Air travel is ramping back up as more restrictions on flying eased Monday. With that, the Edmonton International Airport wants to provide passengers with some tips as they head back into the sky, some for the first time in more than two years.
Effective Monday, air travellers are no longer required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to travel within Canada.
“That’s going to add more passengers into the mix and it’s been a busy morning already today,” said Steve Maybee, vice president of operations, infrastructure and communications with EIA.
That increase in passenger load — combined with other travel restrictions that have lifted over the past few weeks — have led to major delays at some airports across Canada, particularly at security checkpoints. While EIA has experienced some delays, Maybee said the airport isn’t seeing the same delays as some other airports across the country.
“We’ve been working with our airline partners, our security partners, CATSA (Canadian Air Transport Security Authority) and others for quite some time because we’ve known this is going to come — this increase in traffic — so we’ve been working with all of our partners for quite a few months to be prepared. And everybody staffed up and is ready to go.”
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Maybee said EIA laid off about 30 per cent of its staff over the course of the pandemic. While the airport isn’t back to full staffing capacity, Maybee said they are bringing back staff in a systemic way as travel ramps up.
“We are bringing people back as we can. As a company, we laid off about 30 per cent of our staff. We have brought back some and we’re going to keep adding on as we need to, as things grow…
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