O O Ø O O O O
CATSA Gets No Respect
My little black heart was oozing empathy for the fine folks who are part of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) over the weekend. I was reading the Globe, and came across an article outlining some of their woes. It seems that the screeners have a number of beefs, including poor training and a lack of respect from passengers.
The poor training I’ll definitely agree with. Many times I have waited in line to get through screening while the entire freaking group manning the screening station looks at the pretty picture on the luggage screener, or waits while someone more experienced arrives from another station to look at the pretty picture and make a determination as to what everyone’s looking at. Meanwhile, everyone in line waits, watches the Shriner’s parade by the display, and wonders just how safe they are with folks like these looking out for them. I sometimes wonder if it occurs to the people manning the screening machine to pick the fucking bag off the conveyer when it comes out, open it up, and have a peek inside for the item causing concern. Way I figure, if you’re not sure, I’ll feel much better if you have a look.
I’ll also say that CATSA needs to have a good, hard look at how they manage people’s expectations of what air travel these days is like. People who travel regularly know they need all metal off/out, laptops in the tray, coats off, and hard-soled shoes off when they go through. Unfortunately, there’s always a significant number of people who don’t travel regularly, and don’t know this. Mayhaps there should be some signage - not a website that no one but me will go to - that articulates what to expect, as well as simple “this is how to breeze through security” information from travel agents or online ticket purchasing. Try working it so that people are informed before the nice CATSA employee asks them for their boarding pass, and you’ll save a lot of angst all around, as not everyone will be grumpy while the nice old man with the fourteen pounds of steel on him goes through the metal detector for the ninth time.
Poor design is another factor. I’d love to meet the person who designed the tables into and out of the screening machine and beat the living snot out of them. I kind of expected that after three years of constant pile-ups at the screeners table because that four whole feet of space only allows for two or three people’s carry-on items, and it takes a little time to put everything back on/in that the screeners required you take off/out. Not so, and people continue to get pissed off as they wait for people to collect themselves and move on. Here’s a thought - add six or seven feet to the end of the table, and you’ll be surprised how many more folks will move through. You may even get crazy and provide a chair or two at the end of the screening stations for folks to put on their shoes, but that might be showing a little too much courtesy.
Actually, why not go to a place that’s figured most of this out, and take notes. I recommend Newark or even Denver. They know how to move people through, and their layouts work. God knows, I’ve been through ‘em enough.
The last beef CATSA employees have I’m not so sure about. You gotta give to get, and in a surprising number of places CATSA doesn’t give. If you’re going to treat me like cattle at the slaughterhouse, I’m probably not going to be inclined to treat you with a whole lotta deference despite your rubber gloves (as compelling an argument as that is). Treat me like a person, and it’ll probably be a whole different experience for the two of us. A great example of how not to do it is the Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 transfer at Pearson that pretty much everyone coming from another country into Canada is forced through.
Because it would be too hard to run the shuttle from a gate like other airports do, you’re forced out of the secure zone after customs, down a long freaking walk to the shuttle pickup spot, and then go through security again - IN THE SAME FREAKING TERMINAL! There is always a line up, and while there are two screening stations, only one is ever open. There is no please and thank you from most of the staff (there are exceptions), they are extremely unhelpful (god help you if you didn’t get a boarding card when you started your journey), and generally have the personality of brick walls.
After clearing security, you eventually find the doors to the outside, where a bored-looking CATSA employee sits on the couch and just says “Sit.” Not “the bus isn’t here, so you can’t go onto the tarmac for security reasons, so please wait over there”, just “Sit.” There’s not even a sign explaining things. Eventually you get on the bus, wait 5-10 minutes, and are shuttled over to your flight, which is departing in five minutes because it took over an hour to get from one terminal to another. Small wonder people are in a bad mood by the time they get to their gate, and it’s in no small part to the security requirements enforced by CATSA.
On whom do you think the passenger’s are going to vent their frustrations?
Ok, I digress a little. For the most part, the folks from CATSA I’ve dealt over the past few years have been pretty good. Pearson is god-frigging-awful, with the majority of the folks working there ranging from apathetic to antagonistic, with very few (but still some) exceptions. Like most industries, you get folks who can deal with the public and folks who can’t. Also like most industries, a few bad eggs can tilt perspective askew pretty seriously, and I think this is the case with the travelling public and CATSA.
