Canada’s airports are stable now, but we’re just waiting for the next disaster

In today’s Big Story podcast, in the time in between peak travel windows, the problems at Canada’s major airports seem to have mostly vanished. But does that mean airlines and airport authorities have actually fixed the issues that had us ranked among the worst in the world last year? Not really.

John Gradek is an aviation industry expert, and a faculty lecturer and program coordinator in supply chain, logistics and operations management at McGill University. He joins us to discuss what has gone wrong in the airline industry in recent years, and outline the potential harm to Canadians if things fail to improve.

“What is it that we have to have in terms of a structure in Canada that democratizes transportation, and makes air transportation an unassailable human right?” he said.

The massive numbers of cancelled or delayed flights, and the chaotic snapshots of hundreds of bags scattered about are primed for a comeback, because there are lessons even a year of awful press has not helped the industry learn. So what makes Canada’s airports and flights so unreliable? What could have been done to fix this? And will it really take no more than a busy week or a bad storm to send this country’s air travel into a tailspin?

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