|
Saturday, December 29, 2007 A day at the
airport BY MARC GALLANT CANADA –
THE WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Troubleshooter
Glenn Poole, better known as Mr. Airport. Thursday, 11
a.m., airport terminal, main floor Passengers swing
by in an endless stream as a lineup for coffee snakes behind Glenn Poole, but
the furthest thing from his mind is a steaming hot beverage or a tropical
destination. Meet Mr.
Airport, otherwise known as the ultimate troubleshooter. Running a hand
over his face whenever he gets stressed, the airport's duty manager is wielding
a two-way radio like a gunslinger raising his pistol in a quick-draw
competition. The airport
cowboy is one of two managers in charge right now of solving problems that
suddenly arise at the airport during one of its most frantic weeks. And there
are plenty. Since
I arrived at 8:30 a.m. and met Poole, I've watched the duty manager handle a
hailstorm of requests thrown at him via his two-way radio. Right now, he's
dealing with a troublesome airfield gate that won't stay open due to a missing
pin. This after ice chunks were found on two taxiways -- they can seriously
damage an airplane's engine if sucked in. "I operate
on the K.I.S.S. principle: keep it simple, stupid," says Poole of his
style. There are 150
two-way radios deployed among airport personnel right now, and Poole is the hub
of all communication between airport security, airfield maintenance, airlines
and the air tower that monitors the field. His list of daily duties includes
making sure passengers flow smoothly through the terminal, operation of the
airport's landing gates and keeping runways trouble-free. If an emergency
occurs -- a pandemic, a crash, a hijacking, an irate passenger -- he's in
charge of the on-the-scene response. Poole is the man
charged with preventing a disaster like the recent Vancouver airport incident
involving the death of an agitated Polish-speaking man stunned with a Taser by
four RCMP officers. He is wearing 32
keys hanging off his belt, and has a package of Pom Pom cigarillos in his shirt
pocket. He'll only have time to puff two of them today during his 12-hour
shift. Recently, the 51-year-old had a heart attack. When asked if
the stress of the job led to medical issues, Poole has a quick answer. "Are you
kidding? This is what saved me," says the former airport heavy machine
operator who has worked his way up during 27 years here. "As you can see,
there's a lot going on," he says, after advising a maintenance worker to
find 10 metres of chain to secure the gate. Instructions fly quickly over the
radio, short descriptions volleyed back and forth. A series of
neatly uniformed airport workers -- from flight engineers in orange vests to
neatly combed airline attendants -- greet Poole with his moniker, Mr. Airport,
as they pass. Airport
firefighter Chad Leclaire participates in a training exercise. Walking
around with Poole is a little like being with the King of Kensington. Time for a
little Hollywood -- a small crowd of crew members from the upcoming Renée
Zellweger flick Chilled in Miami have shown up to check out an airport
location for the movie. Mr. Airport, not one to pause for long, has already
bounded off to meet them. 1:10 p.m., second
floor security gate There's no
shortage of drama at the airport, including countless marriage proposals and
the occasions when retiring Air Canada pilots gate their final plane under
sprays of water spouted by fire trucks, with fellow pilots lined up and
saluting at the departure lounge. There are the
passionate embraces -- think Alfred Eisenstaedt's iconic 1945 Life
magazine shot of a soldier embracing a nurse on V-J Day in Times Square -- as
lovers greet in main-floor arrivals. (Don't ask about
the airport legend regarding one flower-bearing man, preparing to propose to
his girlfriend coming off a flight, who ended up greeting her alongside her
husband. Gulp.) This afternoon,
Gabriel Wilmott, 33, makes his way to the gate with purpose, punctuating each
step with a tap of his cane. He's got little time for reporters -- or anyone
else in his way. The aircraft
maintenance engineer is heading home to Bay D'Espoir, N.L., after a horrific
motorcycle crash in July on Regent Avenue. The Maritimer is hesitant to chat,
barely stopping as I approach him. He's hell-bent on getting home, he says. "This is
the first time I've been out of my house in a while. I just got a bunch of
plates and pins put in me," he says, hurtling towards the departure gate.
