Nav Canada Sixty-five metres up a tower, with a panoramic view of the Pearson airfield. Banks of monitors track aircraft coming and going. A blip on a radar screen suddenly becomes an Airbus 319. "Air Canada 3977, stay this frequency, wind two-nine-zero-ten gusting 20 knots, clear takeoff, runway 23." Between conversations with his pilots, I'm firing questions at air-traffic controller Dave Leonard.
"I think you should let him do his work," says Patrick Lawler, Nav Canada's Toronto control-tower manager. "You wouldn't want to be named in the inquest." He's only half-joking.
Nav Canada (a non-share capital corporation started by the federal government in 1996) manages Canada's air navigation system, overseeing the country's 43 control towers and seven Area Control Centres. It's Nav Canada's job, essentially, to maintain a cushion of space around every aircraft-about three to five nautical miles front and back depending on the size of the craft, and 1,000 feet above and below. This is necessary mainly because large aircraft leave behind them a trail of dangerous "wake turbulence"-a powerful air vortex caused by the difference in air pressure above and below the wing surface.
It's a tough job, especially in Toronto, where thousands of aircrafts on hundreds of routes are merging down to just four runways every 45 or 50 seconds. Still, Nav Canada maintains an astounding safety record. "Critical operating irregularities"-situations in which the pilot has to take action to regain safe operating distance-happen less than once for every million arrivals or departures annually. That's astonishingly good. So much so that aviation authorities around the world-particularly in the United States and U.K.-now look to Nav Canada as a model.
Air Canada's station Operations Centre Seventy per cent of the traffic through Pearson belongs to Air Canada, and the task of juggling all those planes is left to the airline's Station Operations Centre (STOC). "Our job is to put the right aircraft at the right time on the right schedule," says general operations director Janet Culbert. A simple-sounding task, but in fact it requires constant analysis and quick decisions-a 3-D chess game in the sky. "It's exhilarating, like being a firefighter," says Culbert. "You become a bit of an adrenaline junkie."
The STOC is run by four operations managers responsible for 59 domestic, transborder and international gates; they're assisted by various gate planners and co-ordinators who, among other tasks, organize luggage and tow crews, dispatch mechanics or handle meals. Every incoming aircraft is scheduled to arrive as one flight number and depart as another. The plane lands, goes to a gate, and unloads its passengers and luggage. It must be cleaned, possibly refuelled, and safety inspected, and it may require a new crew. Meals have to be delivered in containers that match the galley configuration of the particular aircraft. Passengers must be rounded up, and in some instances tracked down. Luggage is loaded and matched to the passenger list. It's a drill that staff repeat several hundred times a day.
How It Works: Arrivals and Departures
1. Dispatcher at Air Canada Systems Operations Control (SOC) files the flight plan with Nav Canada before takeoff. GTAA monitors local weather and determines available runway. This affects how Nav Canada's Area Control Centre (ACC) will manage the flow, and which approach routes the tower will use. Pilot instructed by ACC on direction of final approach.
2. ACC transfers responsibility of aircraft to the tower. Tower's Departure and Arrivals Controller clears the pilot for landing. Tower stays in touch with GTAA field maintenance, especially in bad weather. If the runway is not clear, the tower will request that the plane overshoot; it goes back into the landing queue. Air Canada Station Operations Control (STOC) monitors the flight's progress with the ACC for any effects its arrival may have on scheduling.
3. On landing, the tower's Ground Position Controller (or ground control) guides the pilot to a gate. The taxi route is set by the GTAA and may be dictated by construction work. The gate is assigned by the STOC, and its traffic is directed by the GTAA's Apron Control; they will confirm if the gate is ready for the aircraft.
4. Responsibility transfers from the tower's ground control to the GTAA's Apron Control when the aircraft taxis onto the apron--a collection area off the runways where pilots wait for direction to their gates.
5. At the gate, passengers disembark, and STOC prepares the flight for outbound: clean, maintenance check, refuel, load meals, assign crew, tow to another gate if necessary, load baggage and board new passengers. GTAA handles movement of passengers into the gate areas, and checks suspicious luggage.
6. Pilot calls the tower to get airway clearance. Apron Control directs the aircraft to the taxiway, and transfers it to the tower's Ground Position Control.
7. Ground control directs the aircraft to its assigned runway; in winter, that may mean a detour through the GTAA's de-icing facility. Ground control hands off to the Departure and Arrivals Controller, who clears it for takeoff.
8. As the landing gear comes up, the tower transfers control to the ACC's Terminal Controller, who guides the plane out of the airport.
