Snowy and icy conditions grounded nearly all local flights this week, impacting hundreds of holiday passengers at one of the busiest times of the year
As the city was hammered with snow and ice this week, the local airport ground to a halt — stranding hundreds of travellers looking to fly in or out of the Sault during the holiday season.
Between Sunday and Friday morning, only one commercial flight managed to make it out of the city as dozens of flights from Air Canada, Porter Airlines and Bearskin Airlines were grounded due to inclement weather and dangerous runway conditions.
While several flights are scheduled to land today, it’s been a week like none other at the local airport.
“This is the first time in my 26 years that we’ve lost that many days,” said Terry Bos, president and CEO of the Sault Ste. Marie Airport Development Corporation.
“We’ve lost a day or two here and there from a storm, but never four days.”
Although plowing, sweeping and other efforts continued throughout the week, the thick layer of ice that coated the city also wreaked havoc on the airport runway, particularly as more and more snow and windy conditions came our way.
During icy conditions, workers apply a liquid chemical to clear up accumulated ice, but the weather made that process slow and difficult over the past five days.
“The wind out there hasn’t allowed us to effectively use chemical, which we would normally use to take the ice off the runway, but with the blowing — it just blows the chemical all over the place and does more damage than good,” Bos told SooToday.
“It’s been a battle against mother nature here for five days now.”
Although virtually all commercial flights have been grounded, Bos said that cargo and medevac flights have been able to continue, as they use smaller aircraft that can navigate the icy conditions.
Other northern Ontario airports — in North Bay, Sudbury and Timmins — also experienced difficulties, but they managed to resume normal operations by midweek while the Sault Ste. Marie airport continued to face unrelenting winter storms.
“All four of us northern airports were closed for essentially Monday into Tuesday,” he said.
“Wednesday, in town, we barely got any snow, but at the airport we got buried from 5 a.m. until about 2 p.m.”
Even today, with flights resuming, the city is under a snow squall warning.
Although the airport has lost several days, Bos said it was not for a lack of effort to get things up and running again.
“We’ve been attacking it throughout,” he said.
“We had all our guys on overtime. We had all our equipment in use. It wasn’t for lack of effort … that it happened — it was just the worst ice I think we’ve seen in 20 years.”
Porter Airlines told SooToday that it’s been a “challenging operating environment” across eastern Canada and parts of the U.S. over the past several days.
The airline’s flight this afternoon will be the first into the city since Dec. 29.
“We are hopeful the weather and runway conditions will remain within limits to continue planned operations today. Regular scheduled service is planned to begin tomorrow,” a spokesperson said in a statement to SooToday.
“We know that this is an important travel period for many people and we are doing everything possible to keep them moving safely.”
When flights are cancelled, Porter customers are automatically “reprotected” onto the next available flight. If that flight is beyond 48 hours away, “best efforts” are made to rebook customers on alternate airlines, the spokesperson said.
Similarly, Air Canada Jazz is resuming its local operations today, with additional flights added “to help move passengers who have felt the impact of these weather disruptions.”
“Passengers are advised to check the Air Canada Daily Travel Outlook on aircanada.com or the AC app for flight details before leaving for the airport,” said Teri Udle, director of communications.
“We do apologize to passengers and will be doing our utmost to get everyone to their destinations as soon as possible now that it is safe to do so.”
Were your travel plans thrown for a loop by the local flight cancellations? Please share your story at [email protected].
