9:44pm, June 22, 1924. Three minutes before dusk and still no sign of Pilot Russell Maughan. 50,000 people waited at Crissy Field outside of San Francisco for the first ever dawn to dusk transcontinental crossing of the United States. What nobody had known was that thunderstorms and heavy rain had caused poor take off conditions…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
My annual renewal form came in the mail for my CFS subscription. In it was a letter on a blue piece of paper that read: NEW! NAV CANADA now offers the Canada Air Pilot (CAP), Reistricted Canada Air Pilot (RCAP) and Canada Water Aerodrome Supplement (CWAS) in electronic PDF download format… Wow! This is great…
I haven’t been flying or posting a lot lately. This past year has been busy with other things in my life. Doug and I spent a lot of time working on the latest version of World Flight Planner. We had a booth at the latest COPA AGM and we’ve been updating the software to support…
Toronto Airways (the flight school at Buttonville) is making a policy change with regards to their booking & rental policy. John Davis, Vice President of Flight Operations describes the change: Toronto Airways has been receiving numerous complaints from customers with respect to our aircraft availability. As a result, we completed a thorough investigation of our…
Anne and I carpooled up to Lake Simcoe Regional Airport (CYLS) for a 9:30am departure. Our route took us first to Lindsay (CNF4) then Oshawa (CYOO), Buttonville (CYKZ), to the Mans VOR (YMS), Collingwood (CNY3), and then finally back to Lake Simcoe. I planned the flight to cut across Lake Simcoe. I did the math…