The screening process is tedious, poorly designed, and very few expectations are set. For the people who have been through it already, it’s not so bad because they know what to expect. For the people who haven’t, they’re going to be right pissed off by demands that don’t necessarily make sense to them, as well as the inconvenience. To expect anything less than this is surprising, and the screeners should try and remember that just because it’s old hat and rational to them, it may not be that cut and dry for people who don’t do it for a living.
To me it’s pretty simple. Don’t treat passengers as adversaries, which is how it comes across in the tone of the article. Take some time and make the effort to inform people of what to expect instead of how their frustration with a system they don’t understand won’t be tolerated. Have a look at what pretty much any airport outside of Canada has done with the screening process, and make the adjustments that make the experience go a little more smoothly. Remind the screening folks that a smile does wonders, and that not everyone knows the process as well as they do.
Take away as many of the things that make the process so annoying, act friendly, and (for the most part) you’ll get friendly. I’ll even thank you from the bottom of said heart o’ mine.
Kev Needham
February 21, 2006
OOØOOOODCCXLIV
February 22nd, 2006 at 11:43 pm
Pearson = Worst Airport. Ever. I just did the bus commute to the US departures last weekend, and thankfully, I had 4 hours to kill since I needed nearly two of those hours to get through security and customs. Again.
February 23rd, 2006 at 11:20 am
The GTAA knows no bounds to the levels of sucktitude it subjects its paying customers to. Like, I dunno, allowing it’s food service partners to charge $2.79 for a no-name half-litre bottle of water. I think I may save the rest, as Pearson by itself could provide fodder for several bits. I don’t think there is anything quite like in any other city in the Western world with more than 1M people.
February 23rd, 2006 at 4:20 pm
AMEN
March 11th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Did you know every single procedure on the first day of your job? Did you know how to deal with every single client or customer? Unless you’re a certified Screener, then you have no right to complain that they do not know what they’re doing.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I’m sorry. Unless you’re a certified Pint Day contributor, you have no right to complain that we have no right to complain.
March 13th, 2008 at 6:45 am
I can’t believe we’re replying to a post that is two years old..but in case people are still reading this, let me just say I work for CATSA HQ.
Alot of what the original whiner is complaining about is the doing of the GTAA and other various Airport Authorities. CATSA is the screening line and that’s it! Your problems with the bus process, or the short conveyor belt after the x-ray is dictated by the AA. CATSA would love to offer you moving conveyors so you don’t get tired and maybe some complimentary water and a massage! That’s not what we’re there for.
We’re there to assure the safety of all passengers entering the secure side of the house.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Thank-you, Mr. (or Ms.) CATSA HQ for setting the record straight. You have stated your disdain for the pathetic whining passengers. Please, however, do NOT complain when you receive the same level of respect back from the unwashed masses.
This was, in fact, the point of the whole article—a point that you seem to have utterly missed.
Note: I am not the original “whiner.” However, I do notice said “whiner” was responding to a few of CATSAs beefs with the job at hand. One of these beefs was a lack of respect from passengers. In particular, said “whiner” mentioned that you have to “give it to get it.”
You did not give it. You are still not giving it. Please do not complain when you don’t get it in return.
March 14th, 2008 at 4:32 am
I didn’t even read the original article. I was merely correcting some wrong information for clarity.
It irks me when reports come out wrongly condemning my corporation. Reporters who jump fences or break into doors at airport then exclaim “CATSA Sercurity Lax.” when in fact, perimeter security is not what we do.
But anyway, it’s a two year old article mentioned on a 3rd rate web site. The only reason it came up on my radar at all was my Google Alerts crawled it.
My guess is that it’s just you and I conversing here and from what I read of your other posts, you’re just someone looking for confrontation which I refuse to entertain.
Have a great day and remember, “Liquids don’t fly!”
March 15th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Ahhh. Arrogance with insults.
Well, I’m convinced they are an actual airport screener…
March 15th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Thank-you Mr. CATSA for your informative and useful corrections to an article that you admit to having never read.
