BC Ferries is gearing up for its busiest part of the year, adding more sailings and staff starting Thursday.
The ferry service is still warning, however, that cancelations may occur and should be expected.
“We’ve done a lot to ensure smooth sailing this summer, but we need to be prepared that not all ships will sail all of the time,” said BC Ferries president and CEO Nicolas Jimenez.
“Even though we have more people, we are short back-up staff in key positions to cover unexpected absences.”
An additional five ferries have been added to service routes between Metro Vancouver, Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast and the Southern Gulf Islands. These vessels, which will require hundreds of additional crew members to operate, will be providing more than 4,700 extra sailings over a three-month period.
BC Ferries expects to move nearly 2.6 million vehicles and almost 7 million passengers through Sept 5.
Back-up crews for the Swartz Bay and Nanaimo route are especially thin, according to BC Ferries, which means even just one or two crew member absences can result in a canceled sailing.
Last year, between June, July and August, BC Ferries was forced to cancel more than 300 sailings due to crew shortages, which is 0.7 per cent of all sailings during that period.
“The issues we’re facing are complex and while we’re hiring more people, boosting training budgets and cross-training staff so they can be re-deployed in areas of greatest need, getting to long-term reliability and sustainability will take time,” said Jimenez.
To help curb staffing issues, BC Ferries said it has hired more than 1,200 staff in the last year, which include 140 recently recruited professional mariners, 70 of which are from Ukraine.
BC Ferries launched a new app in the spring to make travel easier by allowing customers to make bookings, manage trips and monitor service alerts.