Operations at Toronto’s Pearson airport are back to normal after thick fog caused delays to a number of morning flights on one of the busiest days of the travel year.
Some flights were delayed due to low visibility, but just after 9 a.m. ET, an airport spokesperson told CBC News that flights were departing and arriving normally.
There will, however, likely be residual delays today, and passengers are advised to check their flight status online before heading to the airport.
Earlier Wednesday morning, CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe arrived at Pearson from Vancouver, and said the fog was slowing things down.
“We’ve got a vertical visibility of only about 20 metres and horizontal visibility of only about 20 metres as well, so a lot of planes weren’t even getting in for the better part of the morning.
The fog led to difficult driving conditions for much of southern Ontario on Wednesday morning.
Environment Canada had issued a fog advisory and police have warned drivers to slow down with near-zero visibility in some areas.
Pearson is Canada’s largest and busiest airport, handling about 400,000 flights and more than 38 million passengers a year.
Traditionally, travel ramps up in the days leading up to Christmas.
CBC News
No Jet Ops. For Billy Bishop Airport
Canada’s new transport minister took to Twitter to do an about-face on Billy Bishop City Centre Airport, announcing the Liberal government has no intention of letting passenger jets fly out of the Toronto Islands.
Marc Garneau tweeted late Thursday night that the government will not re-open an agreement that could lead to the expansion of the island airport.
Speaking to reporters in Ottawa just hours earlier, Garneau appeared to contradict earlier Liberal statements — both before and after last month’s federal election — that the proposed expansion was dead.
“What I’m doing at the moment is examining all of the factors that are involved in this. It’s a complex issue,” Garneau said after a cabinet meeting Thursday afternoon.
However, the former astronaut executed a 180-degree turn later on Twitter, saying the government’s position on the issue mirrors the Liberal Party’s election campaign commitment not to re-open the file.
Garneau’s earlier comments came as a surprise to Trinity-Spadina Coun. Mike Layton, who called the transport minister’s remarks “distressing.”
“We had received one message from the Toronto [federal Liberal] caucus leading up to the election and now we’re getting a different message from the minister.”
Porter Airlines, which is based at Billy Bishop, wants to fly Bombardier CS-100 jets out of that airport. The airline has been lobbying for the reopening of the tripartite agreement between the federal government, Toronto’s port authority and the city governing what kind of aircraft can fly out of Billy Bishop.
But under the terms of the deal, if one party to the arrangement refuses to revisit it, the agreement cannot be reopened.
Earlier this year, nine Toronto Liberal candidates, including Vaughan, articulated the party’s position against re-opening the agreement.
“No Jets. No Expansion. Period,” Vaughan wrote in a September letter to a citizens’ group aimed at stopping the airport’s growth.Porter Airlines has lobbied Toronto city council since 2013 to extend the runway at Billy Bishop for the Bombardier jets, a move that would enable the airline to fly to more destinations.
Toronto city staff have been studying the proposal and were expected to report back to city council in the new year.
CBC News
WOW Air launches Montreal and Toronto flights
An Icelandic low-cost carrier is out to create some turbulence in the Canadian market with plans to offer deeply discounted fares on transatlantic flights out of Toronto and Montreal.
WOW air, founded by serial entrepreneur Skuli Mogensen, is launching two new routes from Montreal and Toronto to the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, starting at $99 one-way.
The upstart airline is the latest Europe-based company to offer low-cost fares on long-haul routes across the Atlantic as the continent’s budget carriers extend their territory outside home base.
WOW, founded by Mr. Mogensen in 2011, says it has already had success with the launch in early 2015 of transatlantic services from Boston and Washington, D.C.
There is ample room for low-cost entrants in the transatlantic space, Mr. Mogensen said in an interview Thursday.
“Transatlantic is really ruled by a handful of very large legacy carriers with their alliances and cartels,” he said. “They will will not give it up freely. They just don’t have the structure and strategies to allow them to compete against pure play, low-cost carriers.”
WOW’s flights out of Toronto’s Pearson airport and Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport are set to begin next May.
The catch is that passengers wanting to go on to other cities such as London or Paris will have to wait “about an hour” in Reykjavik and pay an additional $149 one-way for an additional flight to their final destination.
Asked about the pricing structure, Mr. Mogensen said the $99 fare “depends on the season, on the load.”
“If you’re flexible on departure dates and book in advance you should always be able to find cheap fares. $99 or below $200 should always be available in any given week,” he said.
“When we announced our U.S. routes last year, we promised that it was just the beginning of our growth into North America,” said Mr. Mogensen, who spent several years in Montreal as head of tech company OZ Communications Inc., which was eventually sold to Nokia.
“These great Canadian cities [Toronto and Montreal] will become our newest destinations but I look forward to announcing even more in the not-too-distant future.”
The Canada-to-Iceland routes will use WOW’s existing fleet of new Airbus A321s, seating 200, while A320s will serve on the flights from Reykjavik to London, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Dublin.
Both Montreal and Toronto services are to be year-round, with departures four times a week, the company said Thursday.
Passengers will be allowed one “free” carry-on bag, but it must weigh no more than 5 kilograms. There are extra fees for additional carry-ons, checked bags, in-flight meals and other items.
The Globe And Mail