The internet is roasting a Toronto airport CEO for boasting that on-time travel rates 'improved remarkably' while a screen behind her showed a deluge of flight arrivals being delayed or canceled

• Twitter users are roasting an airport CEO who was filmed next to a board filled with delayed arrivals.
• She was lauding the Toronto airport's performance when a cameraman filmed the screen next to her.

An airport CEO is getting roasted online after she was filmed praising the travel hub's on-time performance while a screen nearby displayed a long list of delayed or canceled arrivals.

"We've seen almost a doubling in on-time performance since last year," Greater Toronto Airport Authority CEO Deborah Flint said at a Tuesday press conference.

She was speaking about how Toronto's Pearson International Airport had "significantly improved" its operations while North America's airline industry was mired in summer travel chaos.

"That is a reflection of all the work that we've done across the ecosystem together with our partner airlines, with agencies, reducing processing time, reducing wait times, and fine-tuning operations with our air carrier partners," she said. "And we see the great results from that."

As Flint spoke, a TV cameraman angled the camera to show flight information display screens behind her, that displayed almost all the airport's flight arrivals in the morning and early afternoon being delayed or canceled.

It's unclear whether the flight arrival times, which can be delayed for various issues like poor weather or holdups at other airports, were affected by Pearson's operations.

Some were delayed by up to two hours. The shot was broadcast on the Canadian channel CTV News, which called the clip an "ironic pan."

Flint said on-time performance at Pearson had "improved remarkably" and that almost 70% of flights at the airport arrive and depart on time, compared to 30% at the same time last year.

People reacting online to the clip lauded the cameraman for filming the display. "Protect this camera operator at all cost!" one Twitter user wrote.

"Very tone deaf press conferences,"one critic wrote.

The airport later defended Flint and Pearson on Twitter. "We get it — but these are arrivals from other airports, which we don't control. Even the ones battling bad weather today," it wrote.

Representatives for Bell Media, the parent company of CTV, and Pearson International Airport did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.