CANADA AVIATION NEWS BETRAYED BY CITY COUNCIL

CANADA AVIATION NEWS

        

If city council’s diabolical plan to close Edmonton City Centre Airport is realized, it will be more than a loss only to Alberta's capital city. It will be a national disgrace and a betrayal of trust by Edmontonians who have previously voted to keep the airport operating for at least another half century.

However, Mayor Mandel's destructive and arrogant Mandelian politics are determined to kill Canada's oldest licensed municipal airport. Originally known as Blatchford Field, and later as Edmonton Municipal Airport, the airfield has served Edmonton, northern Alberta and the rest of Canada for nearly 90 years. City Hall has now ignored the request by 90,000 citizens to put the matter on a plebiscite, a further insult to the taxpayers of our city and residents of northern Alberta who are served by the airport.

It is a historic treasure in the heart of the city and home to dozens of aviation-related businesses that employ hundreds of people. It is the airfield that earned Edmonton its moniker as “Gateway to the North, ” as appropriate a name today as it was decades ago.

On June 8, 2009 when the manipulative mayor and his nine cohorts on council voted 10 to 3 to close the airport, they voted to end aviation service and put anyone employed there out of work. In the laughable “debate” that council conducted when minds were already made up, Mandel and his minions gave reasons for closing the airport, but could never explain why it should be done. Some reasons given, if not all, were, in fact, downright misleading.

From early days of bush flying and through Second World War service in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, from a base for the United States Army Air Force to the good old days of Pacific Western Airlines air bus flights to Calgary, and for charter service, flying instruction, aircraft maintenance and medevac flights today, the airport has been at the heart of Edmonton's character.

Closure of runways and ending the life of an active and viable airport is simply not necessary. Despite claims by those who favour closure, the land is simply not needed for residential or industrial development. Nor does the airport need to be removed so that Edmonton can build higher office towers. Edmontonians did not ask council to close the airport. City Hall's call for development is only for increasing a tax base and for providing financial reward for developers. Ending operations at the City Centre Airport will end life-saving medevac service, passenger flights to northern Canada, and the visit of historic aircraft that fly into the airport on special occasions.

Located at the airport is the Alberta Aviation Museum in Canada's last surviving double-wide, double-long hangar of wartime BCATP stations. It is one of the three largest aviation museums in Canada. Its prominence, and location next to an active runway, have made it possible for warbirds such as the Lancaster from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum to land beside the museum and taxi right up to it in 2009. That aircraft is one of only two Lancasters left in the world that still fly, of 7,377 built for the war effort, and Edmonton was privileged to have it in the city.

In July 2009, during the 100th anniversary year of powered flight in Canada, city councillors led by the mayor voted to start closure in laughable discussion that they tried to pass off as a debate when they were already decided on the issue. In July 2010, when the Corsair navy fighter aircraft from Vintage Wings of Canada visited the museum during Aviation Heritage Week and paid tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Navy, city councillors were counting the days until they could start putting an end to activity like that.

Edmontonians have come out by the thousands to show their interest in aviation by visiting such aircraft as the “Lanc,” and to see other special interest aircraft from Canada, England and the United States that have made Edmonton a stop on their tours. At the annual Airfest display, dozens of aircraft land, then park beside the museum as visitors come out in droves in appreciation of the place of aviation in their city. In early October 2010, a DC-3 Dakota aircraft, now some 70 years old, flew into Edmonton last week for display, and like other historic aircraft drew visitors to the airport who cherish our aviation history.

Edmonton is in an enviable position with both an international airport and a viable municipal airport. The two facilities provide opportunity to provide the essential services needed for freight and passengers, maintaining Alberta's capital city as Gateway to the North. Another moniker the city uses is “City of Champions,” but that one doesn't apply to the mayor and the councillors who would insult fellow citizens, destroy the airport, terminate its service, remove it from the fabric of the city, and put an end to a rich aviation heritage.

City council has tried to silence the voice of citizens who want to keep the airport open. But we can make our voice heard by voting for candidates for mayor and council who support the airport. We can refuse to vote for candidates who would close the airport and not re-elect those who have betrayed us.





DIRE EXPERIMENT TACKLES COMMUNICATIONS DURING DISASTERS

When disasters – such as the recent Hurricane Igor in Newfoundland – strike, police, fire, ambulance and, in this case, the Canadian Forces, have to be able to talk to each other.

The clock is ticking and lives are at stake. What hampers first responders more than anything, and delays their ability to coordinate search and rescue efforts, is the lack of communication between agencies. Why? Because there is no universal standard in Canada for the kind of communication devices or frequencies that should be used in an emergency.

Major Bernie Thorne, who heads up the Air Force Experimentation Centre in Ottawa (part of the Canadian Aerospace Warfare Centre at 8 Wing Trenton), recently coordinated the Disaster Interoperability Response Experiment (DIRE) in Ottawa. DIRE took place between October 4 and 8; Ottawa police, fire and paramedics worked side by side to manage a simulated earthquake response using aerostats, or giant tethered balloons, to relay information. Three engineering students from Ottawa, working with Defence Research and Development Canada, built and operated the live streaming video, transmitted from the balloons, that participants used in their decision making.

Major Thorne used the Hurricane Igor clean-up in Newfoundland as an example of what can be done better.

“[The CF] does not have radios to talk to the small towns because [they all] have different radios,” he says. “Everyone, not just the CF, does their best [to communicate]. We get creative, we solve every problem that’s put in front of us but if we weren’t solving our little problems we could be focusing on the big problems a lot more.”

The problem may be big, but one of the solutions could be something small enough to fit into the trunk of your car. The aerostats can be taken to a disaster scene, loaded with video cameras and radios, inflated and launched. Transceivers on the balloons relay voice communication from the ground to locations as far as 60 kilometres away, much further than most “line of sight” devices such as ground-based radios can transmit.

“It truly makes me feel good to be able to push comprehensive interoperability for Canada,” says Maj Thorne. “I’ve been an operator on board the CP-140 Aurora and I’ve worked with almost every agency across Canada on a lot of big disasters for the last two decades. In each of them I wished I could talk with the other agencies. To be here helping push the yardstick ahead […] makes me feel happy to get up in the morning.”

Maj Thorne says there are municipal, provincial and federal working groups trying to achieve a common standard for disaster communications and he hopes their work will lead to a new national standard.