Category: Canada

‘Reclaiming the Sky’ Resiliency Project Winners Announced on Sept. 11 Anniversary

Posted on | by ScottElmore

Even 22 years later, the stories of esteemed aviation leaders and their response to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks continue to provide learning opportunities for the benefit of future airport industry professionals.

As we hold space today to remember those we lost and honor those who helped in the aftermath on September 11, we are proud to honor the legacy of so many aviation leaders through the “Reclaiming the Sky Resiliency Project,” an essay contest organized by the Human Resiliency Institute at Fordham University and ACI-NA to engage up-and-coming airport industry leaders.

Through this year’s essay contest, young professionals from across the airport industry were invited to read the stories of aviation heroes profiled in the book, “Reclaiming the Sky,” by Tom Murphy, and participate in a workshop with aviation mentors to explore lessons about resiliency.

Twenty-five openings were allotted for the program. Participants had the chance to learn about the stories of airport and airline employees who went to work in New York, Boston, and Washington, DC, on the morning of 9/11 expecting a normal day, only to find that “just doing my job” was to become the creed of heroes. The stories, including the powerful teachings from Susan M. Baer, the General Manager of Newark Liberty International Airport on 9/11, tell how the front-line aviation employees responded with courage, selflessness, and resiliency that day and in the weeks and months that followed to rebuild their lives and reclaim hope – while helping to get the country moving again.

This year’s winners were Michael Gyan, Project Manager, John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport; Salvatore Mendola, Director, Brands and Concept Development, Areas USA; and Deborah Blass, Arup, Associates, Security and Risk. Their award-winning essays can be read at ReclaimingTheSky.com.

In addition to cash prizes, these three winners will also be recognized for their achievements during the 2023 ACI-NA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Long Beach, CA, on October 3.

The young professionals who participated in the 2023 include Deborah Blass, Arup; Carey Metcalfe, Lee County PA; LaTarryl Hall, City of Charlotte; Ryan Thomas, Parsons Group; Adam Ussher, Dane County Airport; Anna Phillips, Columbus Airport; Michael Hamilton, Savannah Airport Commission; Michael Gyan, John C. Munro Hamilton Airport; Juan Martinez, Chicago Dept of Aviation; Antonette Chambers, Clarksville Airport; Kendall Griswold, GSP Airport; Arjun Nair, Syracuse Airport; Jimmy Vazques, San Diego Airport; Aireyanna Kennedy, Syracuse Airport; Benjamin Torres, San Diego Airport; James Gerrald, Jacobs; Ana Zivanovic, San Francisco Airport; Esther Chitsinde, HDR; Christopher Liese, Munich Airport USA Holding; Anandhi Mahalingam, Transsolutions; Kristin Jewell, Baton Rouge Airport; Julie Seglem, Areas USA; Madison Strong, Tulsa Airport; Roeland Visser, InterVISTAS; Jeff Taylor, Jacksonville Airport, Salvatore Mendola, Areas USA; Brooke Bowman, Areas USA.

Judges for the essay competition were aviation industry leaders Cedric Fulton, Virginia Buckingham, Lysa Leiponis, Eileen Ammiano, John Duval, Kathy Denker, Debbie Roland and Jennifer Juul.

For more information, visit ReclaimingTheSky.com. For aviation companies looking to participate in the expansion in 2024, contact Tom Murphy at Tom@edge4vets.org.

’60 Minutes’ Correspondent Scott Pelley: Aviation is a Miracle

Posted on | by ScottElmore

During the 2022 ACI-NA Annual Conference in Minneapolis, Alessio Olivetti caught up with Scott Pelley, the 60 Minutes correspondent and 2022 annual conference keynote, who shared his experience as tireless traveler and long-time journalist.

 

AO: You travel all around the world. It’s safe to say you’re a frequent traveler. What’s the most memorable airport experience have you ever had?

SP: My most memorable experience would have been at the very beginning of COVID, when thousands of people in the United States were dying every day.

I was covering COVID, and I was flying through Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. I got off the plane and I was the only person in the terminal. Everything was closed. There were Texas State troopers clearing every plane and taking down the contact information for every passenger who came off.

