Weather, holiday traffic brewed perfect storm

It was the nightmare before and after Christmas. If you were anywhere near Vancouver International Airport between Dec. 23 and 27, you probably have your own horror story to tell.

Thousands of passengers were left stranded as a record snowfall grounded planes, which raises questions about the airport's capacity to handle heavy volumes of traffic should snow hit the Lower Mainland during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

"What happens in 2010 if the same thing happens again?" wonders Conservative MP Alice Wong. "What we've seen during these snowy days probably was not acceptable."

The Consumers Association of Canada has called on the federal Minister of Transportation to review what happened at YVR.

I will definitely raise this issue at the next B.C. caucus meeting (Wednesday)," Wong said.

Neil Filipek, a pilot for Air Canada, was in the thick of things, flying from Vancouver to Toronto between Dec. 23 and 24, and Vancouver-Hong Kong on Dec. 25. What he saw at the airport was chaos.

"It fell off the rails in a lot of places," he said.

"The dramatic thing to see was the people lined up going through security," Filipek said. "They were lined up across the airport. Security was overwhelmed.

"I came back from Hong Kong, I saw a mountain of bags and no passengers picking them up, so obviously there were some missed connections."

During the worst part of the storm, YVR closed one runway.

"They didn't have the equipment," Filipek said.

Many flights were cancelled. The planes that still managed to take off had to wait while the only runway was plowed. Filipek said Air Canada ran out of de-icing fluid and trucks that would bring in fresh supplies could not get through.

Filipek added that problems at the airport were exacerbated by lack of staff.

"Half the staff couldn't get in due to road conditions," Filipek said.

Bruce Cran of the Consumers Association of Canada is astounded that the airport and airlines were caught so unprepared.

"They've been collecting these improvement fees -- hundreds of millions of dollars over the years -- what on earth are they doing?" Cran said. "Why should they not have on hand equipment to deal with an emergency?"

Cran's association has received some 300 complaints, many of them against Air Canada. While WestJet has reported spending $2 million to provide 6,000 hotel rooms and 25,000 meal vouchers to stranded passengers, and offered incentives to passengers to not fly, Air Canada charged $50 to rebook flights, did not or could not answer phone calls to reservation lines and lost baggage, according to Cran's organization.

"I think you've got to cut them some slack," said Conservative MP John Cummins (Delta-Richmond East).

"The circumstances were unusual and totally unexpected. When there's weather-related delays, do we blame Air Canada or is it an act of God? My own daughter sat on the tarmac for four hours (on Dec. 22) and was relieved to get out of there at all."

Filipek said all carriers, not just Air Canada, had problems during the snow storm. The big difference is that WestJet had better public relations, he added.