Kip Powick

I would like to indicate that I laughed at your last post about Pizza Hut but ...alas...you don't have that little HEART widget in the lower right corner of your posts...........whhhhhyyyyy ???

Trackers and video cameras.......I don't care about them......."they" can track me and video me all they want EXCEPT in the privacy of my house. Video cameras enhance law enforcement and I am all for that and to a degree, so do trackers. Trackers??? Don't care ....and if "you" are doing the job you are being paid for.......why would you care.? And last but not least........ now I know where my luggage is ....

Must be a new set of "bean-counters" in AA

We fixed wing jockeys have always questioned any flying machine where the airfoil spends 50% of its time going backwards...

And no one had a cell phone to get a pic...????

When I lived in Kelowna, the population was about 15,000. I believe it is over 130,000. When I was accepted in the RCAF, I thought it would be nice to come back, at retirement, and attempt to become the airport manager at our little airport......purely a "pipe-dream".... I went back last year to see some school friends whose lives took different turns but returned to Kelowna when they retired. The building behind the sign is the Fairview Hotel, where I stayed last year. It is sitting on the property where our ranch house once sat. My legacy is the road sign installed on a new street decades after I left home...a new steet which used to be a dead end but now runs to another street. You can't stop change 1960 2023

MORE HERE.. CNN — Groundbreaking aviator Amelia Earhart’s tragic and mysterious disappearance while flying over the Pacific Ocean has captivated the world for nearly 87 years, spurring on countless investigations and expeditions for answers on what happened to the beloved pilot. Video Ad Feedback Why exploration team believes they found Amelia Earhart's plane 02:31 - Source: CNN The most recent group to join the search — a team of underwater archaeologists and marine robotics experts with Deep Sea Vision, an ocean exploration company based in Charleston, South Carolina — says it may have found a clue that could bring some closure to Earhart’s story. By using sonar imaging, a tool for mapping the ocean floor that uses sound waves to measure the distance from the seabed to the surface, the group has spotted an anomaly in the Pacific Ocean — more than 16,000 feet (4,877 meters) underwater — that resembles a small aircraft. The team believes that anomaly could be a Lockheed 10-E Electra, the 10-passenger plane that Earhart was piloting when she went missing while attempting to fly around the world. Amelia Earhart is photographed with her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, the aircraft she used in her attempted flight around the world. Earhart and the plane went missing on July 2, 1937. Underwood & Underwood/Alamy Stock Photo Deep Sea Vision announced the find through an Instagram post on Saturday, January 27. “Some people call it one of the greatest mysteries of all time, I think it actually is the greatest mystery of all time,” said the company’s CEO Tony Romeo, a pilot and former US Air Force intelligence officer. “We have an opportunity to bring closure to one of the greatest American stories ever.” Solving an underwater mystery The imagery was taken roughly 100 miles away (161 kilometers) from Howland Island, Romeo said, the next spot where Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan were expected to land following their last takeoff from Lae, Papua New Guinea. The pair was declared lost at sea after an extensive 16-day search conducted by the US government. Deep Sea Vision scanned more than 5,200 square miles (13,468 square kilometers) of the ocean floor using an advanced autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) known as Hugin 6000, which maps the seabed using sonar technology. The company’s expedition began in early September 2023 and ended in December, Romeo told CNN. Romeo hopes to return to the site within the year to get further confirmation that the anomaly is a plane, which would most likely involve the use of an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) with a camera that would allow the object to be investigated more closely. The team would also look into the possibility of bringing their find to the surface, Romeo said. “While it is possible that this could be a plane and maybe even Amelia’s plane, it is too premature to say that definitively. It could also be noise in the sonar data, something geologic, or some other plane,” said Andrew Pietruszka, an underwater archaeologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and the lead archaeologist for Project Recover, an organization dedicated to finding MIA soldiers and aircrafts from World War II. “That being said, if I was searching for Amelia’s plane and had this target in the data set I would want to interrogate it further,” Pietruszka said in an email. More theories on Earhart’s disappearance A 2017 History Channel documentary proposed a theory that Earhart and Noonan had crashed in the Marshall Islands — about 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) away from Howland Island — where they were captured and taken to Saipan Island, held hostage and eventually died. The theory was based off a photo from the US National Archives that featured several blurry figures; investigators claimed the aviator and her plane were in the image. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, theorized in 2016 that Earhart and Noonan survived a rough landing on a reef in the Pacific Ocean but later died as castaways when the pair could not radio for help. The TIGHAR team claimed that a skeleton of a castaway found on the island of Nikumaroro, Kiribati, in 1940 had matched with “Earhart’s height and ethnic origin.” The most widely believed theory, held by the US government and the Smithsonian, is that Earhart and Noonan crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island when the plane ran out of fuel. The new sonar image of the proposed missing aircraft is of particular interest because of the anomaly’s proximity to Howland Island, said Dorothy Cochrane, a curator for general aviation in the aeronautics department of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. In Earhart’s last communications, her radio transmissions progressively got stronger as she got closer to Howland Island, indicating that she was nearing the island before she disappeared, Cochrane said. However, the plane-shaped object found by Deep Sea Vision lacks certain features of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, such as the twin engines, according to David Jourdan, the cofounder and president of Nauticos, a deep ocean exploration company that has conducted search operations for the lost aircraft. “It is impossible to identify anything from a sonar image alone as sound can be tricky and the artifact could be damaged in unpredictable ways altering its shape. For that reason, you can never say that something is (or isn’t) from a sonar image alone,” Jourdan said in an email. RConfirming that the newly discovered anomaly is Earhart’s plane would require returning to the site to further investigate the plane, and more definitively, locating the certification “NR16020” that was printed on the underside of the missing Lockheed’s wing, Jourdan said. If the plane were to be uncovered at such depth in the ocean, where the temperatures are very cold and with low oxygen content, the plane could be very well-preserved, Jourdan said. “(Earhart) was kind of the rock star of the era, the Taylor Swift of the era … Everybody’s pulling for her, they want her to make it around the world, and she disappears without a trace,” Cochrane said. “It’s the mystery of the 20th century, and now into the 21st century.

