Menace of aviation safety hits hard in the easy-going Canadian Arctic

Time:2011-09-14 Browse:50 Author:RISINGSUN

HOW much safety can one afford is the rising cry of the Canadian Far North where aviation is a way of life and there are few roads - or cars and trucks to use them.crack

For air customers Nunavut, the vast territory of the eastern Canadian Arctic, which includes Baffin Island, the costs of aviation have risen dramatically, reports Nunatsiaq Online.


Airlines must also now obtain special passes for employees who work on the airstrip ramp, even in the smallest airports in Nunavut.


"I can have a teeny little base in the North where I need a guy on the ramp and it might take weeks before we can get the proper security pass," said Tracey Medve, president of Canadian North airlines.


"In a base of five people, where one can`t go on the ramp, there`s now 20 per cent of my employees who can`t go on the ramp," Ms Medve said.


Canadian North argues that the Arctic lacks the facilities to do cargo security checks considered normal in the south because of a large amount of air freight and the small number of cargo customers, who will be "inordinately burdened by having to cover the costs of that."


The challenge is to balance security against reality, she said. "I guess the question always is how safe can we afford to be? You could be 100-per cent sure nothing would happen relative to an airplane only if you never left the ground, so that`s not a practical solution," Ms Medve said.


"Air travellers must now show an identification card with a photo, not easy in a place where many lack drivers` licences. They must also ensure that their reservations are made in the same name that appears on their photo ID card, a challenge when the spelling of Inuit [Eskimo] names in English can vary wildly.".


As well, travellers must show up for flights earlier and be prepared to go through security checks when heading to or from the south.


Gone is the easy-going tradition of the Canadian bush pilot. "On board, they won`t be invited up to the cockpit when the plane is in the air, and airplane meals often don`t come with knives," says the report.


Northern airlines have been hit with a long list of new expenses, such as the required purchase of bullet-proof cockpit doors for every aircraft and the payment of higher landing fees to help cover security improvements at airports.


The government also introduced new air traveller security charges, which now amount to C$7.12 (US$7.14) one way and up to C$14.25 per round trip.


Insurance rates have skyrocketed, as well, and "any time you pay money to a third party it cuts into your bottom line," she said.


In the years after 9-11, security screenings also started to cause havoc in northern airports, like those in Iqaluit or Yellowknife, which were not built for the new required equipment or the line-ups of people waiting to go through security.


"If you look at the northern airports and what they were designed for, they were never designed for that kind of bottleneck," Ms Medve said. "I think it impacts the northern carriers more substantially because of the facility shortcomings."


Canadian North was also obliged to adjust its schedules, to allow for security measures in Iqaluit and Yellowknife. At these airports, passengers must send their hand baggage through an x-ray machine and then walk through a metal detector, along with an explosive check and possible body search, before they`re allowed to travel south. Their checked bags must also be scanned before being loaded on to a plane heading south.


This means passengers travelling by jet from Cambridge Bay to Edmonton must disembark to go through security in Yellowknife - and their bags have to be offloaded for scanning - before continuing south.


"So the airplane sits for a time," she said. "There`s a cost somewhere for all that."crackcrack