(Precedent story: illegal fishing on the Innuksuak river)
An Austin Airways Twin Otter is getting airborne during a snow shower in Inukjuak, 1982. In the background, the Environment Canada upper air station.
A Transport Canada manager had to occasionally leave the comfort of his office in Montreal to visit one of the flight service stations located in Northern Quebec, in the Nunavik. So in 1982 he made the journey to Inukjuak (CYPH), using Nordair for the leg between Montreal and Kuujjuarapik (CYGW).
From there, an Austin Airways Twin Otter brought him to Inukjuak. But few minutes after the aircraft was airborne from Kuujjuarapik, the cloud base dropped dramatically and the pilot later told the flight services specialists (FSS) in Inukjuak that he had made the trip with no more than 200 feet of clearance between the Hudson Bay water and the clouds.
The airplane arrived in Inukjuak during the afternoon. At dinner, the chef offered a hot meal, but the manager refused to eat anything, stating that he had absolutely no appetite. He later told us that to see the surface of the water so close to the plane and feel the mechanical turbulence throughout the trip had cut his appetite. The flight services specialists realized that their manager was not very comfortable with “non standard” flights.
An Austin Airways Twin Otter on takeoff from Inukjuak in 1982.
On the return flight, he was the sole passenger on board, the remaining space being occupied by cargo. The FSS knew the pilots very well and asked them a small favor, which was a takeoff with a tight turn to the right. This was done skillfully and certainly created a surprise with the traveler.
On the flight back to Montreal, while on a stopover in La Grande (CYGL) he sent us a message via the La Grande flight service station teletype that spoke volumes about his appreciation of the turn. I must say, in all honesty, that the pilot had given more than the client requested, and that the traveler had the chance to experience a 70 degree right turn. It was enough to keep him from traveling up north for a while.
(Precedent story: enroute toward the first posting: Inukjuak)
The Inukjuak soft sand runway, in 1982, and a balloon tires equipped Twin Otter, property of Austin Airways.
During my first working days as a flight service specialist (FSS) at the Transport Canada flight service station in Inukjuak (CYPH), in 1982, I received a radio call from a Twin Beech 200. The pilot of this aircraft registered in the United States indicated that he wished to land at Inukjuak for a short stopover. Several passengers were on board. I gave him the necessary air traffic services and followed its progress towards the airport, through subsequent radio communications.
It is assumed that a pilot wanting to land at an airport has prepared himself and knows the length and orientation of the runway, as well as its constitution (cement, asphalt, gravel, grass, sand). These are absolutely essential information, like ensuring that there is enough fuel on board the aircraft. This makes the difference between an accident and a successful landing. I doubted that Inukjuak, with its soft sand runway, was suited for an aircraft like the Beech 200.
Being a pilot myself, I was uncomfortable to ask him if he was aware of the characteristics of the Inukjuak runway, because this was such basic information. Moreover, having no experience as a flight service specialist yet, I considered unimaginable that in the early days of a new career, I had to deal with a pilot that was not adequately prepared, and would soon put his life and the lives of his passengers in danger.
I kept on thinking that if the pilot was responsible for this type of aircraft, he must have had hundreds, if not thousands of hours of flying experience. It would be like saying: “Don’t you think that the plane is too big for your abilities?“
The aircraft was now on final for the runway, a few miles away. I decided to ask the fateful question: “Are you aware that you are about to land on a 2000 feet soft sand runway?” The pilot softly said: “OK, we’ll do a missed approach and will head somewhere else. Is Kuujjuarapik acceptable for us? “I answered positively and in the following seconds, the airplane overshot the runway and headed southward for the next airport.
From that day and the following decades, I vowed to never take anything for granted. When in doubt, action is worth more than inaction…
(Next story: A visit at the Inukjuak flight service station (1982))
(Precedent story: flight service and the Transport Canada Training Institute in Cornwall)
1982 Northern Quebec view from a Nordair B737
Summer of 1982. Today is the departure from Montreal towards Inukjuak (CYPH), a northern Quebec Inuit village, part of the Nunavik. There, I will start working as a flight service specialist (FSS) for Transport Canada. Nordair’s Boeing B737 takes off and immediately heads northward. It will fly along James Bay and, upon reaching Hudson Bay, will land in Kuujjuarapik, its final destination. From there, an Austin Airways’s Twin Otter will take us over to Inukjuak , an isolated posting further to the north on the east coast of Hudson Bay.
