Stats Canada released their aircraft movement report last week.

Some highlights:

There were 5.2 Million take-offs and landings at the top 93 airports.
The peak month was in July, 2012.
Toronto Pearson (CYYZ) was number one at 435,592 movements.

Buttonville (CYKZ) pushed up two spots last year from 11th to 9th with 138,946 movements. Of those take-offs and landings, a whopping 77,160 (55%) of them were local movements. This means that the aircraft never left the circuit. In other words, more than half of the movements were for the sole purpose of practicing  take-offs and landings.

Where are …

It was Sunday afternoon when I decided to see if there was a plane available at 6pm. I called up the airport, and indeed there was!

So far, the new booking policy at TAL has paid off. For me specifically, I’ve been able to fly exactly when I wanted to without having to book months in advance.

I filed my flight plan for the following routing:

CYKZ YSO CYQA CYLS CYKZ

This would give us a round robin flight around Lake Simcoe

The flight was smooth above 4000′ and hazy, but still perfect conditions with …

Yesterday involved a 1.5 hour checkout with a flight instructor at Toronto Airways. It had been 8 months (damn, time flies) since I was last up in the air.

Toronto Airways has changed their checkout policy for the better. Checkouts now involve 0.5 hours of ground briefing plus 1 hour in the air. The good news is that you pay for the aircraft time only. No more $300 checkouts!

After we did some weight and balance and performance calculations we headed out to the airplane to do some circuits. I ended up with …

NavCanada has decided that the Pilot Information Kiosks in various airports across Canada will be decommissioned by the end of August of this year.

The main reason? Lack of use.

PIK were introduced in the early 2000s when the availability of the Internet, cell phone, and other mobile technologies were limited. Due to the emergence of this technology NAV CANADA has seen dramatic decreases in the use of PIK, to a point where further investment is no longer practical.

Not surprising that they are getting rid of them given the reasons stated above. The eventual …

I just did an update of the GTA Rental rates spreadsheet for aicraft rentals in the Toronto Area.  I’ve updated all the prices, as well added the Brantford Flying Club.

If you have any recommendations, suggestions, or corrections… please let me know.

The minimum annual cost to fly is still out of Brantford (no change from 2012).