I could hear the soles of my shoes clacketing on the floor. I was literally by myself walking through Houston Intercontinental, which I came through many times surrounded by tens of thousands of people in the terminal.

It was just such a shocking, remarkable experience to understand better in an airport than anywhere else the effects the COVID was having and would continue to have on the national economy. If Houston Intercontinental is empty of people, the economy has stopped, you can tell.

 

AO: You wanted to become an astronaut when you were a child. The U.S. has been the cradle of the aerospace industry for a century. Why are people fascinated in stories about aviation and lately about space tourism?

SP: People are still fascinated about the courage required to leave the Earth and fly beyond the atmosphere. Even though we have been watching that happen in the United States since 1957, the year I was born by the way, people are still fascinated about the images coming back from space, our astronauts on the International Space Station for example. And now in this all-new world of private companies launching people in space we are beginning to imagine, ‘Hey, it could be me, I could go too!’

In terms of aviation, there is just something about flying. I should be the most jaded airline passenger at all times. I’m a multi-million miler on many different airlines, but I’m still thrilled when I get on a plane and it leaves the ground. It never gets old.

I was on the A380 the other day, which is the size of an apartment building. The engineering involved in building something like an A380 or a 747-8 is a miracle, getting that thing off the ground almost effortlessly. Engineering is far beyond me, but I have so much respect for it.

There is another thing about aviation. People complain insensitively about their flight being delayed, canceled, or their luggage being lost. I get all of that, it’s very frustrating.

But I would argue that aviation today is a miracle. You can literally be anywhere on this Earth in 24 hours. Imagine such a thing.

I’m amazed at the way the airline industry runs all around the world with thousands of operations every day, and virtually accident-free. It’s one of the greatest achievements of man.

 

AO: What’s your favorite interview if you have one?

SP: Now I have a new favorite interview and that’s the one I did in April with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

I’ve never met a leader of a country who has impressed me more. The courage that he took to stay in Kyiv when the Russians were coming at him in three different directions. And when he walked outside into the courtyard and filmed a video message on his phone.

That moment galvanized the country to resist. It was on the knife’s edge of collapsing until he walked out and said, ‘We’re not going anywhere, we’re all staying here.’

Just an incredibly courageous and impressive man who forced the Russians to retreat from Kyiv and from Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv. He has punched way above his weight leading his people so courageously.

At the end of the interview, I said ‘Mr. President, we wish you all the luck in the world.’ He broke into English saying, ‘Half of it, I think we need half of it.’

A man with 44 million people on his shoulders and he is still having a sense of humor.

Looking Forward One Year In

Posted on | by ScottElmore

By Kevin M. Burke, President and CEO, ACI-NA

Now at the one-year milestone of widespread travel and local restrictions to help stop the spread of COVID-19, we are reminded that this past year has been incredibly challenging for so many, both personally and professionally.  While so much has changed in our industry as we continue to respond to this prolonged crisis, airports remain fully committed to ensuring the health, safety and security of the traveling public and airport workers.

Although North American airports quickly mobilized to protect travelers and workers, the significant drop in passenger traffic has wiped out record growth in air travel and decimated the airport industry’s financial outlook. In 2019, more than 1.9 billion people traveled through North American airports.  At the start the pandemic, air travel dropped by upwards of 95 percent.  ACI-NA estimates that the pandemic will cost U.S. airports more than $40 billion and Canadian airports more than $5.5 billion — a number that will only grow if the pandemic drags on.

There is no shortage of issues confronting the industry.  Early in the pandemic, ACI-NA created the Airport Industry Recovery Advisory Panel to provide the industry with valuable recommendations on immediate term, medium term and long-term measures to address the public health concerns and assist airports coming out of the pandemic.

These initiatives, ranging from restoring confidence in air travel to implementing a wide variety of mitigation strategies, are fostering a completely new level of collaboration across aviation industry stakeholders.  We each have a role to play, and the value of partnership has never been more important. As we think about the future, airports leaders should remain cognizant of the ever-evolving airport business model.  Our ongoing relationships with airline partners, concessionaires, retailers, service providers, and government regulators are essential to our continued success.