I'll take the last choice if Trump gets in....again.

This is a link to CNN and shows aircraft of the future. Dont know how long it will last, ( the link), and if you have AdBlock you should turm it on https://www.learnitwise.com/worldwide/fuplan-ta/28?utm_medium=tb&utm_source=tb&utm_campaign=mg-lw-fuplan-l-win-ca-18-rl-20014d&utm_term=www.cnn.com&utm_l=1&utm_t=scroll&cc4d76fdaf5=7&a0v5la7bquf89=65e72cba9cc1705e2zmces00lrb4fjhz&uy3ubftvh0u6o8=1b74a671d1fb55b2a63fb24f724695d0&cusduxj27i=2359022&xnfrr0ncac=22777&zsmoi87pih9=trace.mediago.io&lzzgnpz8d=41b6e88a2b85b0e731ef8e73e5558712

Classy, showing the "missing man/woman" formation, (laminated paper with silhouettes) unfortunately I had to fly in two of those in DND.......

You need binoculars to read the names..... I really enlarged the picture and still never saw one name.....think maybe someone from a rival airline found a suitable eraser ???

I think this was the only commercial airline aircraft painted with employees names

REMEMBER THIS ????? (apparently rated as one of the best aviation airline commercials.)

GPS...??? .. we used to follow railway tracks and white-caps Back to the basics guys/gals

