Calgary International Airport II

[Cage]

Okay I see it now, three domestic aircraft arrived at 74/75/76 within 8am-8:45am time slot and then departed international or transborder. My information that i looked at initially had the domestic arrival gate assignments for tomorrow.

Thinking outside the box......

The reason for segregating domestic arrivals/departures from international (not transborder) departures is to provide both OSS (One Stop Security) and TWoV (Transit Without Visa). If there is no chance of OSS or TWoV departure connecting pax, then domestic and international departures can be comingled.

The first D concourse departure is not until 10am, PVR WS2312. The first arrival is not until 10:05 being AC585 from EWR. Finally AC9 from NRT arrives 10:30am. So lets say by 10am the D concourse departures hall must be locked down to international departure pax only.

International Duty Free needs a segregated international departure pax in order to be able to let pax leave the store with their purchase. If domestic and international pax are commingled, duty free purchases must be handed out at the gate after being cleared to board the aircraft.

My guesstimate is that WS 104/110/128 have a lot of international and USA connecting pax, especially since these flight connect into the 8 aircraft transborder/international departure bank. Gating these aircraft close to the international terminal would minimize the connection time and walking distance.

At 10am WS has the international departures concourse to themselves, save for a handful of AC10 pax who checkin and go through security 4.5 hours before departure. With D concourse to WS near exclusive use, I could see a plan whereby WS 104/110/128 pax disembark the aircraft to the concourse D departures. With 5-8 helpful WS staff to direct domestic arrival pax back through to C70 departures hall (going backwards through the Commissionaire station at gate C72/73) and to waiting YYCLink shuttles to take them back to concourse A. International connections would remain at gate 76 for the 10am to PVR. Transborder connections would be directed to the appropriate pathway for checkpoint E screening and USCBP formalities.

Your risk is that there are a few domestic pax that remain in concourse D area past the 10am cut off. A few intercom messages would get most peoples attention and the odd straggler would have to be seen by CBSA to explain themselves.

My final conclusion is that WS and the CAA are trialing a new configuration that would address some of WS concerns over the new international terminal being dissfunctional for WS operations and passengers. Picking a Tuesday before school lets out would lessen the downside risk of a major failure while still allowing for summer schedule operations.

[DoubleK]

What time does Edelweiss arrive/depart? I can see 35L (I think I got that right) arrivals from my desk.

[Tobuz]

Originally Posted by outoftheice

All I can say is I don't know who the Calgary Airport has working for them but they obviously have zero idea on how humans behave and haven't bothered to take 5 minutes to stand and observe passengers arriving in the customs hall during a busy international arrival period. A few observations....

. . .

Okay, rant over. That felt better.

1000% correct. And I concur with your rant! (I've ranted in a very similar way a number of times.)

That entry to the CBSA hall is far and away the most egregious design flaw in the whole building -- at least the "traveller" parts of the building's design. You've described it perfectly. When our brand new, cutting edge airport has a good number of inbounds at around the same time, that hall is chaos and the passenger experience (for rookies and non-Calgarians, at least) is awful.

I honestly don't know what led to the design problems. Many have suggested that it was due to arrogance on the part of CAA leadership -- a "we know better than our customers" attitude. That might be part of it, but my hunch is that the bigger culprits were the designers. Lots of designers are good at the structural and base building stuff -- the "interior architecture". Lots are good at aesthetics and making spaces look cool. Far, far too few actually understand human behaviour and how people will instinctively move in and use a space. That's a rare talent in corporate/institutional interior design. And then airports are a pretty unique behavioural situation. (Odd, then, that YYC went with a local design firm with no real airport experience.)

That arrivals area design probably looked great on paper. But entirely forgot that you'll have tired people, non-English (or French) speakers, once-in-a-lifetime-YYC-users ... all needing to separate themselves into different "queue categories" (ie arrivals/Cdn, arrivals/foreign, Nexus, and Connections) ... after a long walk from their plane ... and do it all immediately after turning a 90' corner into a big room packed with people. And to get to your correct queue, you'll probably need to cut across other queues of people.

And then there's the placement of all of those stupid scanner machines. You can see what they thought would happen -- walk forward to a machine, then a leisurely stroll forward to a nearby CBSA officer, then breeze on through to baggage. Massive misunderstanding of the crowds and how people would move before they planted those kiosks in the concrete. You'd hope they'd have modeled how people would flow through the space. If they did, they got it very, very wrong.

