Air Transat instructed a Canadian charter airline to mislead aviation authorities and its passengers about unscheduled stops on flights from Mexico, according to sources and a string of emails obtained by CBC News.
The emails should make every air passenger “skeptical about ‘unscheduled’ refuelling stops,” says air passenger rights advocate Gabor Lukacs.
The problems stem from Air Transat needing more planes for its Mexico routes, and then hiring a charter airline that could only complete the route non-stop under ideal or favourable flying conditions.
The complicated saga began in 2016 when Air Transat hired Flair Air, a B.C.-based charter company with a fleet of five older Boeing 737-400s.
The prescribed range of the 737-400 is 4,176 kilometres; the flight distance from Edmonton to Cancun is 4,248 km.
Two of the Flair planes had extra fuel tanks that would enable them to fly a full load of 156 passengers safely between Edmonton and Cancun — at least when flying southbound, say Flair pilots, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
When taking off in colder climates, jets don’t use as much fuel, and flying south doesn’t go against the prevailing jet stream.
But flying north — with a full complement of passengers and luggage, taking off in a hot climate where it is more difficult to create thrust, and flying against headwinds — requires much more fuel, often more than their planes can carry, the Flair pilots say.
Air Transat’s manager of commercial operations was prepared for the planes not being able to make the northbound flight non-stop. In an email to Flair’s director of flight operations, Mauricio Diaz gave the following instructions.
“Due to Mexican authorities restrictions, we always need to file a direct flight (flight plans) CUN-YEG [from Cancun to Edmonton],” he wrote in a May 2016 email to Flair.
“Never file CUN-MSY-YEG [Cancun-New Orleans-Edmonton] because it will be refused by [the Mexican authorities],” the email continues. “When the flight is airborne from [Cancun], you can plan the technical stop in [New Orleans] and advise ATC [air traffic control].”
Air Transat spokesperson Debbie Cabana refused to comment about this email.
Passengers misled
Not only were passengers being misled about being on a non-stop flight, Flair’s pilots say they were uncomfortable filing two flight plans.
“Problem is, what if you’re flying across the Gulf [of Mexico], and you have a communications problem, and you enter American air space, land in Kansas City and nobody knows about it, post 9/11?” one pilot told CBC News, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“How do you think that is going to end?” he added, suggesting that he could be intercepted by U.S. fighter jets.
“Airlines may divert to a different airport than the destination in their flight plan for a variety of reasons, as long as they are in contact with air traffic control,” said U.S. Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson Tammi Jones. “Any aircraft that loses radio contact with air traffic control for an extended amount of time could be intercepted.”
Passengers also had their flight times extended by as much as two hours.
The first flight of Flair’s contract with Air Transat, on May 22, 2016, diverted to New Orleans. Two subsequent ones on May 29 and June 5 went through Kansas City.
Email spells out ‘Mexican game’
An email from Flair’s director of flight operations, Harold Knop, makes no mention of passenger dissatisfaction with the stopovers. Instead, he assured pilots that “Transat has advised us that this method has worked successfully and without any issues with previous operators and that there was no negative passenger reaction in these situations.”
Knop’s instructions — which became known among pilots at Flair as the “Mexican game” — explained that “the passengers will not have been briefed prior to boarding.”