‘It’s just not right’: Passengers call out WestJet for breaching rebooking rules MONTREAL - On a frigid Saturday earlier this month, Mindy Watson learned that her family’s flight that day from Edmonton to Toronto, en route to Cuba, was cancelled. WestJet offered to rebook their Varadero vacation on Sunday — not the following day, but eight days later on Jan. 21. "My wife is Canadian military and needs to be back on base at CFB Comox on Jan. 22," Watson said. Her daughter needed to clock into her nursing shift the same day, and another family member on the trip — a veteran with disabilities — had to be home for appointments. One agent told her he was not allowed to book them on another airline, she said, adding that multiple representatives said the same. They ended up scrapping the trip, a getaway the family had been looking forward to for months. Watson was among thousands of WestJet customers whose flights were cancelled amid an extreme cold snap in Alberta earlier this month. And many say the airline would not reschedule them within the required window, in what one advocate framed as just the latest example of a failure to uphold travellers' rights. If a carrier has to call off a trip for reasons outside its control — severe weather, for example — Canada’s passenger rights charter requires it to rebook passengers on its own planes or those of a partner airline within 48 hours. If it can’t, it must put them on board “the next available flight that is operated by any carrier” to reach their destination. The Canadian Press has spoken or emailed with more than two dozen passengers who say they were not rebooked within the prescribed time frame — many of them for WestJet trips scheduled this month, but others for flights over the past couple of years across several airlines. Calgary-based WestJet says it rebooks customers, including with rival airlines, after cancellations in accordance with federal rules. “We understand how frustrating it is when travel doesn’t go as planned during extreme weather events and are committed to our guests and ensuring their safe and expedient journey,” spokeswoman Madison Kruger said in an email. "We sincerely apologize to our guests who were impacted by the extreme weather events of the past week, but safety will always be our first priority," she said. Kruger said the airline rebooks with a number of different carriers. “WestJet books reaccommodation flights on partner and non-partner airlines during irregular operations for domestic and international flights in compliance with the (passenger rights charter) and in certain circumstances as a gesture of goodwill.” Recordings of phone conversations between passengers and WestJet agents suggest that isn't always the case. WestJet cancelled Winnipeg resident Kelly Regula’s connecting flight back home from Toronto on Jan. 12. In recordings of her phone conversations with airline agents shared with The Canadian Press, company representatives say they were barred from booking her on one of the multiple Air Canada flights apparently available that Friday, slotting her into a Monday departure with WestJet instead — well over 48 hours later. Regula wound up booking a trip with Air Canada for herself, her husband and child at a price of $2,855. “It’s just not right," she said. "But I can see why people just give up. It’s exhausting.” Ashley Armstrong, whose Saskatoon-Orlando flight was also cancelled by WestJet on Friday, Jan. 12, was rebooked for the following Wednesday even after she highlighted other trip options. “There is an Air Canada flight that travels on Sunday, and so I don't understand why we couldn't get booked onto that flight,” she told the agent the next day, according to a recording she made and shared with The Canadian Press. “I'm unable to do interline stuff. I can only deal with WestJet,” he replied. Asked about Armstrong and Regula's experiences, WestJet said it had forwarded their files to its guest team for review to ensure the airline's policies were properly applied. Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez told The Canadian Press on Thursday that airlines "can't and they shouldn't" get away with consumer rights violations. "They have to respect that." An overhaul of the passenger rights charter is underway, he noted, with stricter rules expected to take effect this year. Some passengers said carriers informed them of a cancellation by email and that a message on rebooking options would follow — but it never actually landed in their inbox. Even when it does, customers can spend hours waiting — on the phone or in person — to try for a different booking. Colin MacRae called the number given to make alternate arrangements after his Toronto-Calgary flight on Dec. 23 was cancelled and he was rebooked on a flight three days later. "After being on hold for over six hours, we were asked if we wished for a callback. We said yes, we would. They then scheduled their 'earliest possible callback,' which was for 8 a.m. on the 30th of December — the same day as our scheduled return flight," MacRae said. Some customers, like Regula, simply rebook with another airline themselves and hope to reclaim the cost from the original carrier later. This requires filling out a form on the airline's website and waiting 30 days for a response. If it's denied, passengers can file a complaint with the Canadian Transportation Agency, a process can take up to two years due to a backlog of about 64,000. Gabor Lukacs, president of the Air Passenger Rights consumer advocacy group, says he believes airlines have been failing to meet rebooking requirements since they came into force in 2019. “I believe it’s very widespread, and it’s one of the prime examples of airlines blatantly sabotaging the (regulations) with complete impunity," he claimed. To stress the regulations' intent, he pointed to a 2022 federal impact assessment stating "that large carriers will have to rebook the passenger on the next available flight of any carrier, including competitors." The Canadian Transportation Agency needs to crack down on rule breakers, he said. Fines have shot up from a total of $725,000 in 2022-23 to $1.17 million so far this fiscal year, which ends March 31. But that tally is a drop in the sea of revenue that carriers earn each year — Air Canada alone took in $6.34 billion in the first nine months of 2023. And the penalties were spread across foreign and domestic airlines, as well as railways. The agency's enforcement team tracks complaints to scan for a pattern of contraventions, and looks to impose fines when it sees a problem as "systemic," said Tom Oommen, the agency's director general of analysis and outreach, in an interview. "So far, we haven't found that yet," he said of rebooking violations. The agency plans to ratchet up its maximum fines by a factor of 10 as part of upcoming regulatory reforms, Oommen said. Over the past four years, the regulator has issued a total of $16,700 in fines for breaches around rebooking. All 30 instances involved WestJet and Sunwing — since bought by WestJet. The two carriers are not the only targets of customer ire. Last week, a B.C.-based tour operator launched a $28,000 lawsuit against Air Canada, aiming to recoup money it spent on taxis, hotels and flights when 31 British Columbians found themselves stranded in Toronto after heading off for a two-week tour of Newfoundland in June 2022. The airline offered to book the passengers of Wells Gray Tours three to five days after the cancellation, according to the filing. None of the allegations has been proven in court and Air Canada did not respond to a request for comment about the suit. As for Mindy Watson, after calling off their Cuban getaway and rebooking a flight back home to Vancouver Island for Jan. 14, the family was again hit with a cancellation and rebooked for three days later. “We couldn’t incur any more expenses," she said. “We have been trapped in Edmonton for days, waiting to see if today's booking actually happens.” That flight too fell through. They finally touched down in Comox, B.C., at 3 a.m. last Friday — nearly a week after they tried to leave on vacation, without ever taking one. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 25, 2024.

