Yesterday, an Air Canada Boeing 737 MAX 8 suffered a grassy runway excursion after landing at Montréal Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL) in the province of Quebec. The modern narrowbody twinjet had just arrived from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in the US state of California, and it was nearly at full capacity, with a grand total of 162 passengers and crew on board.

Thankfully, there were no injuries as a result of the runway excursion, which saw the Air Canada jet come to a stop on the grass adjacent to the taxiway as it made its way from the runway to the terminal building. However, there was some degree of operational disruption, with Montréal being one of the most delayed airports in the world yesterday. Let’s take a closer look at this strange incident.

An Eventful Arrival

Credit: Flightradar24

Air Canada flight AC774 is a regularly scheduled international commercial passenger service that links Los Angeles with Montréal on a daily basis. The Canadian flag carrier’s aircraft of choice on this route is the Boeing 737 MAX 8, with tracking data made available by Flightradar24 showing that C-GEOJ was rostered to yesterday’s iteration. It left LAX at 8:26 AM, and was airborne for around 4.5 hours.

Its landing at 3:57 PM was 41 minutes before its scheduled arrival in Montréal at 4:38 PM. However, as seen above, the arrival took an eventful turn when the jet suffered a runway excursion after turning onto the taxiway, ending up in the grass. FL360aero quoted an Air Canada rep as saying the jet “sustained a runway excursion and travelled through the grass when exiting the main runway.” They added:

“The 156 passengers and six crew [were] deplaned and transported to the terminal via buses. Plans are being made to tow the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to the hangar, where a full inspection will take place.”

The Incident Had Various Operational Implications

Credit: Air Canada

With C-GEOJ subsequently being taken out of service after its eventful arrival in Montreal, there was a wide range of operational implications. Most directly, the jet’s next rotation (an evening flight to San Francisco and the return leg this morning) had to be cancelled. However, away from the flights that were set to be operated by the plane itself, the incident also had wider knock-on impacts in Montréal.

Indeed, reporting on the matter by The News International highlighted the fact that, while no one was injured as a result of the runway excursion, Nav Canada had to implement measures such as a temporary ground stop and flow restrictions. This, it said, would allow it to “safely manage arrivals and departures” in Montréal while the relevant authorities dealt with the aftermath of the Air Canada incident.

This, along with adverse weather, resulted in considerable operational disruption on a wider level in Montréal. Indeed, YUL was one of the most delayed airports in the world yesterday, with data from FlightAware showing that 27 departing flights (7%) were cancelled and a further 130 (35%) were delayed on July 9. In terms of arrivals, 113 inbound services (29%) ran late, with 24 (6%) being cancelled outright.

The Aircraft Involved

Credit: Air Canada

According to present fleet data made available by ch-aviation, C-GEOJ is one of 52 examples of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 that Air Canada currently has at its disposal (of which 21 fly under the Air Canada Rouge banner). These modern narrowbody twinjets are six years old on average, compared to Air Canada’s fleet-wide mean figure of 17.5 years. C-GEOJ itself is slightly older than average, at 7.11 years.

Air Canada ordered the jet in March of 2014, and it first flew in June of 2019. However, the Boeing 737 MAX’s grounding and the knock-on effects of the coronavirus pandemic meant that the plane wasn’t actually delivered to Air Canada until April of 2022, by which time it was already close to three years old. It has 16 business and 153 economy class sets on board, and is set to join Air Canada Rouge in 2028.