Flight school teaches how to to navigate long distances, ensure the weather will suitable for your flight, how to divert in case of an emergency, and how to manage fatigue while flying. However, if you are planning a multi day trip across the country there are a few other things you need to know: What…
NavCanada’s Operational Information System (OIS) outlines all of the traffic flow-related information for Canada and most US centres. It offers the following information that can be used by smaller operations, flight dispatches, and IFR GA pilots on: It also displays which runways are in use at airports and at what capacity (measured in aircraft arrivals/departure…
Uncontrolled airports are just that. Airports that have no control tower or a tower that is closed. At least in Canada, we have no specific laws that tell you how you should approach an uncontrolled airport to land. Let’s take a look how Canadian Pilots land at an airport with no positive air traffic control….
To view my full tutorial on how to use Windy for Flight Planning. See my previous blog post. Windy has recently made a (old) new model available for Canadian aviators to use for their short term flight planning: The High-Resolution Deterministic Prediction System. For years I’ve been touting the accuracy of the European Centre for…
One of the main advantages of flying is that you get to travel in straight lines. You know that saying: “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line”. Take, for example, this short flight from CNC3 to KERI. As the crow flies (over Lake Erie): 101nm or approx. 50 min of flying time….
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in August 2023. A lot has changed with Toronto’s airspace since then and this post has been updated accordingly with those changes and corrections to errors. A fellow aviator was asking me how to transit through Toronto (YYZ) airspace so that they could visit Buttonville (CYKZ) airport before…
An air traffic controller shortage in Toronto is starting to negatively effect general aviation across the city. Controlling Canada’s Airspace NavCanada is Canada’s non-profit organization that is responsible for managing traffic over the world’s second largest country. In addition they also manage traffic over the Atlantic Ocean as far east as Reykjavík, Iceland. They do…
Canada has some unique rules when it comes to instrument flight rules compared to the rest of the world. The reason for these rules was simple – Canada’s large geography and unique geographical position on the planet makes for some interesting situations whereby special rules needed to apply. Let’s take a look at two unique…
In Canada, there are three ways search and rescue (SAR) officials will initiate the start of a search for a missing aircraft. Of which, only two of them will be initiated automatically during certain events: The third way is “manual” activation by a responsible person who has been following the flight using a flight itinerary….
One thing they don’t teach you in flight school is how to fuel your aircraft. This is something I had to learn on my own years later. Some pilots may never have to learn this skill as a lot of airports have full service fuel pumps where the ramp attendant will do it for you….