Airport apologizes, announces changes

Two airport customer service agents noticed Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski was sweating profusely and one said he looked pale in colour, several hours before his violent outburst led to him being Tasered by Mounties on Oct. 14.

New details about what happened to Dziekanski are contained in a 33-page report released Friday morning by the Vancouver International Airport Authority, which also announced $1.3 million in changes that it hopes will prevent this type of incident from occurring in the future.

Round-the-clock customer care, bigger information signs, better staff training and other architectural changes are coming to the international arrivals area of the airport, airport president Larry Berg told reporters.

The airport authority has been given the green light by the Canada Border Services Agency to take a more active role in customer service in the customs controlled area of the airport, he said.

Regular sweeps will be made in the arrivals area of the airport to assist passengers arriving on international flights, and customer service agents will be equipped with Blackberry telephones and easy access to translation services.

Berg said that in the future, when people appear to be in distress, or in need of medical assistance, this will be identified by trained staff who know how to respond. This will help fill in a communication gap in the flow of information between the airport authority and Canada Border Services.

"If I can point to what I think is a great deficiency here is the fact that over the years, YVR has not had staff in the customs control area," he said. "We've changed all that with the concurrence of Canada Customs and Border Services Agency."

There will also be round-the-clock medical response available at the airport, he said.

Berg also revealed that a few weeks ago, he wrote a letter to Dziekanski's mother, Kamloops resident Zofia Cisowski, in which he apologized to her and offered his condolences.

"I also gave her my commitment to see through these changes to ensure this doesn't happen again...I think it's clear that our systems that we have in place did not serve Robert Dziekanski that evening and in fact...the changes we're making today is a direct result of that."

A prominent new customer information centre will be centrally located in the baggage carousel area of the airport, staffed whenever the customs hall is open, and capable of providing translation services in more than 170 languages

Also coming in the future is improvements to the way arriving passengers can connect with those people greeting them at the airport.

This will include a video-paging service, he said.

Key changes to the airport include:

• 24-hour customer care in the international arrivals area and inside the customs hall

• additional customer care training and tools, including a translation pamphlet and Blackberry telephones

• more easily identified, terminal-wide access to translation services

• 24-hour medical response at the airport

• larger, brighter signs with pictograms and multiple languages

• hourly walk-throughs of the customs hall and round-the-clock public safety patrols