A Boeing B737 landing on the Kuujjuarapik (CYGW) 5000 feet gravel runway uses special procedures. This is a short runway for a loaded aircraft, and braking is less effective than on asphalt. There is no significant margin for error. The wheels must touch as close as possible to the runway threshold, followed by maximum breaking. Passengers really feel the deceleration. The same calculation applies for takeoff: the pilot positions the aircraft close to the runway threshold then applies both the brakes and maximum thrust, and once the appropriate parameters are reached , releases the brakes. As usual, weight and balance, density of the air, airport altitude as well as direction and strength of the winds are all precisely calculated for the aircraft to be airborne before the end of the runway.
1982 Kuujjuarapik. A Nordair Boeing B-737 in the foreground and an Austin Airways Twin Otter in the background.
1982 A flight service specialist (FSS) working at the Kuujjuarapik station, in Québec
After a short stopover, the Twin Otter is now ready for the trip to Inukjuak. The takeoff from Kuujjuarapik goes without problems. I am sitting in the first class section, behind some cargo held by a net. For champagne, I will have to wait for the boxes to be removed from the hallway.
1982 Cargo and passengers in the Twin Otter
1982. A view of Sanikiluaq from an Austin Airways Twin Otter.
Then a slow descent is started to Inukjuak. From my window, I can see a small group of narwhals. I feel like I’m dreaming but, after a quick research in scientific documents, learn that narwhals can be found in small groups mainly in the north of Hudson Bay.
The aircraft is now getting closer to Inukjuak. The flaps are extended and it is possible to see the runway before the airplane turns on final. It is two thousand feet long and made only of sand thick enough to render its surface unstable.
1982 Austin Airways Twin Otter on base for the Inukjuak airport runway
Upon arrival, someone comes my way with a motorcycle. He offers me a ride to the staff-house, even if there is only a fifteen or twenty seconds walk. I politely declined the offer, but the personage insists. Not wanting to give a bad impression just as I arrive, I finally accept and try to find a small place on the seat of his tiny motorcycle. Hardly have we started to move into the soft sand that the driver loses control of the vehicle. We fall (what a surprise!), but there is no serious consequence. Welcome to Inukjuak!
1982 Inukjuak inhabitant and canoes used for traditional activities
View of a small portion of the Transport Canada Training Institute in Cornwall, Ontario, in 1982
In the early 80s, the oil crisis forces airlines to greatly limit hiring. This was not the case during our pilot training course but becomes a reality when applying for a job a year later.
However, on the government side, the situation is quite different. The air traffic services branch of Transport Canada is looking for new employees to replace staff approaching retirement age. The only option immediately accessible to me is to apply as a flight service specialist (FSS). I have only a rough idea of what are the responsibilities, nothing more. But the pay and advantages are far better than what is otherwise available to a new flight instructor. It is time to send in an application.
For the Province of Quebec, two written examinations totally unrelated with aviation are held at the University of Quebec in Montreal. There are 1500 candidates (5 sessions of 300 applicants) who attempt these tests during the two days allotted for the first phase of the selection process. In the following weeks and months, those who have succeeded in the written tests must then undergo anything from personal interviews to language tests, medical examinations and security clearances.
We are now three candidates from Quebec heading towards the Transport Canada Training Institute in Cornwall. There will be thirty-five hours of theoretical and practical course per week, over a six months period. The pressure will be continuous and desired in order to eliminate candidates who may not react well to stress.
We will be paid to study. A candidate is guaranteed with a posting upon completion of training, providing he manages to obtain 80% and above on the written and practical evaluations. Because this 82-01 course is not dedicated to Quebecers only, it cannot be offered in French. So it is going to be in English only, and will include twenty-four students from almost all Canadian provinces.
The Transport Canada Training Institute in Cornwall is nothing short of exceptional for those who have decided to study and succeed.
In order to help the student to deal with the weekly thirty-five hours of courses and examinations, the school provides interesting amenities.Each student has a private room with daily maid service. The cafeteria offers a good choice of meals. Calories can be burned at the pool, gym, weight room, on the tennis court or on the baseball field. A snack bar remains open for late-night cravings. A bank teller is made available to students, as well as a hairdressing salon, a bar, arcade games, pool tables, etc.
1982 Cornwall TCTI Pool
Transport Canada Training Institute weight room. Cornwall, Ontario 1982
1982 Cornwall TCTI combat room
1982 TCTI, Cornwall. Students from the FSS 82-01 group are experimenting a new way to improve scoring at basketball.
1982 Cornwall TCTI games
So that we understand what lies ahead, we are told that there are traditionally many students in each class who will not keep pace and will be sent home, despite their efforts. For a francophone who wasn’t using a second language on a daily basis , it is clear that integrating new theory presented in English for seven and a half hours every day, five days a week, becomes demanding. I compensate for the times when my attention decreases by studying in the evening.
There is a library in the school as well as multiples rooms for flight simulators designed for every career considered by the students.
