Overhauling the GTAA

Anyone who tried to fly out of Pearson Airport last week likely had a frustrating experience. A temporary shutdown due to frigid temperatures left thousands stranded and now some municipal leaders say it’s time for a change at the Greater Toronto Airport Authority.

Some municipal leaders are calling for more transparency from the GTAA.

After the ground stop last Tuesday brought on by cold weather left some travelers waiting on planes for hours before getting to their gate. Long wait times at baggage claim and thousands of others stranded. The GTAA had said at the time that the extreme cold temperatures which had dropped well below minus 25 made it difficult and unsafe to operate equipment that services planes on the runway.

The GTAA is made up of 3 board members from the provincial and feds. Five municipally appointed members from Halton, Peel, Durham, York and Toronto. And 7 other members from the community and professional groups. The Durham region chairman has said publicly the GTAA board could use greater representation from municipalities.

Wednesday we spoke with Halton Regional Chair Gary Carr. He says he is mostly concerned about the GTAA’s lack of communication during the crisis. “In this day and age you’ve got to have good websites, you’ve to to use social media. You have to have good call centres. That’s what we do in the region. We have a 311 call centre. We have a good webpage during any situations like this. We also use social media twitter, Facebook and so on. And so the Airport Authority in a city like Toronto which is a world class city unfortunately when it came to communications they were not world class. We’d like to see them come in, do a report to council. They usually come in about once a year. And then we’d like to see some of the changes.”

Carr says he’ll be meeting with GTAA CEO Howard Eng to discuss some of these issues on Friday. The Greater Toronto Airport Authority did not respond to our requests for interviews.