community's reaction was less charitable – they say the Vancouver airport has a less than stellar reputation when it comes to dealing with snow, record or otherwise, and want changes made. “This airport isn't run by idiots,” a captain with a major international carrier said. “It's a good operation, except when it snows. Then it goes downhill in a hurry. They don't have the equipment, they don't have the manpower, and they don't have the expertise. They're like a goalie that never gets shot on.”

The captain, who has more than three decades of airline experience, described how the snow crippled the Vancouver airport over the holidays by producing a set of cascading problems. On one flight, for example, he spent hours waiting for his jet to be de-iced, then found the taxiways so snow-covered that he couldn't figure out where to go – he was facing a featureless white expanse, with no indication of where taxiway edges were.

Finally, he said, an airport worker arrived in a pickup truck, and used a hand shovel to find the stripe marking the centre of the taxiway. The captain guided his jet to the freshly shovelled line, then used the pickup truck as a guide so he could make his way to the runway without taxiing into a snowdrift.

At the runway, the captain said, he faced a new problem. The runway was covered with slush – so much that he wondered if it exceeded his jet's tested performance, which is documented in a thick manual known as a Pilots Operating Handbook, or POH. Generally speaking, aircraft manufacturers prohibit takeoff if there is more than half an inch of slush on a runway because it builds up a bow wave in front of the airplane's tires, generating so much drag that the jet can't reach takeoff speed.

Although the decision to fly in severe weather conditions ultimately rests with the pilot, major airlines routinely use formalized decision-making processes that weigh a series of criteria that includes the aircraft's takeoff weight, wind speed and direction, temperature, airport altitude and the runway condition. (The depth of snow and slush is measured by ground crews, and traction is gauged by an instrumented airport vehicle that accelerates and brakes along the runway.)

In many cases, pilots consult with their airline's operations centre, which double-checks their calculations, and helps them decide whether it's safe to fly (or land). And in the case of Vancouver airport through the holiday period, the answer was often no – more than 1,000 flights were cancelled. Some pilots found themselves facing conditions that tested the limits of safety. “These were very marginal conditions,” a senior captain with one international carrier said. “Right on the edge.”

Vancouver's snow-clearing problems weren't confined to the runways and taxiways. Pilots learned that snow had knocked out a critical part of the instrument landing system, which guides airplanes to the ground with an electronic beam known as a glide slope.

The Vancouver airport is one of only in two in Canada that have an advanced ILS system known as Category III, which allows suitably equipped airplanes to land in conditions of near-zero visibility. But the airport's inability to keep snow from building up in front of the glide slope projector at the end of one of its two main runways rendered the system useless. Pilots were warned of the problem by air-traffic controllers.

Although the impact of this failure varied with the changing weather (in clear conditions, pilots can make a visually guided approach to the runway), it compounded the Vancouver airport's other problems, and in some cases, flights had to be diverted to Seattle and even Calgary.

Pilots and other aviation experts say the Vancouver airport's snow-clearing problems are the result of a series of factors. Most obviously, the airport is located in a temperate coastal area that has relatively little snowfall. As a result, there's little incentive to spend money on costly equipment that is rarely used.

“If they designed their equipment and staff for what happened this Christmas, they would be massively overstaffed and overcapitalized,” said Joseph D'Cruz, a professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Business. “This was far from a typical situation.”

In many cases, Vancouver's snow is also harder to deal with than the kind that falls on other airports. “This is wet, heavy snow,” one Air Canada captain said. “It doesn't blow off the runway like the dry stuff you get in Winnipeg. It sticks like wet concrete.”

“The snow is qualitatively different,” Ms. Catley said. She compared the snow to a Slurpee: “It's heavy, and it's hard to get rid of.”

Ms. Catley said the airport is committed to improving its snow-clearing and de-icing operations, and that the changes will be made well before the Vancouver Winter Olympics begin in February, 2010.

“The operations team is looking at new equipment,” she said. “Exactly what it will be, we don't know yet.”

Ms. Catley said the airport also plans to revise its de-icing facility, which was plagued by backups that compounded the airport's other problems. At the moment, the facility involves a complex set of staff and agencies: The de-icing bays are owned by the airport, but the crews, trucks, sprayers and de-icing fluids are supplied both by individual airlines and contractors.

The airport plans to convert the operation to an integrated facility, where crews and equipment are supplied by the airport. Integrated de-icing facilities are currently used at the Toronto and Montreal airports, which both get good reviews from pilots.

Vancouver operations staff will go to both Toronto and Montreal to study their operations, Ms. Catley said.

No date has been set.

Although the holiday cancellations have raised questions about the airport's preparedness, Vancouver Olympic officials say they aren't concerned. (The airport is an official partner of the Vancouver Organizing Committee.)

“As with all of our partners involved in the staging of the 2010 Winter Games, we continue to work closely with YVR to review and revise plans in preparation for next year, and have complete confidence that as a world-class airport they will deliver on their commitments,” said Irene Kerr, VP services and transportation for VANOC.

Some airline pilots were less sanguine: “They spent a fortune on this airport,” says one captain. “There are new gates, new sculptures and new boardrooms. Where were the new snow plows?”