Federal Transportation Minister Jean Lapierre, who called Tuesday's fatality-free airplane incident at Pearson a miracle, was labelled a hypocrite by a union official because his ministry has recommended that Canada reduce its ratio of flight attendants to passengers.
"Let's stop calling this a miracle and say that the crew did their jobs," CUPE researcher Richard Balnis said. CUPE represents most of Canada's flight attendants.
Currently, Canadian law requires one flight attendant for every 40 passengers. The international standard is one attendant for every 50 seats. Australia retains the highest flight attendant to passenger ratio, at 1 to 36.
In 2003, Transport Canada drafted a risk assessment that stated the 1-to-50 ratio was acceptable. That assessment was studied in a Notice of Proposed Amendment to the Canadian Aviation Regulations in April, 2004.
At yesterday afternoon's news conference at the offices of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, Mr. Lapierre said he was satisfied with French safety regulations, which follow the 1-to-50 seat ratio. "I have had requests [from airlines]to lower the number of attendants and we've been resisting," he said, adding that "every study that I have seen says that there is no safety issue.
"Unions have been pushing on this issue and we've been discussing that with the transport committee of the House of Commons," Mr. Lapierre said.
According to Transport Canada documents from April, 2004, WestJet had formally asked to operate flights of 125 passengers with three flight attendants between 1996 and 1999. The government denied the requests on the grounds that such an arrangement would "fail to ensure an equivalent level of safety."
Mr. Balnis has been fighting the proposed change to Canadian law for the past several years.
"[The ministry]is all into risk management now. . . . We're calling it risky management," he said.
French law required only six flight attendants be on board Air France Flight 358, although 10 attendants and two pilots were present when the plane overshot runway 24L at Pearson International Airport. The 297 passengers on the plane got off in under two minutes.
Mr. Balnis said he believes the extra flight attendants made the difference between a miracle and a disaster.
Yet he said the ministry is "in the process of reducing the number of flight attendants on the system."
While the quick work of the flight crew and emergency service personnel was praised yesterday, others said the layout of Pearson is problematic and may have impeded evacuation efforts.
An executive at a major Canadian airport, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said yesterday that the layout at the Toronto airport, particularly near the ravine where the plane ended up, is a problem. "A creek and an [average-sized]overrun is not a good thing."
He saluted Toronto airport officials for their performance after the accident, but said it was a miracle nobody was killed.
Yet flying -- and landing -- remain safe.
Gunther Matschnigg, senior vice-president of safety, operations and infrastructure for the International Air Transport Association, said overshoots involving major airlines -- even those that lead to no injuries or damage to airplanes -- are very rare, especially in Canada and other Western countries. He said he doesn't remember any in Canada in more than a year. "It doesn't happen too often," he said.
Globally, however, overshoots are not rare, says Gunnar Kuepper, chief of operation with Emergency and Disaster Management Inc. in Los Angeles. He said overshoots occur at least once a week worldwide, usually on domestic flights when pilots are in a hurry.
The Transportation Safety Board was unable yesterday to provide statistics on the frequency of airplanes overshooting runways.