Thank-you also for your namecalling. It’s a refreshing way to refuse confrontation.
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled 3rd rate ramblings.
March 16th, 2008 at 6:04 am
I may have written this, in fact I’m quite sure I did.
The original article to which I referred was a list of grievances CATSA employees had. They included unruly passengers, confusing rules, and training the employees found didn’t prepare them for what the job required. If you’d like to read it, I can send it to you.
I only addressed the “unruly passenger” bit. I’m not unruly. I travel a lot, and go through the process. My main point here was that the process, in some places, sucks large, and that there were many small changes the organization could make to greatly improve the client experience.
To Screener: I have every right to complain, as I am your client - which is sometimes forgotten. I totally agree that on-the-job training is essential, and having multiple eyeballs look at something that is unknown or useful for others to see as a learning experience is excellent training. However, there is a point where that usefulness is outweighed, particularly when the delay starts to impact the confidence of the people going through the line (do they know what they’re looking at? was the question that went through my mind). If it’s that questionable, pull the bag and hand-check. It improves passenger confidence and keeps things moving (NB: I rarely see this type of thing anymore, fwiw)
To “Knowing a bit more”: Your self-identification as working at HQ and subsequent referral to my complaints as ‘whining’ and use of sarcasm explains an awful lot about the treatment passengers receive in some facilities (like Pearson). Since you felt the need to correct my information, I’ll respond to those, too.
I understand the AA’s are responsible for some of the items I’ve outlined. However, as far as I understood, CATSA - in conjunction with the AA - sets the design standards for the screening process. I didn’t ask for a massage, all I said at the time was that a few extra feet of leading and trailing tables to ease congestion and improved signage letting people know what to expect (again, to ease congestion) would help immensely. These types of modifications could be incorporated into minimum standards based on expected traffic flow, and everyone wins, but it requires taking the passenger’s viewpoint, something CATSA and the AA wasn’t doing at the time (they’re better about it now, and some of the changes I outlined - don’t worry, I don’t delude myself into thinking I had anything to do with it - have been implemented).
I didn’t complain about the bus. I specifically called out the behaviour of the CATSA employees at that station who ensured that no one strayed onto the tarmac. I cannot recall one time where the personnel occupying that position displayed anything approaching common courtesy. That’s a personnel and CS issue, and their attitude does a lot to form general opinions of people.
“We’re there to assure the safety of all passengers entering the secure side of the house.” - but you don’t have to use this as an excuse to treat people as an inconvenience and/or cattle. The amount of discourteous, mean, and/or threatening behaviour displayed in the name of safety was appalling, and your comments here are disheartening, as it shows that attitude still exists.
This links back to the original point of my opinion piece, which was “you treat us like shit, so you probably shouldn’t expect us to be nice back.”
A lot has changed since I wrote this. The staff at most Canadian airports are awesome. I have no quarrel with the folks in Ottawa (where I live), as they’re efficient, friendly, and take the time to explain things to passengers. It’s a huge improvement over two years ago. New training programs have been put in place for staff, signage in the airports has been improved, and the process is generally painless now. This is the way it is at most Canadian airports, and it has been really nice to see the improvements.
Pearson is still a place I avoid at all costs. The screeners there make the pain in the ass air travel has become that much worse. I don’t know what it is, maybe the volume of passengers, but they’re abrasive, rude, and treat the folks paying for the privilege of making it through the screening worse than cattle. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it is, and I confess I don’t understand why that is given how other large airports in NA seem to have found the balance.
This opinion piece was in response to CATSA employee’s complaints of passengers not respecting them. My rant - and I make no bones that that is what it was - was more about how the process was miserable from a passenger point of view, and that there were a few simple changes that could be made to make the experience a little more pleasant. As KJ says, the point was completely missed, so I probably could have written this a little better, but it was a rant at the time. (I did send letters, as well, which outlined the suggestions I made a little more constructively. Their receipt wasn’t even acknowledged)
Happy clients make life easier for everyone. My main point was that if you set things up so that there’s a good user experience and treat the passengers like people, that’ll generally lead to people who are nicer in return. Give to get. Simple.