Vancouver Airport invests $40M in plan to avoid travel chaos during extreme weather

Vancouver International Airport is investing $40 million to ensure what happened during the 2022 holiday season does not happen again.

The money will go towards new staff, training, more communication, better leverage technology and investing in additional equipment to keep more aircraft moving and passengers informed.

Officials said the main factor of the holiday mess was passenger and airline demand exceeding processing capacity due to winter weather conditions.

1:59 YVR CEO on using weather data to improve airport operations

Trouble at the airport began the week before Christmas when an intense snowstorm grounded planes and resulted in a massive wave of delays and cancellations with lengthy ripple effects.

Some passengers were left stranded in their aircraft for hours, while others were stranded at the airport for days or separated from their bags for weeks.

“While the review confirms our safety promise was kept, it shows that our customer service commitment was not,” Vancouver Airport Authority CEO Tamara Vrooman said in a Monday release.

“Passengers clearly told us that, while they recognize aviation is a complex ecosystem of different partners and players, they want YVR to take a leading role in providing more information, better access to front-line staff, and other improvements in times of extreme travel disruption — this action plan provides our roadmap for doing just that.”

1:11 Passengers stuck on tarmac at YVR due to weather delays

The airport will have five key focus areas with a total of 25 supporting actions.

This will include the installation of new, real-time weather monitoring equipment, new gate protocols to ensure arriving aircraft can deplane passengers within 30 minutes of taxiing off the runway, and additional winter weather equipment and de-icing fluid storage capacity to meet the new realities of sustained, extreme weather events.

The full report can be read on the airport’s website.

2:10 YVR warns passengers about travel delays

• YVR warns passengers about travel delays
• B.C. snow storm cancels flights at Vancouver’s airport, passengers stuck on tarmac for hours
• Frustration and chaos at YVR after flights temporarily suspended
• Travel slowly resumes at YVR following mass flight delays, cancellations from B.C. snowstorm
• ‘Unprecedented’ chaos at Vancouver International Airport
• Snow creates unprecedented chaos at YVR
• Vancouver International Airport resumes travel, limits international arrivals following snowstorm
• Chaos continues at YVR in wake of snowstorm
• YVR CEO silent during chaos
• Stranded at YVR this Christmas

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