Passengers complained of long lines at Pearson International Airport Thursday because of a protest by security guards.

Some passengers said it was complete chaos at the airport, as they experienced delays for several hours.

Bassem Handy, a passenger who was on a flight from San Francisco to Toronto, said he and other passengers waited on the airport tarmac for 45 minutes. He said no announcement was made explaining the delays. When he called Air Canada�s concierge service, the airline said airport security is on a work-to-rule.

�As a result of a work and labour issue with CATSA guards today, pre-board screening is very slow this evening. We do expect some delays for passengers travelling out of Toronto Pearson,� a spokesperson for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority said in a recorded message.

The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority or CATSA is responsible for passenger screening at airports across the country.

If you were delayed at Pearson International Airport send your photos to [email protected]

Source: http://www.thestar.com/news/article/...t-pearson?bn=1

Flying LGA > YYZ > YEG. (Stay tuned for my other post about the LGA > YYZ segment.)

Security was pretty bad. There were 12 people (I counted) in the connections priority security line (on Level 2). It took 34 minutes to process 12 people. CATSA was artificially creating a bottleneck during the x-ray scanning. The CATSA officer manning the x-ray monitor either a) got up and walked around between passengers, or b) just looked away for about a minute while each bag was up on the display.

Regular security line stretched all the way down the hall on Level 2. PAX were being sent down from Level 3 as, apparently, they weren't even processing priority folks up there due to the craziness.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

The extremely tiny amount of sympathy I had for airport screeners has now vaporized. Fire them.

So the war begins... CATSA's attempt to consolidate power from its contractors on November 1 is going well I see. I expect similar things to pop up in pretty much every non-coastal province.

Indeed. Delaying (read: screwing) passengers isn't going to get you very far in drumming up support. Sigh.

Folks, there is a thread on this already started here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...ustoms-am.html

A quick check before posting will avoid duplicate posts (and make it easier for the rest of us to follow the discussion.

Any idea what their grievances are, legitimate or otherwise?

According to The Star updated version, its because how the company has changed their working hours/scheduling

Likely due to a wide range of labour issues with both CATSA and contractor (Garda) management. CATSA is trying to shake things up across the country right now by arranging the contracted companies (which had to go through a recent bidding contest) into regions. This is presumably to take a tougher stance on the companies who are beginning to stand up to their bureaucracy. Garda will be the contractor in YYZ/YTZ for the foreseeable future, but between now and November 1, and possibly beyond, will be a turbulent time for airport screening in Canada. There was a major unrelated development in this industry recently on which word started trickling out today, but I won't reveal it for fear of government/private retribution. The important thing is that things aren't gonna be any easier for a while!

I'm actually impressed by this. The CATSA screeners' union in YYZ (Canadian Airport Workers Union) has traditionally been pretty spineless... maybe a few disgruntled union stewards started this.

Going through YYZ connection security on Tue around 6 pm the 2 screeners at the metal detector were discussing the burning issue of the day. One upset screener was telling the other:"They will be scheduling by competence* instead of seniority in violation of the contract".

*the exact word which I forget suggested competence, accomplishment, demonstrated ability, achieved performance

If these people have a grievance based on "competence" then I fear we the traveller are all royally screwed.

Well if shift bidding and scheduling are to be done by seniority (which it obviously would be) according to the CA, the company would be legally obligated to follow it. "Competence" is subjective, seniority is very clear-cut. Now, if this was regarding competencies, there might be a bit of a grey area.

Not relevant. The contract is between Garda and GTAA. Garda is not meeting its obligations, so GTAA should terminate the contract with cause and hire another security firm. Plain and simple.

Now, if the Garda still meets Service Level Agreements despite the job action, then some heads at GTAA should start rolling right about now for crappy supplier management.

Accountability is a ......

(you have to love sensorship) canine of the female gender

The contract is between Garda and CATSA. As much as I love to bash the GTAA, they can't be blamed for this.