The Mounties were called to Vancouver airport after Robert Dziekanski started acting strangely in the early hours of Oct. 14, 2007. They stunned him with a Taser within seconds of arriving, and he died soon after. (Paul Pritchard)

Vancouver's airport has made "every possible change" to prevent what happened to Robert Dziekanski from repeating itself, a top airport official said Thursday at a public inquiry into the Polish immigrant's death.

Don Ehrenholz, vice-president of operations, outlined more than two dozen changes that are in place or in the process of being implemented to ensure passengers who need help are looked after.

They include expanded access to translation services, extra staff on the lookout for passengers in trouble, better training, improved signage and additional emergency personnel who respond to every medical call.

"For 15 years, the airport had run quite well and we had never seen a situation such as this … but we determined that we needed more of a human touch to deal with very unique circumstances such as Robert's," Ehrenholz testified.

"We've implemented every possible change that we could to prevent the circumstances that occurred on Oct. 14, 2007."

That was the day Dziekanski, who was coming from his native Poland to Canada to live with his mother in Kamloops, B.C., died in the airport following a confrontation with police.

Unnoticed for 5 hours

Dziekanski went unnoticed in a secure customs hall for more than five hours, possibly sleeping, before finally making his way through immigration, a process that took several more hours.

His mother, Zofia Cisowski, had told him she would meet him in an area where members of the public are not allowed.

Instead, Cisowski, was waiting in the public area frantically trying to find any information about her son but receiving little help from airport staff or border officials.

A border officer eventually told Cisowski that her son wasn't in the airport, so she drove back to Kamloops. By the time Dziekanski cleared immigration into a largely empty meeting area, his mother was gone.

Soon after, four RCMP officers were summoned to the terminal where Dziekanski had started throwing furniture. Within seconds, Dziekanski was stunned several times with the Taser, and died.

The airport was among several agencies, including the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP, to face harsh criticism in the year and a half since Dziekanski's death. In particular, questions have been raised about why no translator was ever called, or how Dziekanski could have remained at the airport for nearly 10 hours without anyone noticing that he needed help.

Airport policies reviewed

The airport immediately started a review of its policies and procedures.

While an internal report concluded all staff acted properly and in accordance with their training, it also made 33 recommendations.

Ehrenholz testified Thursday telephone handsets are now at every customer service booth in the airport that give passengers and staff instant access to interpreters speaking dozens of languages.

The service was available in October 2007, but Ehrenholz admitted it was seldom used and many staff didn't know how to access it. Today, it is used 150 to 200 times each month, he said.

He said airport staff now patrol the customs hall once an hour looking for distressed or lost passengers. In the year and a half since Dziekanski's death, they have encountered just one such passenger — a man with dementia who staff helped return to his care home on Vancouver Island.

Other things haven't changed.

Most notably, it would still be difficult for a waiting family member or friend to find information about an arriving passenger.

Airport staff have no way of paging passengers in the customs hall Canada Border Services Agency agents aren't allowed to release information about passengers, although passengers can post electronic notices letting waiting family members or friends know they've arrived.

The border agency has already said its officers still only call for interpreters when a person is found inadmissible to Canada. Most of Dziekanski's interactions were with border officers, and admissibility wasn't an issue.

The inquiry has also heard that the airport's own firefighters weren't called after Dziekanski collapsed onto the floor, and an automatic defibrillator wasn't brought to the scene, even though airport policies require both in a high-priority medical emergency.

Ehrenholz said the airport supervisor who decided not to call the airport firefighters, known as ERS, or fetch a defibrillator had the authority to use his discretion.

"In the training that was given to the (airport response co-ordinator), they were also told that they had the ability to use field judgment in certain circumstances to override and not dispatch ERS," he said.