Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services

Yellowknife ( Jun 05/00) - New, shorter air routes over the Arctic, thanks to the opening up of Russian skies, will likely mean more jets flying over the NWT.

And that's a cause for concern for members of the Arctic Interdepartmental Working Group. The agency met May 26 at the Canadian Forces Northern Area Headquarters in Yellowknife to discuss the situation.

The opening of Russian airspace could lead to up to 500 flights per day through polar air space.

There are currently about 85,000 flights per year over the Arctic and 20 to 30 per day over the Arctic control area, north of the Parry Channel, where there is no radar. Therefore, the Canadian military cannot keep track of who is flying through that area.

The advantages commercial airlines will reap in taking the shorter routes through the once-forbidden Siberian air space are millions of dollars in saved costs as a result of shortened flight times and less fuel. The savings on flights from North America to Asian destinations have resulted in an ongoing feasibility study between Nav Canada and the Federal Aviation Administration of Russia.

One of the major concerns raised by the increased air traffic is how to deal with the potential for air disasters.

Current search and rescue capabilities would be stretched to the breaking point to deal with a major incident in the North.

"We're talking about asking for serious resource allocations," explained CFNA public affairs officer Lieut. Mark Gough. "It's a matter of hierarchy in Ottawa to best allocate the resources to meet different requirements. It isn't a direct threat right now to Canada's sovereignty."

Major Rick Hanna, of the Canadian Forces National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, told the meeting that search and rescue would be hard-pressed to deal with a major air disaster in the North.

The major air incident disaster (MAJAID) plan describes "a response to a search and rescue incident that, by its scope or the existing environmental conditions, exceeds the capability of the normal search and rescue system," according to Hanna's presentation.

"Experts in the field suggest the number of commercial flights will double in the next 15 years. Should the accident rate remain the stable, the increase volume will result in a doubling of the raw number of aircraft accidents."

Canada's primary military facilities for major air disasters that involve search and rescue are located in Comox, B.C.; Winnipeg, Man.; Trenton, Ont.; Halifax, N.S.; and Gander, Nfld. The time to get rescue units deployed to the site of a disaster, south of 60th parallel, is a maximum of 15 hours. The maximum time to deploy rescue units north of that would be considerably longer depending on several variables such as weather.

"When you look at it in perspective -- the number of resources we have and the number of people we have -- it's hard to find an even balance," Gough explained. "What we are asking for is being considered.

"But we keep the resources in the south because that's where the majority of (search and rescue as opposed to MAJAID) incidents occur."

Changes to the plan do not include any closer major facilities to the North at this point.

"The plan we have right now works," Hanna said. "However, there's revision required in the plans themselves."

Discussions are now under way on how to make those changes, including the possibility of moving Canadian Forces military assets that would be used in search and rescue operations in the North.