Nav Canada has announced that “surplus notices” issued to 41 air traffic controllers at area control centres in Gander, Moncton, Montreal and Edmonton have been cancelled. A few weeks ago the company announced that it was abandoning the possibility of closing seven air traffic control towers at secondary airports across the country. “We are proactively taking this action to support our customers as they shift their focus to recovery,” said CEO Ray Bohn adding that it will maintain services necessary “to ensure the continued safety of Canada’s airspace as demand for air navigation services grows.”
The company, which depends almost entirely on user fees from commercial aircraft for revenue, was pummelled by the COVID downturn but its aggressive cost cutting proposals have all but disappeared as a return to more normal traffic levels seems to be happening. In the news release the company said its workforce planning processes “include multiple sources of information, including air traffic forecasts, which are designed to ensure that operations have the required resources to safely manage traffic throughout the pandemic, industry recovery and beyond.”