Fire and Medical
The intricacies of emergency response
The GTAA's Airport Operations Control Centre (AOCC) is the nerve centre for the day-to-day running of Pearson. It's also the kind of bunker that James Bond villains dream of. Low lighting; double the normal rate of air circulation; a dedicated meteorologist monitoring local weather conditions; and a team of operators who support and log services which can range from snow removal to fire and medical emergencies to basic maintenance calls. The GTAA uses a "unified command structure"; in a fire emergency, for example, the AOCC's on-site duty manager co-ordinates the operation, but the fire chief commands the situation in the field.
Communication is vital; operators have access to 55 phone lines and 20 radio frequencies. They also have eyes in the form of air-and-ground radar that shows the location of every vehicle and aircraft on and over the airfield, and video feeds from any of the 700 cameras in and around the airport. If necessary, any of these feeds can be projected on a large screen at one end of the room. All of their conversations and every video feed is digitally archived.
The AOCC is also the focal point for safety and security operations. Pearson now has two state-of-the-art firehalls at the north and south ends of the airfield. By federal regulation, they must be able to respond within three minutes to the farthest point in the middle of any runway, a standard that they beat handily.
The airport also maintains a full service division of around 110 Peel Region police officers-for emergency response, criminal investigations and some services peculiar to the airport.
In extreme situations requiring longer-term co-ordination-major storms or a crash, for example-senior decisionmakers will direct operations from the Emergency Command Centre, also located in the GTAA headquarters. Police, fire, air-carrier reps and senior airport management will gather in the ECC, share information and support their field commanders as required. Its last major use was during the Y2K switchover, which created no problems at all.
Canine Unit
Pearson's crack team of bomb-sniffing dogs
Like most bosses, senior public safety officer Mike Carter looks for qualities like motivation, focus and just a little bit of aggression in his employees. Which is exactly what he has in Kilo (right), Dillon, Grim and Nitro-a canine unit that patrols the airport constantly, dealing with about 2,000 potential bomb threats a year. The vast majority involve abandoned luggage or suspicious packages. Over 90% of those calls will not be considered dangerous, and over a roughly six-year working life, a sniffer dog may never encounter a bomb. So to keep the dogs sharp, handlers do regular simulated checks on packages containing actual explosives like semtex or C4.
Security dogs are specialists. A drug dog will be trained to detect seven basic smells; a bomb dog has a repertoire of 16 smells. When the substance is detected, the dog will sit and the handler rewards him with a treat or rubber toy.
While almost any dog is smart enough to be trained for the work, Shepherds are among the few breeds tough enough for the daily grind. Training takes about two months, and begins when the dog is between one and two years old; a trained, purebred bomb dog from Europe is worth $60,000. Dogs live and work with their handler, and it can take up to a year for the two to really mesh as a team. As Carter explains, "Dogs aren't machines. They have feelings, and they have good days and bad days."
And sometimes a dog just doesn't work out. Carter had one canine who breezed through screening and training, but had to be retired. Turns out he had an unconquerable aversion to the airport's shiny, slippery floors.
Radio
You're listening to CFYZ, 1280 on the AM dial
Some airports offer canned flight information on short-range AM stations, but Pearson takes it a step further. It is the world's first airport to have a radio station with live programming and on-air personalities.
Pilot and travel enthusiast Stu Holloway (left) serves as CFYZ's station manager. It's a dream job for somebody who's accumulated enough air miles to travel around the world 173 times: "I may have arrived in heaven here a little early," he says. The other two staff members are also aviation buffs: Morning host Cate DeKorte is working on her pilot's licence, and afternoon man Jason Ritchie is a ground-crew member for Royal Air.
The station rotates through a 15-minute cycle of up-to-the-minute arrival-and-departure information tapped from the GTAA's data link. In addition, CFYZ provides updates on local aviation weather-cloud cover, wind and visibility-which is popular with pilots on their commutes to the airport. Mixed in are features on travel destinations and miscellaneous stories about operations at Pearson.
With a new tower and 25-watt transmitter, CFYZ has a 15- to 20-kilometre range. But plans are in the works to increase its signal to cover all of Toronto and stream it over the web, which effectively makes its reach worldwide.