Now, arrivals at our shiny new YYC is a chaotic mess in the afternoons when all of the widebodies come in. But the building was supposed to be future-proofed for future passenger growth -- more routes, more carriers. If you're arriving in that 90-ish minute mid afternoon window (sans Nexus) you'd safely assume that YYC was already over capacity.

Sure, YYC and CBSA have tried to fix it. But the fixes that I've noticed aren't working very well and are pretty amateur. Some of the signs have been changed, but more 'ad hoc' than in a very smart or thoughtful way.

And my favourite part of the fix to the arrivals experience: now, as you approach the entry hall during busy times, those poor YYC guides have to stand there - in all of the din and chaos - trying to scream instructions at international visitors as they walk by. Yikes.

[Tobuz]

I just booked a YYC-MEX segment ... but I'm going United over IAH.

I wish I could have flown AM, both to experience it and to support the service.

Price was slightly better on AeroMexico, but - for me - the fact that it's a red eye is a dealbreaker. A short amount of low quality sleep before landing there, then no hotel check-in available until 9 hours later. Day 1 is shot, and I'm getting too old to recover from lack of sleep. I can't do it! (My United trip will take longer, but I leave in the morning and arrive that same afternoon -- fully rested.)

[suburbia]

Hainan's new Panda Dreamliner:
https://twitter.com/FlyYYC/status/877991261201879040

[Cage]

Originally Posted by Tobuz

I honestly don't know what led to the design problems.
......
That arrivals area design probably looked great on paper. But entirely forgot that you'll have tired people, non-English (or French) speakers, once-in-a-lifetime-YYC-users ... all needing to separate themselves into different "queue categories" (ie arrivals/Cdn, arrivals/foreign, Nexus, and Connections) ... after a long walk from their plane ... and do it all immediately after turning a 90' corner into a big room packed with people. And to get to your correct queue, you'll probably need to cut across other queues of people.

And then there's the placement of all of those stupid scanner machines. You can see what they thought would happen -- walk forward to a machine, then a leisurely stroll forward to a nearby CBSA officer, then breeze on through to baggage.

The CBSA primary inspection hall was designed with the principle that most of the triage and primary inspection line services would be handled at the kiosks. The secondary inspection hall is massive, quad-ripple the number of inspection stations.

Pax would do the data entry and the computer system would do most of the determination of whether the pax got sent to secondary. CBSA officers would quickly inspect the pax and maybe ask 1-2 followup questions. If anything seemed odd, the pax would be sent to secondary.

The CBSA screening officers hated getting pushed out by computerization, so they ask the same questions as the kiosk terminal as their method of interviewing the pax. In the screening officer defense, some of them were trained long ago when the same standard questions were used to determine the pax demeanor. They can't do their job without going through the same script. However most are just bitter at doing 20% more work with lower staff levels.

So in answer to your question about the line up between the kiosks and CBSA officer desks, its due to an intentional slow down by the PIL officers.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Cage

The CBSA primary inspection hall was designed with the principle that most of the triage and primary inspection line services would be handled at the kiosks. The secondary inspection hall is massive, quad-ripple the number of inspection stations.

Pax would do the data entry and the computer system would do most of the determination of whether the pax got sent to secondary. CBSA officers would quickly inspect the pax and maybe ask 1-2 followup questions. If anything seemed odd, the pax would be sent to secondary.

The CBSA screening officers hated getting pushed out by computerization, so they ask the same questions as the kiosk terminal as their method of interviewing the pax. In the screening officer defense, some of them were trained long ago when the same standard questions were used to determine the pax demeanor. They can't do their job without going through the same script. However most are just bitter at doing 20% more work with lower staff levels.

So in answer to your question about the line up between the kiosks and CBSA officer desks, its due to an intentional slow down by the PIL officers.

Problem is easily solved by hiring a bunch of summer students and keep the "real officers" hidden away in the secondary screening area.

[yyc_engineer]

Originally Posted by Cage

So in answer to your question about the line up between the kiosks and CBSA officer desks, its due to an intentional slow down by the PIL officers.

I never understood the excessive questioning when returning to Canada. Flying into Australia (Brisbane BNE) for the first time in April I was amazed that their Immigration is fully automated (for Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, Brits..) I didn't talk to a single human being. When handing the customs card to the Quarantine officer he quickly glanced at it and said "Ok". No questioning by anyone.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by yyc_engineer

I never understood the excessive questioning when returning to Canada.