"I had six bones sticking out of my arm, and eight bones sticking out of
my leg," he says. "I haven't been home since." 3:55 p.m.,
office of Winnipeg Airports Authority CEO and president Barry Rempel Natalie
Williamson, 4, gets some sleep after a late-night flight. Hanging
behind Rempel's desk, there's a large print showing children playing with a
makeshift airplane in summery fields bordering the airport. It's fitting for a
man who has a blue-sky vision for the WAA, the non-share capital corporation
that operates the airport. Here's one hint:
during a marketing meeting earlier this morning, a WAA executive told staff a
major real estate deal is in the works for 2008, but stopped after
acknowledging a reporter was in the room. Rempel says the
future of the airport is in at least two areas: handling increased amounts of
freight and becoming an "intermodal" hub. Winnipeg is
already third among Canadian airports for the amount of cargo tonnage it
handles, after Toronto and Vancouver. It's the No. 1 destination in Canada for
freighter flights. Rempel says the
WAA has advocated to get airline carriers to schedule direct flights from
Winnipeg to North American destinations like Denver, Chicago and Las Vegas --
and he'd like to see more added. He says when he arrived in 2002, the Winnipeg
market was "under-served" by direct flights. "Airlines
have a very mobile asset -- they don't have to fly to Winnipeg," he says. "Airports
have taken over the role of being advocates of the community to the carrier.
What we do is present what's going on in our community." Rempel says the
future success of the airport isn't only about air travel, it's about creating
a facility where passengers and cargo are linked by air, plane, bus and truck.
Greyhound Canada announced in January it was moving its downtown Portage Avenue
operations to an airport facility. Sources recently told the Free Press
the bus terminal will relocate to the airport when the new terminal opens in
2010. Rempel formerly
worked with the property development subsidiary of the Calgary Airport Authority
and with Canadian Airlines International. After he runs through a 53-slide
PowerPoint presentation on the future of the airport for me, he's ready to keep
talking. He's
especially tickled about a marketing campaign to hype the airport's new
facilities. On the skyline, the skeleton of the new terminal is already filling
out. The ad campaign
-- which promotes website www.james2010.ca -- has a daily blog and video posts
to stimulate buzz among the airport's younger technology-savvy users. Rempel says he believes
the airport will be the heart of making Winnipeg known as a "transport
city." 4:20 p.m., arrivals
lounge on main floor Even with a
29-year age gap, they've got the same unmistakable narrow faces and brown eyes.
Their emotional
embrace in the arrivals lounge -- towering daughter in a bulky ski jacket with
her arms wrapped around a smaller counterpart -- radiates emotion in a mostly
listless crowd. It has been a long fall for Kenora-based Glenda Spencer, 47,
mother of 18-year-old Carleton University student Nicole Spencer. The day she
drove to Ottawa and dropped her daughter off for school, Glenda cried. Today,
after driving to Winnipeg to pick up her leggy look-alike, small tears leak
from Glenda's eyes again as she hugs her daughter. Their holidays together will
be a simple affair, says Glenda. "It's just
family and food," she says, eyeing her daughter and already talking about
the steak restaurant they're heading to for dinner. After that, home awaits. 9:30 p.m., field
on WAA property For the
firefighters at the airport's Emergency Response Service, the memory of
Swissair 111's crash in 1998 at Peggy's Cove, N.S., is a constant reminder to
remain alert. Sixteen firefighters work here in shifts of four around the
clock, based in a small building on the southwestern corner of the airport's
property. Almost
three-quarters of their calls are for medical incidents, some on planes
unexpectedly grounded at the airport. When the buzzer sounds at the fire
station, firefighters hit the ground running. "This place
clears out in seconds," says Capt. Jim Abram, who heads the crew.