ACI-NA led the charge in an effort secure $20 billion in immediate financial relief for the U.S. airport industry.  We are immensely grateful from the strong support of the U.S. government for airports and their concession partners as they remain open and fully operational though this crisis.

Thanks to the proactive leadership of our team in Ottawa, Canada’s airports received some of the only sector specific COVID support in Canada, with some CAD $1.4 billion through ground rent waivers and deferrals, wage subsidy, and infrastructure funding.  However, as the situation in Canada grows more dire each day, our work continues in Canada to secure addition relief to meaningfully address the financial challenges Canada’s airports face.

One of the silver linings to come out of this pandemic is the rapid innovation and the deployment of new technologies to allow for a seamless – and contactless – passenger experience.  While most of this progress had seemed years away, the pandemic has accelerated this effort to turn our industry’s aspirations into reality.  One thing is clear: the passenger experience will look different than it did before. It is going to be better.

Airports have taken unprecedented actions to limit the spread of COVID-19.  As the eternal optimist, I am confident there is a light at the end of the tunnel and much to be done when we emerge from it. From enhancing airport sustainability and resiliency to taking full advantage of automation and big data to enabling a new generation of aircraft to operate at our airports, we face myriad opportunities to make a difference in the aviation industry. All of these opportunities require a ready and able workforce. We look forward to working with the industry to develop training that will help current airport workers adapt as well as prepare the next generation to make their mark on aviation.

Thank you for the continued trust you place in ACI-NA and the immensely talented team here at your trade association.  I continue to be proud of our team, our members, and the important work we do on behalf of North American airports.

 

Canada’s Airport Capital Assistance Program Needs Reform – Urgently

Posted on | by rrudishlaning@airportscouncil.org

By Chris Phelan, Vice President, Industry and Government Affairs, Canadian Airports Council

The Canadian Airports Council has joined with several other Canadian associations that represent local and regional airports to send a national, united message to the government of Canada: Reform the Airport Capital Assistance Program (ACAP) to provide more funding and modern criteria that better matches needs and realities of small airport capital or run the risk of air services declining for Canadians living in small communities.

ACAP was created in 1994 as a companion to the National Airports Policy (NAP), which handed over the operations of the majority of airports from the federal government to private sector airport authorities or in the case of most small airports, local interests. ACAP recognizes that although the intent of the NAP was to ensure that airports would be both self-governing and self-financing, small airports did not have the critical mass of passengers to generate enough funds to pay for capital improvements related to safety. ACAP is intended to fund financial projects related to safety, asset protection and operating cost reduction. Overall, there are approximately 200 regional/local airports in the country that are eligible for ACAP funding.

Fast forward 25 years and ACAP has become an invaluable source of funding for the airports that are eligible for it. But, gaps and issues with the program have not been addressed and are becoming more acute.

In the last quarter century airports have seen air demand – and complexity – soar. Today, Canada’s airports are expected to serve passengers with increasingly diverse needs and must fulfill new safety requirements that have changed and become more complex over time. To provide context, just one runway rehabilitation project covered by ACAP costs about $12 million, almost one-third of the total ACAP funding envelope. Yet ACAP funding has not risen since 2000, nor has the program adapted to the changing air service environment.

While there have been program improvements in recent years, funding has failed to keep pace with demand for ongoing safety and security maintenance. ACAP receives $38.5 million in federal funding a year, an amount that has not changed in 18 years. The funding shortfall is exacerbated by the fact that Canada’s airports also face a host of new regulatory requirements in the coming years that have not been addressed in any way by the government program.

In order to be eligible for ACAP funding an airport must:

  • Not be owned or operated by the federal government;
  • Meet certification requirements; and
  • Offer year-round regularly scheduled commercial passenger service.

Further, in each of the three previous calendar years, the airport must have handled at least 1,000 year-round regularly scheduled commercial passengers, although airports designated as a “Remote Airport” under the NAP, do not need to meet this requirement.

Not all airports are funded equally. ACAP funding is pegged to the level of airport activity. For example, an airport with fewer than 50,000 commercial passengers receives 100 percent funding for projects. That number decreases by increments of 5 percent for every increase of 15,000 passengers. When an airport reaches 525,000 passengers, the funding is listed at 0 percent.

