Love, excitement and emotional reunions as holiday travel hits its peak

CTV National News: Braving the holiday travel Air Canada is planning to move more than 2 million travellers over the holidays. Garrett Barry scopes out the operations in St. John's.

There was hardly anything left to do, even the family pets were tucked away, so Jocelyn Farrell came to the airport early — an hour early — to pick up her daughter.

"I'm completely overwhelmed," she said. "This is the longest we've ever been apart."

Her daughter — heading home and arriving at the St. John's airport — had just spent her first semester away at university in Alberta, studying for a computer science degree. And Farrell has been anxiously awaiting her adopted daughter's return.

"I've been cleaning and cooking and shopping and pacing the halls. I haven't slept, I didn't even sleep last night, I can't do it," she said.

"The last time I felt like this was the day they put her in my arms."

As each flight to the St. John's International Airport arrived on Thursday, another crush of family members crowded by the arrivals exit for a hug, a kiss or an excited reunion with their loved one.

It's not the busiest time for the airport — that's in August — but maybe one of the most lopsided. In the next few days, the planes coming into St. John's will be jam-packed, and the flights leaving will be a little lighter.

That trend will reverse as the holiday season ends and the flow of traffic leaving St. John's picks up for travellers heading back to their daily lives.

Lorraine Neal was one of the many arriving in St. John's Thursday. For her, it's going to be her first Newfoundland Christmas in 25 years.

"We're excited," she said alongside her son Cody Neal. "And I'm going to bring the blue skies to them."

Air Canada says peak holiday travel has started. The busiest days are expected to be Dec. 19 until Dec. 23.

Overall, the airline says it will move more than two million people throughout the holiday season and operate 1,000 flights a day.

Favourable weather kept things running mostly smoothly in St. John's on Thursday, although operations staff were already looking ahead to a weekend weather system threatening rain and snow over much of the province.

Almost all of the airport's concerns run through the on-duty manager position, a job staffed 24 hours per day. In messy winter weather, or complicated travel days, the phone lines into that office can run hot.

Wayne Morris, now the director of operations for the airport, sat in that chair for seven years.

"Everybody, our tenants, our contractors and so on, have one number to call," he said. "It can be phenomenally busy on the telephone."

Building concerns, runway updates, snow clearing concerns — they all run through the on-duty manager's office.

"It could be — and particularly in winter — conditions on the apron, that they need some additional snow clearing or ice control," Morris said. "If flights are running early or behind, we may need to start juggling bridges and gates to make sure that there's no gate delays."

A recovery day — when a big winter storm has cancelled several flights — can get very busy too, involving a lot of coordination with the airlines and runway maintenance staff.

"It wouldn't be uncommon in a busy winter's day to get a couple of hundred calls," he said.

Saturday's storm looks manageable — good news for all those hundreds of travellers on the way home for the holidays.

"I think … we're going to get away with this one," Morris said, "and it looks like it's going to be rain, thankfully."