IT USED to be I looked
forward to going to airports.
I have always thought of them
as sub-space ports. From here you
step up to the edge of stratosphere.
There is reflected glory and power.

However else we have goofed up
horrendously, when it comes to
flight, the human race has done
well for a species that can’t master
basic levitation.

Iam just old enough to have
been a young reporter covering the
airline beat when the current air-
port was built in Winnipeg. I
remember wandering around inside
its echoing cavernous hails,
awestruck, using a press pass (o get
in there before the crowds.

The ultimate accolade { could
give it was to praise it for being
like something on the cover of a
1930s Amazing Tales sci-fi pulp
magazine.

1 felt ike I had finally found the
future. I had lived long enough to
look around and find myself in it.

Having been raised on Tom
Corbett, Buck Rogers and Flash
Gordon, it was ali I could do to
control the urge to remove my
fedora, as I would do in church,
and bow my head.

In the quarter-century since
those heady pioneer days, I have
flown a few hundred times, over-
whelmingly on jets.

The technology of the jets has
been getting better all the time.
The engines are quieter. They use
less energy. Their reliability has
never been better. They are
aerodynamically purer.

“Working
For Your
Success.”

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Pager: 645-9549

3151 Edgemo

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nt Blvd.

1 feel so safe on jets now that |
often don’t even look up from
what I’m reading when we land.
Oh hum, another perfectly safe
landing on good old Air Canada.

Meanwhile, back on the
ground....

It’s incredible. Conditions at
airports have been going steadily
downhill.

f, seems incredible
to me that the airline
industry can deliver
such wonderous high
technology, and yet
the airports
themselves are
chaotic messes.”’

Vancouver’s airport is not bad,
by the way, unless you happen to
be unfucky-enough to come in
behind a couple of 747s from
Southeast Asia.

The expenditure on repairs and
expansion in time for Expo no
doubt spared Vancouver a lot of
gridlock at the terminal. Other
Canadian airports, notably Toron-
to’s House of Aeronautical Hor-
rors, Pearscn International Air-
port, have not been so lucky.

980-4757 |

My wife and I quickly Icarned,
after a few botched efforts, that it
simply wasn’t worth her trying to
pick me up when [ got home from
atrip. First, you can’t get parking.
Second, even if you succeeded,
you'd never be able to figure out
v here exactly the passenger is ac-
tually deplaaing.

One gets the uncomfortable feel-
ing that nobody else knows, either.
Or at least it is a carefully guarded
secret shared only by a handful of
staff, as long as their wwn com-
puter terminals don't go down.

Terminals within terminals. And
line-ups! It’s worse than a bank.
Worse than the Post Office.
There! Does that tell it?

It seems incredible to me that
the airline industry can deliver
such wonderous high technology,
and yet the airports themselves are
chaotic messes.

Two-hour waits are common at
Pearson. And this is before the
Christmas rush begins on Dec. 16.
From then uatil the end of the
year, forget fying. You are just
setting yourself up for an ulcer.

It’s like the famous freeways
around here where the traffic starts
backing up about 3 p.m., with
average movement of about five
miles an hour, until after six.

The great silver birds circling
thunderously overhead seem
beautifully unfettered.

But the reality is they are more
often than not circling, stacked,
waiting for a hole to open ir the

302-mile-wide traffic control!
sphere around Pearson.

Transport Canada will start
tinkering with flight control
systems this spring, pouring $1.5
billion into snazzier radar and
computer equipment, with the idea
of getting more planes in and out
faster.

Speaking as a fairly frequent
flier, I find the approach to bea
truly frightening line of thinking.

First and foremost, as airport
problems go, there is the safety
issue, never mind convenience. I'd
rather get there laie, alive, no mat-
ter how fong I have to wait, thank
you.

Canada has an acute shortage of
air traffic controllers. At Pearson,
they can only handle 40 to 50
flights in peak hours, when there is
a demand for 100.

Every major Canadian airport
grew during this past year. Mon-
treal's Dorval grew the most —
some 14 per cent. Vancouver was
third, with an increase of nearly
nine per cent or two per cent more
than Toronto. There were 160,000
flights in and out at Vancouver.

Federa! officials have the gall to
say that things are only going to
get worse at airports in the
foreseeable future. They're
nihilists. Surely they’re getting
paid to get things done, not whine
to cover up their past failures.

Who'd have thought that, in the
end, we'd get hijacked by the air-
ports themselves? Help@

Municipalities
receive grants

THE NORTH Shore's three
municipalities received just over
$51,000 in B.C. Buildings Corp.
{BCBC) grants recently.

North Vancouver City, which
has ICBC’s head office within its
boundaries, received $42,722.46,
the largest grant of the three North
Shore municipalities.

North Vancouver District got
$6,379.21 while West Vancouver
District received $1,925.87.

Crown corporations are exempt
from paying property taxes, so
BCBC makes grants-in-lieu of
those taxes to help B.C.
municipalities keep property taxes
low.

In all, BCBC issued cheques to
B.C. municipalities totalling $11.5
million at the end of November.

Since it was formed 11 years
ago, the corporation has transfer-
red more than $100.5 million in
grants to B.C. communities.

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