Toronto Pearson is Canada’s largest and busiest airport, North America’s second largest international airport, as measured by the total number of annual international and trans border passengers. It is the hub for some 465,000 flights, over 47 million passengers annually, and continues to experience significant growth.
Unit Load Devices (ULDs) are currently stored on the apron at both Terminal 1 and Terminal 3. There is a significant, consistent, requirement for more ULDs as the increase of planes and flights continues to grow. As such, finding areas to temporarily store these units is proving more difficult resulting negatively on operations and safety for ground crew. The ULDs are currently occupying Ground Support Equipment (GSE) staging areas leaving no place for ground handlers to park, in turn ground handlers routinely park equipment in unauthorized areas. This unauthorized parking of GSE has implications to smooth apron operations and as such not only effects on time performance but raises health and safety concerns.
To mitigate this concern, GTAA plans install vertical storage (Stillage) to minimize the footprint occupied by ULDs.