Spent almost a year at Canada's Naval college. (HMCS Venture in Victoria), and then they changed their syllabus for us students to commence pilot training so I opted to resign and applied to RCAF. Short story.... After a month at HFX RCC as a controller I was made CO . Previous CO had a beverage problem. Down the hall was the office of MARCOM ops and there was always friendly rivalry between Navy and RCAF as both were housed in the Admiralty building. Shortly after my "upgrade" we had a search going between HFX and NFLD as a vessel with about 8 souls onboard went missing. My immediate boss was a full Colonel, (RCAFNavigator)., and he phoned me to tell me tha Admiral was coming into the RCC and wanted me to brief him on the search. The Admiral arrived, my boss behind him, and I took the Admiral over to the plotting board to brief him with what was going on. I pointed out that we had scrambled an Argus out of Greenwood and some Helos out of Shearwater and were waiting for a C130 from Trenton. Another Argus would join the search soon. I mentioned that the aircraft could cover more area in a shorter time and obviously had an excellent visibility even at 200-500 feet . I then stated we had his "boats" doing shore crawls because their visibility was restricted by their height above water. ((When I saw him give a slight grimace with the word "boats" , I knew I had him)) I mentioned that two of his "boats" were shore crawling the East coast of NS and we had one of his "boats" doing the same thing on the south coast of NFLD. More grimacing but he turned to me and thanked for the briefing and my boss and the Admiral left the plotting room. My boss returned shortly after, trying to look stern through his smile and suggested I stop using "boats" and use "Ships" when briefing the Admiral. BTW, the Colonel was a really good fellow and the morning HMCS Assiniboine ran aground when proceeding out of HFX harbour he came down to my office and suggested we go to the Stadacona Officers Mess and have a drink and then lunch......I wasn't going to turn that down.... We arrived,and the Officers mess was full of Navy officers, just us two in CAF uniforms with wings showing....The bar was crowded but my boss, who was about 6' 4", pushed through the crowd and said to the Steward " We'll have two of those new Navy Drinks" The Steward looked puzzled so the Colonel said to the Steward, a bit louder than necessary ," You know...we'll have a couple of Assiniboine on the rocks". The mess got a bit quiet and we departed with our drinks for the dining room. Real cool guy and he made sure I got C130s after my RCC tour.

Malcolm... Did you expect any other attitude from an Admiral ??? Certainly he is going to "defend" his turf. Student of history ??? we should ALL be students of history but sadly many of the youth of today don't even know the names of the Axis powers, where Dieppe is, and probably don't even know, or care who was in charge of "D Day". Time marches on, things change but those of the higher echelon want to remember what was,and tend to think this country needs to spend billions on men and equipment that IS NOT NEEDED. Give me one good reason we bought "lemon" subs from the UK???? Give me one good reason why we need F-35s....in all honesty I don't think we need any fighter aircraft.....how many CF 100s , CF101s, F5s, CF 104s have we had and they have not been in combat The CF-18s have done bombing missions but no air to air combat. Do you think the end result in the sand-box and/or afghanistan would have turned out different if we did not have F18s over there ?? It is time our Government looked closely at DND's role and modified it, much to the chagrin, of the old timers but it is time for DND to move into the real world and be COST EFFECTIVE..

