Well… looks like this is the final nail in the coffin for the Buttonville Airport.

Armadale Co. Limited and The Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited have announced that they will be closing the airport and redeveloping the lands.

Looks like the Siftons will remain part of this re-development as they own Armadale Co. and are using Cadillac Fairview to help develop the lands into mix-use.

The full press release can be found on the Cadillac Fairview website.

Shame.

It will be interesting to see what the next few years holds for Toronto Airways. Will they move …

‘Tis a chilly one in the land of CYYZ this morning. According the expansion of mercury in a glass tube graduated with with the centigrade scale, it was 1°C this morning. Frost on the control surfaces for sure!

The latest Aviation Safety Letter was released yesterday. I took a quick read, and I found one article an extremely interesting read. Check out the article on page 12 titled “What Went Wrong: In Flight Blackout”.

The pilot experienced a power failure for half of his instruments in IMC. The outcome was positive (and …

It’s time to vote for a new Mayor in the city of Toronto on October 25th. So the main question on my mind is: “Which one of them supports the Toronto Island Airport?”

A quick googling didn’t reveal anything, so it’s time to take a look at each candidates website to find out if they support the island airport and it’s expansion.

Rob Ford: Yes
George Smitherman: Yes
Joe Pantalone: No

In particular, Smitherman supports building a pedestrian bridge to the Island. Mr. Pantalone would like to abolish the port authority all together.

My only agenda …

I’m doing some preliminary research into getting my IFR rating in Toronto. My rough plan is to see if I can start up in the spring, and get ‘er done before the end of the summer.

My biggest concern is about staying current. I dug up the CARs and section 401.05(3) spells it out for you:

(3) No holder of an instrument rating shall exercise the privileges referred to in Section 401.47 unless the holder has

(a) within the 12 months preceding the flight, successfully completed an instrument rating flight test in …

Seneca College is performing a survey to gather real-world examples of flying scenarios. They are going to use the information gathered by this survey to come up with training and flight simulator scenarios.

The Hangar Talk 2010 Survey website goes on, saying:

The aviation industry has always used a pilot’s hours as a description of his or her expertise.  Before a pilot is eligible for an interview with a major airline they require a minimum number of hours.  Although this minimum guarantees a certain level of hands-on skills, …

The National Museums of Scotland has put together a few 360° views of The Concorde, a Jaguar fighter bomber, an Avro Vulcan, and a De Havilland Comet.

The views are pretty high resolution and allow you full 360 degrees of freedom around the cockpit. It must have been amazing to fly in these old school aircraft. If you take a look at the Comet one, you will see seats for the pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, and two navigators.

Pretty Cool!

I’ve converted my blog from Movable Type to WordPress.

I’ve done extensive testing to ensure that all the links and images from the old site still work. Please let me know if you discover anything that’s not working properly.

One thing that I will stop doing, is sending updates via e-mail. So apologies to those who used this feature.

For those of you who are reading this site via a RSS reader, I welcome you to visit the site and check out the new design.

Are you able to answer this students question? Why *can* airplanes fly upside down if this is how an airfoil works.

Or better yet: Why does the air above the airfoil have to meet up with the air below the airfoil?

It happens hundreds of times a day. Aircraft flying from North America To Europe. In all cases they must travel across the North Atlantic Ocean.

An agreement between Canada, USA, Iceland, Ireland, and the UK have resulted in standard routes that aircraft must follow to get from point A to point B.

These routes are called North Atlantic Routes (or North Atlantic Tracks) and are named using a letter designator: A through G for westbound tracks and U to Z for eastbound tracks.

These are not fixed routes, but change every day as …