The current categories for ACAP funding are:

  1. Safety-related airside projects such as rehabilitation of runways, taxiways, aprons, associated lighting, visual aids, sand storage sheds, utilities to service eligible items and related site preparation costs, including directly associated environmental costs, aircraft firefighting equipment and equipment shelters necessary to maintain the airport’s level of protection as required by regulation.
  2. Heavy airside mobile equipment and safety-related items such as runway snowblowers, runway snowplows, runway sweepers, spreaders, winter friction testing devices, and heavy airside mobile equipment shelters.
  3. Air terminal building/groundside safety-related considerations such as sprinkler systems, asbestos removal, and barrier-free access.

As it stands, ACAP is underfunded, overly complex, highly prescriptive, suffers from a lack of transparency, and has not kept pace with changes to regulatory and weather safety equipment needs.

Working with its counterparts, Atlantic Canada Airports Association, Airport Management Council of Ontario, Réseau québécois des aéroports, BC Aviation Council, Manitoba Aviation Council and the Saskatchewan Aviation Council, the CAC is working to develop a set of recommendations to the government on how ACAP may be improved. This coalition believes that we are at a critical time for airports. Given the above-mentioned changes, adjustments need to be made to ACAP to make it more responsive and useful to those that rely on the program.

If ACAP funding kept pace with inflation, the annual budget for 2019 would be approximately $56 million.

Unfortunately, even if the government tried to catch up by raising the program level to $56 million to match inflation, ACAP would still be underfunded because new safety requirements will be putting even more pressure on the funding envelope. These new regulations are neither minor nor cheap. They include upgrades to accessibility, changes to the Aerodromes Standards and Recommended Practices and the Accessible Canada Act, as well as changes to Global Reporting Format/Takeoff and Landing Performance Assessment (GRF/TALPA) and new Runway End Safety Area (RESA) requirements. RESA alone will cost Canada’s small airports at least $165 million to fully implement. The pressure is on ACAP to fund these new initiatives, but it doesn’t have the financial resources or mechanisms in place to handle its existing commitments, let alone these new requirements.

To complicate matters further, airports are facing new challenges that were not even imagined in 1994. These include the impact of climate change, which causes changes in storm patterns and freeze/thaw cycles that place additional strain on equipment. ACAP must stay current with new needs by adopting a new forward-thinking dynamic program design that can account for and adapt to climate and other factors associated with the geographical location of the airport.

Make accessing the program simpler, more transparent and more predictable

Based on member and industry experience with ACAP, the CAC has determined that ACAP criteria need to be modernized. Runway length and passenger volumes are not appropriate measures for equipment requirements. The amount of precipitation should be a factor in determining the size of a plow eligible (or other type equipment) for funding. An airport in southern Ontario has different needs than one in Northern BC, and so forth. One size does not fit all, especially when it relates to transportation infrastructure.

Moreover, the complexity of the application process is a challenge in itself. Airports go through an extensive consultation process with Transport Canada staff regarding needs, eligibility parameters, thresholds and airport conditions and also discuss the likelihood of being considered for funding if a project were submitted. The result is some category level 2 projects and most of category level 3 projects are being pushed further and further into the future.

In fact, in the program’s 25 years of existence, and having funded almost 1000 projects, only 18 of those projects have been category 3. This inequity of funding approvals is now shaping behavior. Recognizing the low probability of receiving funding for a category 3 project, airports are simply not applying for those projects. Ultimately this gives the government a false impression of need – airports are not applying, therefore, there is not demand. Meanwhile, the reverse is true and with changes to accessibility regulation and legislation, this need will only be more pronounced.

While the CAC recognizes that Transport Canada has made efforts to improve the ACAP application process when consulting companies offer services to help airports prepare applications, the process is overly complicated.

The coalition will be conducting its research and developing its recommendations over the coming months. If this year’s federal budget doesn’t address ACAP funding, given the time horizons and realities of the 2019 election cycle, the group is hoping to have its input considered and implemented for Budget 2020.

In the meantime, the CAC will be more visible with our asks of the political parties as they compete for votes in the 2019 election. In fact, one of the main asks of all political parties is to increase funding for small airport infrastructure programs for safety and security.