The following tour summary was written by Tours & Events Director, Mr. Derek Horsey.

At 1930hrs on Monday September 10th 13 members of YYZ Airport Watch met at the parking lot for our first tour of the FedEx YYZ facility. The tour had been arranged with FedEx after several months of discussion on subjects from who is Airport Watch and what exactly do you want. After the discussions were finalized and announced by our Communication Director it took just thirty minutes for the allowed number of 16 to sign up. The usual practice was taken by adding the next names from the original request list. One point to mention to all members would be if you cannot make the tour date notify the group by email in the hope that your space can be filled. We had three no shows for FedEx and many more than that on the waiting list.

At 1945hrs we moved, as a group, handed in waiver forms and met with the Operations Manager Adrian Skall. Adrian was certainly a FedEx person, been with them for the past 15 years, was a walking encyclopedia on the airfreight business and answered every question we could throw at him. The only apparent disappointment was the statement we only have two airside passes left, others taken up by FedEx training in progress. It was the suggestion of Andy Cline who the passes went to as Andy knew more of the group. First stop from front counter was security, walk through machine and wand scanned. Informal welcome from Adrian and a follow me commenced the tour. We literally saw the complete terminal from truck dockside to follow the sorting belt up to the second level and down again. Review of the container stowage area, all this time Adrian was explaining every detail of the operation. We arrived next to an airside door and the two pass holders were escorted to a MD-10F (N398FE) and then to an A-300-605F (N663FE), the escort was a ramp supervisor. However, the rest of us stood by the open door and those shooters wasted no opportunity, some superb ramp photos emerged. One of the pass holders later had an air tug trip to push back the DC10F; comment upon safe return was even with earplugs it was noisy We then visited the third floor operations room and one of the dispatch weight supervisors explained his responsibilities, again in detail and again all questions were answered.

The Operations manager is allowed a two minute grace period at pushback time prior to receiving a late reason request . Yes, Fedex run a very tight ship, the one thing many of us noticed was the relationship between manager and floor staff, very friendly and Adrian appeared to know a very large percentage of employees by name. The end of the tour took us back through security after Adrian handed out his business card with if you have any questions please call me direct I don t think anybody was disappointed with our first tour with FedEx and I was personally pleased with Adrian inviting us back for another tour, for those that missed out on our first, early next year.