The excessive questioning is caused by a number of factors:
1) Importation duties are assessed at excessively low levels in Canada. Canada has a $20 deminimus rule. In Europe and USA the equivalent is $800. The deminimus rule allows Customs officers the ability to not assess duties if the revenue amount is below the deminimus.
2) Byzantine importation restrictions that are set by other government agencies but imposed on CBSA. For example, the dairy industry wants a restriction on importing more than 20lbs of cheese. This is generated by the dairy supply management system. Most other countries either have an outright ban (e.g. fruit or veggies into Australia) or have really high limits on when the personal amount exemption cuts off.
3) The introduction to the criminal code that allows for prosecution in Canada for certain crimes committed in foreign countries has increased the amount of questioning by CBSA officers regarding activities of the tourist. These laws mostly impact around child exploitation that while noble in desired outcome are also near impossible to prosecute.

By a wide margin reason #1 causes most of the excessive banter with CBSA officers. However, Trump's NAFTA renegotiation might solve the problem. Border importation restrictions is one area Trump wants renegotiated. Apparently the Northern States are not like measures to reduce cross border shopping by Canadians. The concept of a really high deminimus rule is being considered by the Americans.

[PPAR]

Deminimus with the US will hopefully fall victim to NAFTA renegotiation. Online shopping has taken this from a minor irritant to a significant concern. It really should be set at a meaningful level, say $5 or $10K. I can have equipment shipped to small town Kalispel MT for significantly less than Calgary. There is really no excuse for this kind of thing in a free trade area.

[Tobuz]

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a pretty extensive ramping up of international inbound passenger screening requirements this afternoon ... and it appears to include U.S.-bound flights coming from Canada:

https://www.dhs.gov/aviation-security?utm_source=hp_slideshow&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=dhs_hp

The official announcement is - so far - pretty light on specifics, other than:
- much more intensive passenger screening,
- especially of all electronics being brought on board

CATSA at E concourse is already a mess at peak periods. And the security screening area in the new terminal was designed with no extra space. If this new directive requires more hand-screening or - down the road - any other hardware in addition to the current CATSA-Plus ... there simply isn't room! (In fact, the "Plus" screening machines already seem too big for the space, given the tight corners and silly queuing pattern. God help us if they need to add in more tables for hand searches or swab testing.)

Once this goes through, I can only imagine it's going to get much worse and much slower.

And the official CATSA position of "No NEXUS security line for Calgary transborder because passenger volumes don't warrant it" will undoubtedly stay ... meaning it's going to get worse for NEXUS members here before it gets better! More scrutiny of electronics might mean that some NEXUS advantages go away at other airports that have real NEXUS security lanes (like YYZ). And this probably gives CATSA way bigger issues to solve for than fixing the crappy passenger experience at YYC Transborder.

Sigh.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by Tobuz

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a pretty extensive ramping up of international inbound passenger screening requirements this afternoon ... and it appears to include U.S.-bound flights coming from Canada:

https://www.dhs.gov/aviation-security?utm_source=hp_slideshow&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=dhs_hp

Thanks for the information.

Overall there are strengths and weaknesses for the new paradigm of aviation security being advocated by the TSA.

On the good side:
- Adv Imaging Tech (telephone booth style detector) and CATSA Plus xray machines are exact equivalent to TSA systems.
- CATSA processes used at pre-clearance facilities are nearly identical to TSA. - Information sharing between Canada and USA is unparalleled.
Putting all these strengths together and Canada is well positioned to be the least impacted by the changes to USA preboard screening requirements.

On the bad side:
- The preboard security screening system really wants to be one size fits all. The one size fits all approach is driven by operator efficiency and the egalitarian nature of Canadian society.
- CATSA metrics that lack reality check. CATSA wants to see 250 pax per hour per CATSA Plus Screening lane. Similarly the stats for convention PBS lane is 160 pax/hour. Compare to TSA which looks to 90 pax/hour for conventional lane and 130pax/hour for their version of CATSA-Plus systems.
- We lack a sophisticated known traveller and terrorist watch list redress process. The six year old cannot be proven to be separate person from the terrorist with the same name.