.......its first lunar mission hit the tiny patch of the moon's surface it was aiming for, in a successful demonstration of its pinpoint landing system — although the probe appears to be lying upside-down........ Yes, our baby could always get to his mouth with a spoon but unfortunately at the last moment he turned it upside down.......

JMHO......Not sad at all. There is no need for aircraft carriers in the RCN as well as no need for excessive RCN personnel employed in duties that are not really relevant for todays global politics. Yes, we have ships employed to assist in "free" shipping transport and that is a great contribution but where else can they be of much service? Canadians have to understand that the Atlantic was a battle zone during WW 2 but not now, we don't need corvettes and submaries, and the subs we do have are bottomless cash pits. From GOOGLE.....While talk of nuclear replacements has been just that—talk—only one of the country's four Victoria-class subs, HMCS Windsor, has hit the water operationally since 2021, logging 43 days in 2022 and 14 in 2023. Want to guess how much that has cost us?? The USN have nuclear subs that do what we "attempt" to do. We have no need for "escorts" (destroyers), now. Why do we keep insisting on more military hardware and cry about the decline in employment within the CF?? We did our duty and did it well in WW 2, but there is no need to be "guns ready" now. Time for a government reality check. Obviously I am in favour of being a member of NATO but rather than spread the low DND budget to all sections of the CF, let us contribute in one major way.......Air Transport to anywhere NATO wants us...Get bigger and better and more transport aircraft and better aircraft for SAR...that should be our mandate. As stated, JMHO... PS....In life.....change is inevitable, but for some, change is deemed as unacceptable.

UPDATE.... FORT SMITH, N.W.T. - Six people died in a plane crash near the town of Fort Smith, while a lone survivor was taken to hospital, the Northwest Territories coroner's office said Wednesday. Four passengers and two crew members from Northwestern Air Lease were killed on the Tuesday morning flight headed to the Diavik Diamond Mine, some 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, the coroner's office said in a written statement. "There was one survivor who was taken to the Fort Smith Health Centre and then medevaced to Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife," the statement read. "The NWT Coroner Service is in the community and will be working with local resources to access the site and begin the recovery process." The plane crashed after takeoff near the banks of the Slave River, west of Fort Smith, which lies along the territorial boundary with Alberta. Rescuers parachuted to the scene Tuesday. The Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, which involved a British Aerospace Jetstream passenger plane Town council offered help for community members who are grieving. "We understand that you may not wish to be alone right now (and) that you may want to talk about it with others that are experiencing the same feelings of grief and trauma," the council said in a written statement.

From Global News https://globalnews.ca/news/10245028/rcmp-plane-crash-fort-smith-nwt/

This is my best example. I used to have an elderly neighbour who called me over to look at his new roof. He pointed to neighbours who had numerous peaks and valleys and said they paid over $6000.00 for their new roof and he only paid $4500.00 for his roof. His roof is identical to mine, single pitch with two sides, (spilt entry -high ranch). I asked for his receipt and wrote a letter to the roofing company stating that I felt he over paid. At the bottom of the letter I also CC pending...CBC, CTV, Global,The Intelligencer and the BBB. I received a call 5 days later that my neighbour was getting a $1500.00 refund........which he used to repave his drive way. You never know what will happen when you write and it only takes a little time to write a good, non threatening , letter with salient facts, and see what happens. As I stated..retired...... some days standing on my lawn yelling at clouds

How would you like to go to 200 1/2 weather with this cockpit layout ?? Certainly improved your cross-check. 2833 hrs in three different aircraft numbers at the beginning of my career . I have a few months with over 109 hours !! Our Unit Tail Numbers 394 - freight 695 - pax 808 - VIPs DC-3 / / MILITARY C-47 Normal cruise 3000 -10000 ft Approved for 2 hours at 14000ft (for transit over the Rockies)

That would depend upon the direction you lean...Democrats or Republicans..?

I believe the "resources" would be trained mental health personnel attempting to help the family.