The Plane Facts
Pearson presently accounts for 30% of Canada's air passenger traffic: 29 million passengers annually and approximately 430,000 aircraft movements (arrivals and departures)
A plane lands or takes off at Pearson on average every 56 seconds. In peak periods, it can go as high as one every 35 seconds or 104 per hour
Total projected aircraft movements by 2020:
665,000, or more than 2,100 planes per day
Top cargo imports to Pearson: Electronics: $3.77 billion
Computing: $1.81 billion
Pharmaceuticals: $1.53 billion
Top cargo exports out of Pearson:
Computing: $2.51 billion
Aircraft and parts: $920 million
Metals: $717 million
60% of the population of North America is within 90 minutes flying time of Toronto
Pearson land area is 4,474 acres
» Identified archeological sites on Pearson land: 29, including three prehistoric native sites, four 19th-century farmsteads, and a 300-grave pioneer cemetery established in 1833
Pearson currently has 86 gates at three terminals; ultimately, it will have 135 at one terminal
56 airlines serve 165 destinations from Pearson
» Top 3 national destinations: Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa
Top 3 U.S. destinations: New York, Chicago, Miami
Top 3 international destinations: London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam
Falcon Services
Lean, mean, cleanup machines
A Canada goose striking an aircraft travelling at 250 km per hour is like a hit from a feathered mortar shell, generating as much force as a 400-kilo weight dropped from a second-storey window. Jet engines are especially vulnerable-even a flock of small birds can cripple a jetliner. In North America, about 5,400 incidents a year are reported, amounting to $500 million (U.S.) in damage. The most famous case is the downing of a Lockheed in 1960 by a flock of starlings. Sixty-two people died.
Plagued by bird strikes, Pearson has turned to nature for help. To clear nuisance birds off the premises, Falcon Environmental Services patrols with a team of trained raptors: a peregrine falcon, a gyrfalcon and a harrier hawk. The falcons are fed by handlers and actually don't have to kill-much. Just the sight of these surprisingly small, elegant birds cruising around the airfield is usually enough to make nervous pigeons and geese hit the road.
The airport is also actively encouraging wild peregrines to breed, by providing a "breeding box" on top of the GTAA headquarters. The peregrine is the F-18 of raptors, capable of dropping out of the sky onto their prey at over 350 km per hour. Judging by the carcasses in the breeding box, the peregrines are even more relentless assassins than the trained hit squad.
It's a plane! A bird!
First reported bird strike: 1908
Pilot: Orville Wright
First reported bird strike fatality: 1912
Culprit: seagull
Muzzle velocity of a (dead) chicken fired from a specialized chicken cannon commonly used to test aircraft windshields: Mach 1 (1,220 km/h)
The Plane Facts
Busiest months at Pearson: July and August
Slowest month: December
Busiest weekday: Saturday
Slowest weekday: Wednesday
You always take off and land into the wind. Wind direction determines which runway you land on or take off from, and in which direction
Prevailing winds mean that Pearson's two east-west runways are used the most
In 1995, it took an hour and a half to clear snow from a runway. Today it takes 19 minutes
GTAA headquarters are in the original Wardair building. Its atrium roof was designed to support Max Ward's old Gypsy Moth, suspended from the ceiling
Total projected building cost for the airport development project: $4.415 billion. Pearson's architects are Airport Architects Canada, a joint venture of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP, Moshe Safdie Associates and Adamson Associates
Aviation Interfaith Ministry
A prayer for the flying
Two years ago, on a transatlantic flight from England to Toronto, an elderly woman quietly died. The flight attendants realized something was terribly wrong, and both the woman and her husband were moved to an unoccupied section of first class. Then they radioed ahead to Reverend Philip Philips, who runs the airport ministry at Pearson. When they landed, someone was going to have to console the man, and this was a job that called for a professional.
Since 1978, Philips's Aviation Interfaith Ministry has calmed the anxious, comforted the sick, and blessed the faithful en route to holidays and pilgrimages-or, in some cases, their final reward.
A former Indian Army chaplain, Philips is the ministry's founder. The chapel is ecumenical Christian, staffed by four Baptists, four Catholic priests and a deacon, who provide scheduled services and masses to approximately 60 people a day in all three terminals.
Though its focus is Christian, the main chapel in Terminal 2 has an interfaith room set up with Muslim prayer rugs, a copy of the Koran and a marker indicating the direction of Mecca, as well as Jewish prayer shawls and copies of the Torah. (Terminal New will provide similar, expanded facilities.) Philips has also been called on to find a Buddhist priest on short notice for the family of a Japanese woman who died of a heart attack on board her plane. Such occurrences, he notes ruefully, are not uncommon.
The ministry has expanded over the years, establishing branches at Vancouver, Halifax, Winnipeg, Calgary, Montreal and Thunder Bay-flying just seems to bring people closer to God.
It's a fact neatly captured by a banner Philips hung in his headquarters at Pearson. It depicts a diving passenger jet buffeted by black clouds and lightning. It reads "God Is Our Shelter in Times of Storm."