MONTREAL — Air Canada is doing all it can to assist travellers in the aftermath of Maui’s devastating wildfires, including flying over 1,000 Canadians home safely.

In addition to updating its flexible change policy in the wake of the emergency, the airline’s global operations’ nerve centre – located near Toronto and known as System Operations Control (SOC) – immediately mobilized to assemble a team following the fires’ outbreak on Aug. 8, which resulted in road closures to Kahului Airport and the cancellation of Air Canada’s normally scheduled flight to Vancouver that evening.

The team evaluated operational constraints, outlooked the demand for seats departing the island, and considered how to balance the overall operation during the busy summer travel season.

“Being in the summer peak, our fleet was fully committed to our scheduled flying operations. With no hotel accommodations available for crew rest due to the devastation, we would not be able to operate our usual scheduled aircraft, a narrow-body Boeing 737 MAX,” said Neale Wisniewski, Director-System Operations Control.

“However, Air Canada’s large and diverse fleet gave us options to look at double-crewing a wide-body aircraft, which has rest facilities onboard, to have one crew operate down with the second crew resting – and the reverse on the way back – and also bring back twice as many people on a flight,” he added.

After evaluating various options, which included tech stops in Honolulu to change crew using smaller 737s and other scenarios, Air Canada made the decision to substitute a narrow body aircraft to one of its YVR-Toronto rotations, assigning a wide-body aircraft for the immediate lift needed in Maui over three days.

“We knew it was important to get passengers home as quickly as possible with the awful situation,” said Wisniewski.

THE PLAN

Within 24 hours, the plan was finalized and implemented, and a call was held with Air Canada’s various operational teams to get that night’s flight immediately onto a larger 298-seat Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, which would provide extra capacity to bring back more passengers.

Massive efforts were made to coordinate all of Air Canada’s operational branches, including crew scheduling, contract centres, catering, security, ground handling and more. Extra fuel was loaded in case facilities in Maui were compromised, extra pilots were assigned to ensure maximum flexibility, and a maintenance engineer was sent as part of the crew to sign-off the aircraft in Maui.

Due to the fires, the Canadian government issued a non-essential travel advisory to Maui, which is still in effect today. As a result, Air Canada cancelled its outbound flights to the island to operate a ferry flight, which would operate down without any passengers on board. The flight would return as scheduled flights on a wide-body aircraft to bring back as many passengers as possible.

AN EVOLVING SITUATION

On the ground efforts were led by Karen Park, Air Canada’s Manager for Customer Service in Hawaii, who assisted passengers and liaised with local authorities, other airlines, the ground handling team and the SOC team.

As park noted, Hawaii’s largest natural disaster in history meant that the situation would constantly evolve over the course of several days.

“There were so many people at the airport, the roads to the airport were affected, power and communications were down for many parts of the island. We had a crew on layover who we were able to communicate with only sporadically and who we could not get to the airport,” Park recalled.

“Customers who evacuated from Lahaina were telling us that it was really scary. People did not have time to get their passports and other items as they fled the danger. Because SOC was able to firm up plans so quickly to have the Dreamliner come down that night, it was a great relief as I could focus on telling the passengers what to expect and work with the authorities to handle identification procedures and other matters,” she added.

“COUNT ME IN”: 24 HOUR RESPONSE TIME

Park recalled the heartwarming way she was greeted by the Air Canada crew, who arrived with the special Dreamliner flight that first night.

“I was so touched when I saw the Air Canada crew as they were ready to go and got us to board as soon as possible. They asked us about our teams’ and our families’ safety and provided us with warm words. Our customers were very relieved to board the aircraft, and I was moved by their words of appreciation,” said Park.

Captain Edwin Olson, who operated two of the Dreamliner rescue flights, said he didn’t hesitate to step up and help when needed.

“When the call came about the rescue flights, my reaction was ‘this is a no brainer, count me in, we’re doing this.’ As a pilot, our focus is, let’s just get the job done, keep an eye on safety and ensure safe operations. We saw smoke as we departed Maui and we saw lots of fires on the island.

“At cruise altitude, I was able to go back and speak to a few passengers. They described some pretty scary scenes and were so thankful to be on board. I am just so proud of our efforts in getting people out,” said Captain Olson.

THE NEXT THREE DAYS

Air Canada continued a double crew operation with the Dreamliner for three days, departing as ferry flights and returning from Maui filled with passengers each time. A goodwill travel policy was quickly put in place. Plus, with a larger aircraft departing Maui, the additional seats were made available to people who wanted to depart Maui earlier.

The SOC team evaluated the ground situation with Park, who was continually liaising with local authorities and managing the numbers of passengers still need to return to Canada. A plan was finalized to resume flights with the normally scheduled 169-seat Boeing 737 MAX on Aug. 12 after crew accommodations were secured in an unaffected part of the island and following confirmation that the larger aircraft capacity was no longer required.

TEAMWORK AND FLEXIBILITY

Looking back on the ordeal, Wisniewski is feeling nothing but gratitude for passengers’ well-being and Air Canada’s quick thinking.

“Looking at the devastating footage, pictures in the news, hearing the incredibly brave stories from passengers who were evacuated or had to get themselves to safety under extreme circumstances, as well as accounts from our U.S. team on the ground helping passengers, we are tremendously moved by our passengers’ deep response to our efforts getting them home safely and as quickly as possible,” he said.

“With our diverse fleet and our global expertise, we were able to implement a comprehensive response plan to this unimaginable disaster effectively thanks to the commitment, dedication and professionalism of Air Canada’s employees, both customer facing and behind the scenes,” Wisniewski concluded.

Air Canada has in place a flexible goodwill policy for passengers to change or cancel their flights to Maui. Options include changing flights from Maui to Honolulu, changing Maui flights to a future date, or cancelling Maui flights for an Air Canada travel voucher, which can be applied to other destinations, or a refund to their original form of payment on request. Air Canada will continue to review, modify or extend the goodwill policy as required.

The Air Canada Foundation is also liaising with aid partners to determine any assistance the Foundation can support.