While road construction across the Greater Toronto Area isn’t out of the ordinary, one of the busiest runways in Canada is holding air travelers up with a ground delay due to a $30 million upgrade.
“This is one of the largest infrastructure projects to be done here at Pearson in the past decade, both in physical size and in scope, but it's being done in such a way that it minimizes impact to those flying in and out of this airport,” Lars Olsson, manager of aviation programs, compliance and co-ordination at the Greater Toronto Airport Authority told CTV News Toronto from the tarmac on Wednesday
Construction crews are working around the clock to repair several of the runways at Pearson International Airport, leaving them out of commission.
“The concept is to basically take it down to like a road, shave it, pave it, and bring it back in to service all in a very short period of time,” Olsson explained.
This is part of a $30 million infrastructure project to rebuild the western end of the tarmac, which airport staff says is at the end of its life.
“We’ve done a couple of rehabilitations on 05 in segments. It’s more of emergency type work,” Olsson said. “In this case we’re doing it all together so we can get the same longevity out of the entire runway.”
Since the summer months are the most popular travel times amongst flyers, the Greater Toronto Airports Authority says it wants to be off the runway by then.
In order to meet that deadline, travelers will be enduring delay times, which are on average around 24 minutes.
This doesn’t include delays during inclement weather, which can amount to much longer wait times.
A traveler who flew from Montreal to Pearson last night told CTV News Toronto his flight was delayed for an hour and half.
“It was just announced that the flight will be delayed for an hour and half because there are repairs happening on one of the runways in Toronto,” the email said. “Noboday said absolutely anything about this until now.”
But it doesn’t stop there. The upgrades are also impacting the airport’s neighbours who are now affected by the airport’s changed flight paths.
“You’re going to get airplanes that are flying more north-south,” Olsson explained. “Normally we would run a north-south operation approximately two per cent of the time.”
Coun. Mark Grimes wrote the Greater Toronto Airports Authority asking if anything can be done to reduce the number of flights over his Etobicoke constituents because residents have been complaining about the increase in flights over their homes.
The work here is expected to be finished mid-May, with more work resuming in October, airport officials say.
The Greater Toronto Airports Authority says travelers should check their website for any delays.
