J.O.

I've said this many times before - the company comes to the negotiating table with a bucket of money. So long as the flights are crewed appropriately, they don't much care for how that bucket gets divvied up. But legislating the change as proposed doesn't magically make that bucket any bigger. 

James McRae, an RCAF veteran and the last surviving WWII recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, died this year, aged 106. A restored PBY Canso, which he flew during the war, will journey from Fairview, Alta., to Yarmouth, N.S., in his memory.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6419729

I found this info here. 

https://www.portvancouver.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-05-Web-Friendly-File-Safe-Boating-Guide-2019-Update.pdf

Based on the images I am quite positive the aircraft was within the mapped area.

I have read elsewhere that maritime rules state that if one vessel has "limited mobility / maneuvering capability vs. another, then the one with limited mobility has the right of way. It's pretty hard to argue that a Beaver on floats doing a takeoff has the same mobility / maneuvering capability as your typical pleasure boat. The Vancouver Harbour safe boating guide also delineates a a floatplane operations area and tells boaters to avoid that area altogether. The aircraft was inside that area. All this to say there are a few holes in the Swiss cheese that need to be addressed.

I know many will say he died doing what he loved, but to still be flying at age 90 seems a little stubborn and selfish to me. 

I only flew the 200, but compared to the other turboprops in its class, it was far superior in all respects.

Same applies. They were designed to run on leaded fuel and apparently running without lead causes several issues including detonation prior to top dead centre.

Someone please correct me if this is wrong but I've heard that those radial engines don't run very well on low lead fuel.

Lol, there's no manual for maintenance on this old "airframe". It's very much an "on condition" program and that condition is rarely the same two days in a row. 

As for the old 215, the lack of availability of avgas in the north is going to render them obsolete before long. The question will be whether or not Joe has the stomach (and the cash) to upgrade them to turboprops - which is a long and quite expensive process.

It's cute that they consider an airplane built in 1971 is "new".  I know - it's new to them, but it's almost as old as me and my best before date is not far away.

On 5/30/2024 at 4:55 AM, deicer said:

If you're into baseball, you know....

Actually, he’s better suited for Boeing senior management. Making bad calls and then denying culpability is kinda their thing.

I read elsewhere that the incident at Schipol was indeed a suicide. Of all the ways …

I can't believe an airline needs to create policy around suspending service in turbulence. I remember a time when that was my job as Captain.

People think they're potholes in the sky because that's the only thing they can relate it to. Hence the term.

It's definitely fuel. The WS aircraft are programmed in pounds and the Sunwing fleet is in kilograms. As for pilot training, I suspect the folks at TC asked for more than was proposed in their first transition plan. 

53%? Wow, that's a divided group and a much bigger headache for the union.

Lol, I should have known you'd be having fun with it! 

I understand your connection with the Malibu. When I was just about 5, our neighbour picked up a shiny new 66 Malibu SS in blue. I don't remember much from that time but I remember him bringing it to our farm to show it off. I also remember how he cared for it like a first born child, hand washing it every day when he got home from work. He was 15 years younger than my dad but still a close friend of his and kinda the big brother I never had. Dad and I had many rides in that Malibu to the local drive-in for foot longs and a shake on a Saturday night. I can still hear the tinny speaker calling out our order when it was time to pick it up. We always sat at a picnic table because eating in his car was verboten.

John died of pancreatic cancer around the time I started flight instructing. Eventually his car went up for sale and it broke my heart that I didn't have the money to buy it because I most certainly would have. I regret not finding a way to make it happen. His sister came to Dad's funeral last year and we shared a fond memory of their friendship and John's car. I also found out that his car is still owned by the same guy who bought it in '82 and that she's neighbours with him in Kitchener. Part of me would love to look him up but I guess that would be a tad creepy.

One very minor point, your flight with me was on a Skyservice A320 - was that to San Andres?

Have a great day my friend. I'm not far from hitting the silk and moving back east. It would be a hoot to catch up someday over a cold one. I could listen to your flying stories for a week.

17 hours ago, Kip Powick said:

.PS..My birhday was 03 May 

Belated happy birthday, old bean.

From a slightly younger old bean. 

P.S., what kinda car are you treating yourself with? Corvette? Aston Martin? 

On 5/3/2024 at 1:57 PM, Falken said:

Got them all except the VOLVO one! I will guess it has to something to do with our environment minister's new airline! 

VI must have been given a different quiz because I didn't see anything connected to Volvo. 

I couldn't get American Airlines. In all my years of seeing their livery I only ever noticed the tail and the name on the aft fuselage. Not once did i pick up in the eagle's head in the forward stripe. 

Talk to anyone who worked in the air attack program at BCWS when the Mars was active and they will tell you a much different story regarding available lakes, especially on a typical hot day in the summer. But the biggest issue was reliability. It lost many available days due to maintenance issues - mostly with the engines.

There are thousands of tasks that AI can be trained to perform, but as Vs has astutely pointed out, the result is only as good as the training. Skin in the game is often used to describe when one's own best interests for survival drive decision making and tend to make us more conservative. How do you teach a computer to have a moral need to stay alive?

A first attempt to train AI to detect skin cancers failed because the training was unintentionally biased due to the images chosen to train the system. The first trials resulted in the machine deciding that any image that included a measuring device to depict the size of the lesion was cancer, while any image that did not have a measuring device was marked as "not cancer". That error was corrected and now it's apparently doing an amazing job at diagnostics. My question would be how many iterations of training would it take to teach a machine to sense and feel all of the "seat of the pants" things that us pilots use to help keep us alive?

On 4/28/2024 at 7:10 AM, Malcolm said:

HuH?  They did have a point.  

No, they didn't have a point. BCWS stopped using it because it was about as unreliable as an air asset could be while still being considered "airworthy". It also couldn't take water from most of the lakes in the province other than Okanagan and Kootenay because it needed the room to get out with a load on board.

What’s one hanger? There are plenty more where that came from. 
 

Good! Hopefully now the Port Alberni mafia will stop whining that BC isn’t using a Model A era airplane to fight wildfires. 

If it sounds too good to be true ...