NavCanada

Quiet Skies: A General Aviation Transect of Canada

July 20, 2017 by Scott Spangler

On the eve of the Congressional vote to privatize the US air traffic control system, I made an informal, unscientific general aviation study of a nation—Canada—that privatized its system in 1996, when Transport Canada sold its air traffic control and navigation services to a private, nonprofit company, NavCanada. Without getting into the vociferous politics involved, the common denominator for a privatized service formerly provided by the government is user fees.

To gauge the consequences to general aviation, during a 3,057-mile transit of the TransCanada Highway, which began on Canada Day (July 1) at the Abbotsford, BC, border, and concluded at the Ogdensburg, NY, border on July 11, I would keep a sharp-eye pealed for GA airplanes flying within my constantly moving visual hemisphere. And I would explore GA airports that were not too far off the highway and talk to any aviator I happened to meet at them.

I started my survey without expectations. By landmass, Canada is the world’s second largest nation. NavCanada’s website says it manages 12 million aircraft operations annually for 40,000 customers in the 18 million square kilometers (6,949,838.85 square miles) that stretches north from the US-Canadian border to the North Pole and from Pacific West Coast to the North Atlantic, the world’s busiest oceanic airspace, which averages 1,200 flights a day to Europe.

On my Canadian transect, I saw nine aircraft. Four of them were turboprop ag aircraft at work in the prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. On Canada Day, walking back from dinner at Hope, British Columbia, I saw a single-engine prop plane with a long, thin high wing, whose make and model I could not identify. The pilot I saw enjoying a beautiful evening over Blind River, Ontario, was flying a Cessna 172. At the Dryden Regional Airport, an A-Star 350 hovered and landed at the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources base, and on the other side of the airport, a Metroliner arrived to exchange its passengers. And on my survey’s last day, what looked like a Cessna Mustang business jet was on its final approach to Ottawa, Canada’s capital.

MH370 Two Years Later: Has the Industry Changed?

March 7, 2016 by Robert Mark

Malaysian Boeing 777

MH370 Two Years Later: Has the Industry Changed?

It’s anniversary time, but March 8 won’t be a happy day to reminisce.

Two years ago, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (MH370), a Boeing 777, disappeared from the night skies over the South China Sea on what should have been a routine flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. All 239 people aboard disappeared along with the airplane.

Only one confirmed piece of MH370 wreckage has been located, a section of the 777′ s flap that washed ashore near Reunion Island last year, some 4000 miles west of where an intensive search operation has been combing the ocean floor for nearly two years.

The theories about what happened to this airplane are as varied as the beer and wine probably consumed before most of those theories went public. Me, I have no idea what happened to the flight.

Lessons Learned?

What’s crucial for our industry however, is understanding what steps the airlines and regulators around the world have taken over the past two years, solutions to make international travelers sleep a bit easier after their next ticket purchase.

To the surprise of a couple of local Chicago WGN-TV anchors I spoke to last week, the simple answer to what’s changed since March 2014 is not much at all. Another airliner could go missing just like MH370 because although a few plans have been released, tracking the location of an airplane anywhere on the planet is no different today than when we lost MH370.

That doesn’t mean no one is trying to solve the problem of course.

A year after the Malaysian 777 disappeared, most member states of the United Nation’s aviation arm, the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO), agreed that air traffic control anywhere on the globe should be able to receive location updates from an airliner at least every 15 minutes and once a minute if the aircraft were in distress. They’ve also recommended new methods of recovering flight data recorders from downed aircraft. But recommendations shouldn’t be confused with solutions. Some of ICAO’s newest recommendations won’t take effect until 2021. [Read more…] about MH370 Two Years Later: Has the Industry Changed?

FAA InFO Translates Canadian ATC Lingo

February 29, 2012 by Scott Spangler

In an attempt to keep current with all aspects of aviation, I subscribe to all manner of e-mail updates. In this arena, the FAA is prolifically focused. My latest discovery is the InFO, short for Information For Operators.

Produced by the FAA’s Flight Standards Service, these notices contain “valuable information for operators that should help them meet certain administrative, regulatory, or operational requirements with relatively low urgency or impact on safety.”

Initially, the idea of focusing on one difference between US and Canadian ATC phraseology might spark a giggle. After all, isn’t English the official language of aviation? How different or confusing could the phraseology used to issue a standard terminal arrival be?

George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright and journalist, indirectly answered this question when he wrote that the English and Americans are “two peoples separated by a common language.” Having reported several stories about Canadian aviation, I’ll second this with a hearty Roger THAT!