"Everybody is trained to think in those terms. ... Our training is always
for the worst-case scenario, and our response is always for the worst-case
scenario. We start at 'this is the worst thing that can happen,' and as the
incident progresses, we step back from there. Whenever a plane declares an
emergency, we assume it's going to crash. We keep eliminating until we can
stand the incident down." Five hours
before, an 82-year-old woman tumbled down an escalator. The petite woman was
soothed by two airport firefighters before being taken away by wheelchair for
further examination. The day before, a team rushed to a grounded CL-65 twin
engine jet that made an unscheduled landing in Winnipeg because of smoke inside
the plane. The incident was resolved safely, but Abram says the lesson is
clear: stay vigilant. Tonight, the
fire crew has taken a $1.2-million Oshkosh Striker 3000 out to a northwestern
field of the airport property to practise. They're extinguishing an antiquated
plane placed there for training, and a firefighter is using a specialized
nozzle on the vehicle to extend about three storeys in the air to spray down
the side of the plane. The crew, with help from aircraft firefighters stationed
at the 17 Wing military base, practise removing weighted dummies from deep
snow. Each dummy weighs an estimated 150 pounds, and the firefighters drag them
from the area surrounding the plane to "safety." In a true emergency,
corpses would not be moved until crash investigators arrived. "We try not
to move any dead bodies and we try not to move any debris," says one
firefighter. "It's all part of figuring out what happened to this
aircraft." Saturday, 1:40
a.m., cargo apron northeast of air terminal A Boeing 727
carrying freight rolls by. Within seconds, a white mechanics' truck and a
fuelling truck have pulled up alongside the white cargo plane as it comes to a
halt, preparing the jet to fly again. The airport duty manager for tonight, Terry
Parkin, has taken me onto the cargo apron, where the planes are unloading
enormous pieces of freight. The ones coming off this flight are clear
containers the size of garden sheds, packed with boxes that fit inside the
cargo bay of the plane. I count 14 large
cargo or passenger planes sitting on aprons -- thick cement where cargo
aircraft stay overnight or while they are loading or unloading their freight.
The apron leads to a taxiway, which leads to the runway where planes take off. Employees are moving
briskly around the vehicles as freight is lifted off by large machines and then
loaded onto rolling flats. The workers are dwarfed by the containers they're
examining, leaving clouds of frosty breath in the air as they dart around the
shipments. The
containers are pulled away to be sorted inside nearby buildings, a
labour-intensive process. The Airports Authority estimates it takes 43
full-time employees to process a plane. That's more than the average of 23
workers who process a passenger plane. Tonight is one of the heaviest nights of
the year for cargo, according to a shipping employee who pulls up alongside us.
Saturday, 2:30
a.m., third-floor air terminal observation deck It's hushed on
the dimly lit third floor of the airport, a romantic setting that boasts a
spectacular view of an airport field where cargo and passenger planes are
buzzing below, regardless of the late hour. Here, those
waiting for friends and family sit and watch the almost aquarium-like action on
the field below -- the soothing to-and-fro of planes at the airport's nine
gates. Tonight,
scheduling where each plane will gate is especially perplexing for duty
managers, thanks to the start of charter season. Fake-baked Canadians clad in
Hawaiian shirts are already lined up downstairs for a 4:30 a.m. flight to
Mexico. Metres away, four-year-old Natalie Williamson is sleeping in a luggage
cart with her hands covering her eyes, after a late-night flight from Orlando. The observation
deck was recently home to an aboriginal drum ceremony organized by two sisters
separated by adoption, and one Winnipeg police officer from the eight-person
Winnipeg Police Services Airport Unit stationed here tells me he has known
students studying for exams to set up in the lounge. I'm hoping no
one will notice a reporter curled up with her laptop bag, sleeping under her
down coat. For the next
three-and-a-half hours, no one does. By the numbers $2.6 billion: Estimated
overall economic impact of the airport in 2003.* 0: Amount of
government funding the Winnipeg Airports Authority (WAA) receives. 11: Years since WAA
assumed operation of the Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International
Airport (renamed in late 2006). $214 million: Amount that has
been invested so far by WAA since 1997 into capital improvements. By 2010, all
major infrastructure like runways and terminal buildings will have been
replaced. 9,300: Jobs the WAA
generates directly. 11,500: Jobs the WAA
generates indirectly. 155,000 tonnes: Amount of
freight handled at the airport in 2006. 3.3 million: Number of
passengers who passed through the airport in 2006. Source: Winnipeg
Airports Authority * Most recent
figure available. |
