BC Ferries is in “great shape” for a busy holiday season with 152 extra sailings scheduled, according to its CEO.
Nicolas Jimenez said about 40 per cent of its available reservation spaces were still free as of Tuesday, and after a “ton of inspections” on its Coastal-class ferries, the company is “very confident” in the condition of those ships in the water.
“The reality is, many of our vessels are at or nearing end of life, so we do daily maintenance, we do annual maintenance programs… We are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on these vessels to keep them in tip-top shape,” he said.
The comment comes as one major vessel — the Coastal Renaissance — remains in repair, and another, the Coastal Celebration, takes over its sailings. The Coastal Celebration was also taken out for repairs over the summer.
It means there is no vessel “on standby” over the holiday period.
“The reality is, in our system, we’re always going to have challenges with resilience until we can bring more vessels into the fleet, and that’s obviously what we announced in the last week or so with the investment that we’re going to be making in front of Island-class ferries,” Jimenez said.
The company has also struggled with staffing shortages, which were responsible for roughly four in 10 cancellations last year, according to a BC Ferries report. Earlier this year, the B.C. government announced it would start fining the company next April for sailings cancelled due to crew shortages.
BC Ferries went on a hiring spree in 2023, bringing in some 1,200 new employees, four new vice-presidents and three new operating divisions.
Nevertheless, Jimenez said staffing shortages are still possible over the holidays, because “life happens to people — people get sick, family members get injured, have to go to the hospital.”
“We definitely have the staffing levels we need to run our vessels over the holiday period,” he said. “What I do know is that we need to continue to build more resilience, particularly in the licensed officer category.”
That category includes engineers, deckhands, the bridge crew, regulated positions that prevent a ferry from sailing if an adequate number of those staff aren’t present.
BC Ferries is currently recruiting for those jobs in Ukraine and is turning to the Philippines, the CEO said. It is also keeping an eye on Panama as a potential market for new staff.
At Swartz Bay in Victoria, sailing delays had already started to frustrate some passengers on Friday morning.
A replacement crew member was needed on the Coastal Celebration, which ran about an hour late from its 7:45 a.m. sailing to Tsawwassen in Delta.
BC Ferries also posted on social media that a service outrage with its payment processing vendor had led to fleetwide disruptions related to card transactions. The issue, however, was resolved in less than an hour.