Air Canada continues to be dogged by a baggage handling crisis at Pearson International Airport.

Delayed takeoffs and lengthy waits for luggage — so long that many passengers have been forced to go on, leaving bags containing vital medicine or expensive valuables behind — could bedevil Canada's biggest airline for a while.

Frazzled Air Canada officials were telling passengers earlier this week that about 1,700 bags had yet to be reunited with their owners. One passenger was told yesterday that 1,000 bags remained.

But by last night, just 200 were awaiting return to their owners, said Air Canada.

However, passengers are being warned they may still see some disruptions as the airline works "around the clock" to deal with ongoing problems with the baggage conveyer system at Pearson — compounded by what others say are serious staffing problems.

"There has been an impact on other airports," said Air Canada spokesperson Laura Cooke.

Some Vancouver passengers, for instance, missed connections over Christmas because of flight or baggage delays.

"This was supposed to be a stress-free vacation before (my wife) has to undergo cancer treatment," said David MacKay of Picton, who hasn't seen his bags since he left Los Angeles for Toronto last Sunday.

Despite 30 attempts by phone, an e-mail and even a teletype, he's yet to talk to an Air Canada official in person.

"This has put an enormous amount of stress on our family."

Passengers, airline and airport staff who've witnessed the problems — which have eased since the end of the Christmas travel crunch last weekend — say they were shocked to see hundreds of abandoned bags just scattered around Air Canada arrivals carousels.

"If I'd been arriving Sunday night, I'd have thought I was on a Third World airline, arriving in a Third World country," said Nancy McDonald of Toronto.

She was stunned to see passengers ducking in and out of what's supposed to be a restricted area when security guards weren't looking to talk to relatives during the long wait for bags.

"It was a real security issue," said McDonald, who was at Pearson Sunday night to get her niece.

"It was a zoo. You could never find anybody from Air Canada to talk to."

MacKay and his wife Susan decided to stay in Toronto overnight Sunday in hopes of retrieving their bags, which contained vital medicine Susan needs to take every morning because of bone marrow cancer, and expensive digital camera equipment.

But David was stunned when he returned to Pearson Monday morning, expecting to be led into a locked baggage area.

Instead, he was taken to the arrivals area, where a sea of some 500 bags was scattered about the floor and carousels or piled against walls.

"We've probably flown between 22 and 24 different airlines around the world in the last two years and we've never experienced anything like this," said David, a freelance travel writer. "It was absolute chaos."

"Anyone could have picked up bags and just walked out with them."

After a fruitless half-hour search, and fearing they were running out of time for Susan to get her medicine, the couple raced home to get replacements there.

Another passenger who contacted The Star said he was shocked to arrive at Pearson Sunday to find one of his three bags sitting "all alone" in the middle of the arrivals area.

The flight number on the baggage tags suggests it arrived via another flight 10 hours earlier from Vancouver — despite strict new security measures that stipulate all bags must be matched to passengers on board the plane.

Two other bags, containing his son's Christmas presents, are still missing.

"We fully realize that the baggage issues facing the airline have had an impact on our customers and created inconvenience, and we deeply regret that," said Air Canada's Cooke.

"We are working around the clock to fix these problems."

But other issues have complicated the problems, some say.

The layoff of some 400 baggage handlers since October has left the money-losing airline too short-staffed to handle what's proven to be a major increase in check-on baggage in the wake of new security measures restricting carry-on luggage and the failure of Canada 3000, which sent many passengers to Air Canada.

As a result of the layoffs, a crew of four, unloading a Boeing 767, can no longer count on getting help from relief crews, said one veteran "ramp rat."

Compounding the problem is that Pearson's Terminal 2 is too outdated to deal with the backlog created by the new security measures.

And many baggage handlers — frustrated at Air Canada and their own union over ongoing seniority and layoff issues — continue to refuse overtime and book off sick.

A fourth baggage handler was fired by the airline yesterday for refusing overtime.

"We joke that there's a saying among Air Canada management: `We're not happy until you're not happy,'" said one long-time baggage handler.

"They laid off people and they didn't have enough bodies to begin with.

"Well, a lot of us are saying: `We've got brothers that have been laid off and terminated. We're not working overtime until you bring them back.'"

The Star

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002