With regard to YYC checkpoint E instance, there are quick win solutions that CATSA or GardWorld could implement nearly immediately.
- If the hand search requirements are onerous, the advantage is lost of having 8-12 screening officers holed up in the remote x-ray viewing room for a 3-4 lane operation. In this instance it is much better to review the bags onsite with a 1:1 lane to x-ray screener relationship, The extra staff can open up a new lane.
- My research indicates that Nexus and other trusted travellers are excluded from the onerous and new requirements. CATSA and Gardaworld would be better off re-instating the Nexus lane privileges with the new requirements.
- There are dormant conventional lanes with a full set of equipment. These are located at international to USA checkpoint (1 lane), domestic connections from international arrivals (1 lane), and extra lanes at checkpoints A and C (2 lanes). CATSA or GardaWorld could move these lanes into the empty space to open up additional lanes.

[casper]

What is it about the Calgary airport Authority that they do not the basic little things to address the environment. Specific refillable water bottles. Most other airport authorities get it.

Calgary not.

Past through the WestJet area recently. No water fill stations anywhere to be found including in the lounge. In the lounge they did have bottled Perrier water, but nothing in reusable containers. Saskatoon, Vancouver and Victoria all have their act together. I think even Edmonton has its act together.

[msmariner]

Originally Posted by casper

What is it about the Calgary airport Authority that they do not the basic little things to address the environment. Specific refillable water bottles. Most other airport authorities get it.

Calgary not.

Past through the WestJet area recently. No water fill stations anywhere to be found including in the lounge. In the lounge they did have bottled Perrier water, but nothing in reusable containers. Saskatoon, Vancouver and Victoria all have their act together. I think even Edmonton has its act together.

I recently flew through trans border and there were multiple refilling stations near the food court and water fountains at the far end by high number gates. I know domestic has water stations all over. Not sure why people keep beating this dead horse. They've listened and fixed the problem.

[casper]

Originally Posted by msmariner

I recently flew through trans border and there were multiple refilling stations near the food court and water fountains at the far end by high number gates. I know domestic has water stations all over. Not sure why people keep beating this dead horse. They've listened and fixed the problem.

Weird, never went to the food court, but I did not find them when I was looking last week.

[Cage]

AC has released schedule changes that confirm the up side to OGG going rouge 763. More rouge 763 to sun destinations, plus one route goes back to mainline.

Detailed from routesonline.

Calgary – Cancun eff 04NOV17 1 weekly 767 rouge service, replacing A319 in W16
Calgary – Huatulco eff 06NOV17 NEW 1 weekly 767 rouge service
Calgary – Los Cabos eff 29OCT17 NEW 1 weekly Mainline A320 service
Calgary – Puerto Vallarta eff 02NOV17 1 weekly 767 rouge service, replacing A319 in W16

Deets: http://www.routesonline.com//news/38/air...anada-rouge-w17-mexicocaribbean-changes/

So CUN, HUX, PVR go rouge 763. SJD goes mainline in new to the terminal service (I'm sure SJD and HUX have been served before by AC or CP). Good capacity increase all round.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by Cage

The AC YYC-OGG schedule is Su, W, F with a full day of flying for the aircraft. This opens up possibilities for AC to base a rouge 763 in YYC for the winter. Way back in the day AC used to operate YYC-MBJ on Mondays. They could do YYC-CUN on Sat and YYC-LAS on Thursday. The aircraft would return to YVR base on Thursday as then both the LAS morning flights from YYC & YVR would be 763 equipment. Tuesdays would be a non flying day for the YYC 763.

Putting one Rouge 763 into YYC for the winter will seriously screw with the competition, all of WS, TS, and WG will be impacted by the above schedule if it were to come to fruition.

Not in the habit of quoting myself, but I called the rouge winter plans last month.

[lubicon]

Hux going Rouge 767 is going to be tempting for me to look at but the seat pitch is going to be a significant driver in my choice as well. I've heard 319 is brutal and would not want to be on a longer flight if it were similar.

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by lubicon

Hux going Rouge 767 is going to be tempting for me to look at but the seat pitch is going to be a significant driver in my choice as well. I've heard 319 is brutal and would not want to be on a longer flight if it were similar.

I always check SeatGuru before booking flights now. If the times and prices are similar, there's no reason for me not to book the plane with the better leg room.

[Canadian74]

Originally Posted by lubicon

Hux going Rouge 767 is going to be tempting for me to look at but the seat pitch is going to be a significant driver in my choice as well. I've heard 319 is brutal and would not want to be on a longer flight if it were similar.

The Rouge 767 is fine legroom wise. Have done YVR-HNL a few times.

However no IFE screen (you have to use your phone/tablet/laptop, which is really not convenient - no stand provided for phone/tablet, can't use it during meal time, also no moving map).