TORONTO (Corriere Canadese / exclusive preview) – Airports, you know, are in chaos. First, the anti-Covid restrictions were “blamed”, then – once those measures were relaxed – it emerged that the real problem was the shortage of staff at airports and airlines. To understand the real situation, we decided to go “behind the scenes” through a young Canadian airline: Flair Airlines, an independent ultra-low-cost company born in 2017 and led by Stephen Jones. We asked him, the President and CEO of Flair Airlines, a series of questions, starting with those necessary to know his company.

Mr. Jones, what is Flair Airlines?

Flair Airlines is Canada’s first, independent low-fare airline. We fly to more than 30 destinations from Toronto and Montreal (among many others in Canada) to places ranging from Vancouver to Charlottetown and Halifax, as well as New York, Chicago, Florida and Mexico. Our fares are very, very affordable, compared to our competitors — half as expensive. We don’t think it should cost so much money to fly between Montreal and Toronto or Ottawa to Charlottetown for example. Corriere Canadese readers should absolutely visit flyflair.com to see for themselves.

 – What is your airline experience?

I’ve worked in airlines for a long time, first with Air New Zealand and later with Wizz Air in Europe, who your readers will no doubt be familiar with as it is a major low-cost airline in Europe. Wizz flies to more than a dozen airports in Italy from Torino to Sicily. I’m bringing that experience  — the low-cost model — to Canada, and we have the newest, greenest airplanes to do exactly that. Flair Airlines is a Canadian airline headquartered in Edmonton but with major operations in Waterloo, Toronto and Montreal.

– Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen troubling images from Toronto’s Pearson Airport and stopping the restrictions does not seem to have improved the situation. Is the problem therefore linked to the shortage of personnel in the airlines? Is it true that the level of personnel has remained the same – at its lowest – of the pandemic? The companies knew there would be an “assault” to the airports this summer: why didn’t they get organized?

I can’t speak for other airlines or Pearson Airport but for Flair Airlines, we’ve got a huge volume of passengers that want to get out and explore Canada but it’s harder now than it was to get workers at airports generally — and that goes for everyone from porters, baggage handlers, security agents, gate agents, flight attendants and pilots. Many left the industry during the pandemic, and it does take time to ramp up hiring. I would say that everyone involved from the airlines to the airports has tried very hard to get passengers through security and on to flights as fast as possible. Everyone is trying very hard to adapt to the new passenger volumes.

– How has your airline organized itself in a situation like this? Have you also had problems (flight cancellations, baggage delays, etc.)?

At Flair Airlines, we have one, single type of airplane to reduce complexity in our operation. Our pilots can fly our planes, and any one of them. Our crew get very familiar with the aircraft they see every day. We try to be laser-focused on simplifying our operations so that we can offer the lowest fares in Canada. But, we do operate within Canadian and international regulations. Our pilots and crew simply are not permitted to fly beyond their duty hours, and if there are delays — and there have been — sometimes we need to swap in new crew. That’s not easy to do. We encourage our passengers to get to the airport earlier than they used to. Yes, there are long lines, but we have tried to make sure our planes wait for our passengers.

– Are there any federal government responsibilities in this chaos?

There are many, many key pieces and a lot teamwork involved in making air travel work smoothly around the world. And, people will remember that the system sometimes would get strained, even before the pandemic, and that didn’t matter if it was at Milan, Bari or Pearson! I’ve seen it all. Now, however, everyone is very focused on solving the problems we see in Canada, and I think those problems will soon pass as the airports and airlines hire more staff, in all facets of the operation. As it stands, the lines at Pearson Airport are not long every single day, every hour of the day. Passengers should know there will be long lines in the mornings and late afternoon, but flights in the middle of the day might have very reasonable lines. That will balance itself out over time. I would say to travelers to be patient, stay calm, and know that the people you meet at the airport from the start until you exit at your destination are working very long hours to make everything work. And behind the scenes too. I know Minister Alghabra — who is a Toronto Member of Parliament and flies between Ottawa and Toronto for his work — is very much aware of the challenges these days and he and his teams are working hard to make travel operate more smoothly.