International Olympic Committee members meeting in Denmark this week are worried about security overkill at the Vancouver Games.
No kidding, says Saltspring Air.
The little float-plane outfit might have to cut staff and service for more than a month because of cumbersome Olympic security requirements.
Ditto for Qualicum Beach's KD Air, which is talking about a 33-day Games-related shutdown -- all because of the remote possibility that Osama bin Laden might try to seize the controls of what is little more than a winged minivan and take out the luge run.
Saltspring and KD are just two of the small Vancouver Island carriers tripped up by rules that say anyone flying near Vancouver or Whistler must first go through a particular type of security scanner -- the problem being that those portals are available only in Nanaimo and Victoria. The requirement will take effect Jan. 29 and last five weeks.
"It just won't work," says Philip Reece, marketing manager and co-owner of Saltspring Air. Passengers boarding the seven-passenger Beaver aircraft in Ganges, Maple Bay or Pat Bay would have to fly to Nanaimo, get out, walk through the screening device, then reboard before continuing to downtown Vancouver or Vancouver airport.
It would more than double the duration of a 25-minute, $96 Ganges-Vancouver flight, wiping out the profit margin, too. Since float planes only fly in daylight, Reece is also hinky about the prospect of security delays keeping planes in the air until dark.
Saltspring Air has been lobbying to have a scanner placed somewhere in the Gulf Islands ("We're prepared to pay extra for it," Reece says) but none can be found.
As a result, a business that had hoped for an Olympic boom is instead looking at layoffs or enforced vacations for its 22 employees. "We will probably cut back to a skeleton staff."
KD Air, which also flies to Vancouver from Qualicum Beach, Port Alberni and Texada Island, says a jog to Victoria -- the closest airport with a scanner it can use -- would kill business.
"Instead of a 20-minute flight, it's going to take an hour and a half," says co-founder Diana Banke. Passengers won't stand for it, she says.
"How stupid is this? Their thought processes went out the door when they planned this. We're very, very angry."
The company has hired a lawyer, recruited politicians and heard talk of a compensation package, but after a year of fighting still has nothing to show for it. One employee has been laid off, and the other 11 are bracing for it.
But it's not just the staff who would be hurt, Banke says. Qualicum's senior-heavy population relies on flights to Vancouver.
"We have people who need to get to doctors and hospitals every day. What are they supposed to do?"
Not all carriers are as concerned. Seair, which flies to Vancouver from Nanaimo and the Gulf Islands, had its fears allayed after working with the Games' Integrated Security Unit to place a security portal at its float-plane base at Departure Bay. Travellers from the Gulf Islands still face the diversion to Nanaimo, but if they're willing to fly, Seair is willing to take them, says manager Brian Potentier.
But some Gulf Islands tourism operators figure there's no way tourists will go for the added rigmarole. The Galiano Inn had big plans, leasing a fleet of Smart Cars for guests and building a 55-metre float-plane dock in time for the Vancouver Games.
"It's perfect," says owner Conny Nordin. "We're 10 minutes away."
Alas, thanks to those flight restrictions, Nordin now finds herself turning away Americans who wanted to commute to the Games.
"Everyone wants the Olympics to be safe," she says, "but it could get extreme to the extent where people can't move around."
And that gets to the core of the matter: At what point does security become so restrictive that it does more harm than good?
Delegates to this week's IOC meetings in Denmark, memories of oppressive Beijing Games security still fresh, muttered about the overuse of scanners in Vancouver.
The 2010 Olympics security bill, originally budgeted at $175 million, has since ballooned to $900 million.
So many police are being seconded to Olympic duty that sa国际传媒's criminal courts will all but shut down for February.
Yet even if they shoot every shadow, take away the biathletes' rifles and make them chuck snowballs instead, they'll never be able to guarantee safety.
And what good is it if the athletes go higher and faster when the rest of us are grounded?
