New procedures at Toronto

The airport launched an Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) trial on Sep 16 which will continue until Spring 2020. In theory you should see faster turnaround and taxi times, but there are two key requirements to be aware of:

Make sure you’ve got slots approved in advance for arrival and departure.
For departure, you’ll get a Target off Block Time (TOBT), which you’ll need to update with ATC if you think you’re going to exceed it by 5 minutes or more.

The airport started requiring GA/BA flights to obtain slots back in February 2019. After a few teething problems, they decided to start allowing local handlers to arrange these on behalf of operators. If you get a local handler to do this for you, you can book slots up to 30 days in advance – Skycharter & Signature provide this service.

If you do want to arrange slots yourself, that’s still an option, but you will only be able to request these 3 days in advance. Various flight planning providers have said they can arrange slots for operators too, but they all seem to be restricted to 3 days as well. Toronto is a busy airport, and this restriction may mean that you won’t be able to get the arrival/departure times that you want.

Once you have your slots, your aircraft then gets automatically entered into the A-CDM system. For departure, you will get a Target off Block Time (TOBT), and pilots will need to update this with ATC if they think they are going to exceed it by 5 minutes or more – getting your handler to update your slot reservation at this stage won’t work! Once you get within 10 minutes of the TOBT, you can only update it 2 more times. If a third TOBT update is required, you’ll need to contact the Airport Flow Manager for instructions (+1-416-776-2236).

The airport has published this A-CDM quick reference guide for operators:

Other useful stuff to know about CYYZ/Toronto:

Toronto still has a night curfew between the hours of 0030-0630L. If you need to arrive between those hours, you need to contact the after-hours slot team (+1-416-776-3480), who will consider your request. But watch out! For ops approved during the curfew hours they usually charge you around 20 times the landing fee!
All the approach charts now make reference to a new procedure, implemented in Feb 2019, called Continuous Descent Operations (Jepp chart 10-2). This is designed to help reduce airport noise levels, and involves aircraft flying a continuous descent in the lowest power and drag configuration possible. ATC may instruct pilots to do this during daytime and evening periods when traffic is relatively light. More info
Updated advice has been issued about the runway selection criteria at Pearson. When the north-south runways are in use (RWY 15/33) the airport sees an arrival capacity reduction of around 40%. So crosswind component guidelines have been included in AIC 12/19 for dry, wet and contaminated runways.

If you have further info to report, please do! Email us at news@ops.group

New procedures at Toronto