PLANE TALK
during WWII was arguably the enormous undertaking of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Others were the creation of an air force in Europe, Ferry Command, and the associated growth in manufacturing including the four-engine Lancaster Bomber. Pioneering unguided and guided rocket work led to the development of rocket-based armament systems used on wartime fighter bombers and later on Canadian aircraft defending Europe and North America through NATO and NORAD. Once the U.S. joined the Allied
cause, it began building airports across the Canadian North which became a major war time project. Three main routes were constructed following some of the early Canadian pioneering work in the North. One paralleled the proposed Alaska highway. Starting in Edmonton, Alberta, a chain of airports was built across northern Alberta, British Columbia and then across the Yukon territory to Fairbanks. This was to allow aircraft to be ferried to the Soviet Union, then allied with Canada. Another route went from Churchill, Manitoba, up across the North West Territory to Greenland and Iceland. The other set of airports covered off Newfoundland and Labrador
which allowed aircraft from eastern Canada and the U.S. a route over the Atlantic via Iceland. After the war these airports became a vital cog in the building of the Cold War radar sites along the Arctic coast and are now the centers of our modern airport system in the North.
POST WAR: 1950 TO 1980 The expansion of airports across Canada and especially in the north set the stage for post-war commercial aviation. Large manufacturing plants provided the means for post-war developments that included the world’s first jet-powered airliner and the famous Avro Arrow. Prior to the Arrow days the CF-100 and its Orenda engines were manufactured in the plants in Toronto that remained there after the war. Even when the Arrow was cancelled in 1959 and Canada lost some 15,000 skilled workers, the manufacturing sector recovered by building CF-104s and CF- 5s in Quebec. Later the CF-18 maintenance contract went to Quebec, which people in Manitoba still chat about in aviation circles. Military orders and subcontracting to international manufacturers kept Canadian facilities going. A large military aviation force requiring civilian support made these years
busy ones. Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA) dominated commercial traffic at this time and later became Air Canada. Many other famous airlines existed during this period, among them Canadian Pacific, Wardair, Pacific Western, Nordair, Transair, Maritime Central and Quebecair. Sadly, few remain.
LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY:
1980 TO 2000 The eighties brought in deregulation of the economic side of air carriers and the shuffle began. One early casualty was the renowned Wardair which was absorbed into Pacific Western Airlines, which in turn was absorbed by Canadian Airlines. In 2001 Canadian Airlines was taken over by Air Canada. Calgary entrepreneurs then started West Jet, which by 2008 had become No. 2 in fleet size in Canada. West Jet is now more than 100 aircraft strong. The story of this time technically would have to be around the electronic revolution and the new airframe and engine technologies that by now we were solidly embedded in the aviation system. The number of AMEs employed or at least licensed exceeded 12,000 out of perhaps 200,000 total employments in aviation-related work.
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DOMmagazine.com | aug 2017
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