1982 Cornwall TCTI Flight Simulation Room
1982 TCTI Cornwall. Environment Canada upper air building.
1982 TCTI Cornwall Stevenson screens
In the courtyard, there is a peacock and other small animals and a water source flows into a very well planned landscape.
1982 Cornwall TCTI courtyard
The amenities are simply stunning. The message is clear: “Transport Canada only ask you to study and succeed, it will take care of the rest.”
1982 Cornwall TCTI corridors to classrooms
Finally, the moment we were all waiting for as arrived. Students who managed to get through the course celebrate their graduation.
Assignments are distributed. Those who will be working in isolated postings, in northern Quebec, are well aware that the schedule does not include holidays. The FSS will be on duty every day. The new employee will be compensated for overtime and a more expensive cost of life. He will also benefit from subsidized rents.
My departure is planned shortly for Inukjuak (CYPH), along the east coast of Hudson Bay in the Nunavik. Life will soon change radically.
(Next story: enroute to the first posting: Inukjuak)
(Precedent story: the flight from St-Jean-sur-Richelieu to Edmonton)
In order to accumulate flying hours, I needed to become a flight instructor. The course was undertaken and my license obtained, after successful written and flying exams. Already having logged enough flying hours as pilot in command, I was able to receive a Class 3 license immediately. Technically, this meant that I did not have to receive permission from a chief instructor before I authorized a student to fly alone for the first time.
In order to study certain maneuvers with the greatest possible accuracy that I would have to teach, I sometimes practiced unusual flying exercises. This meant I needed to check the behavior of the aircraft if a student mishandled the controls before I could correct him. With enough altitude, you could afford a fair amount of improvisation.
So I decided, during one of these specific exercises, to simulate a student who had inverted the maneuvers required to stall an aircraft and bring it to a spin. The plane turned completely upside down and I heard noises indicating that the stress on the structure was possibly important. Needless to say, I decided to abandon some experiments, realizing that it was quite possible that certain leased aircraft had previously been engaged in similar exercises. We all want to end a flight with our aircraft intact…
A group of flight instructors working in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu in 1981
At the St-Jean-sur-Richelieu flying club, we were now eleven certified instructors. However, the number of new students was stagnating in the economic uncertainty of the late 70s to early 80s. A global recession was raging and unemployment soaring. Some airlines went bankrupt, others were freezing the hiring of new pilots. Eleven instructors in the same flying club was a lot for so few customers. The pay was meager.
Among the students I trained during the period when I was a flight instructor, the first to successfully fly solo was an Egyptian. He arrived in Quebec with a group of a dozen compatriots. Their ambition was to receive all of their training in Quebec and return to Egypt as pilots for the national carrier EgyptAir.
Two Egyptian students at a St-Jean-sur-Richelieu flying school in 1981
My student had talent and learned quickly. But there was a student in the group that many instructors tried to train without success. Each of us thought that our own method might not have been appropriate so we encouraged him to try flying with other instructors. But it became clear that aviation would never be the field of activity in which he could progress and make a career. No instructor ever agreed to let him fly solo, and this, even after the student had spent months trying to understand the basics of flying: when came the time to execute the learned concepts, even after multiple demonstrations, he could not do it. He was simply not a safe pilot. I guess he changed his plan after the St-Jean experience.
A few months later, I got my commercial pilot license. It was now time, as for all pilots, to accumulate flying hours in order to gain experience as captain.
I chose to accumulate hours by making short cross-country trips and offering first flights to people of all ages. The evenings were particularly popular because there was little convection and most passengers appreciated a smooth ride for their first flight in a small aircraft.
A Tire Bursts on Landing.
Despite my best intentions, there has still been an occasion where I had to perform an unusual landing. It was during a busy time for air traffic control. Many aircrafts were in the St-Jean-sur-Richelieu (CYJN) airport’s circuit pattern and the controller asked me if I could make a short landing with my Grumman Cheetah (AA-5A). He was counting on a minimal roll after the landing so that the aircraft could exit the runway as soon as possible.
All pilots know how to make a short landing. This is part of the basic training and I accepted this restriction. This can, however, be complicated by the fact that sometimes we had to fly an aircraft with particularly worn out tires. I remember (and I should not be the only one) having had to use an aircraft on which we could see the rope under what was left of the rubber sole. School aircrafts are generally safe. You just don’t want to be the one using the plane the day before the tires have to be changed…
So I began the approach toward runway 29 on a particularly hot summer day. Touchdown was smooth. I applied the brakes without blocking the wheels, while pulling on the control column at the same time that the flaps were returning to their initial position. A pilot does not block the wheels when breaking as the friction decreases and the length necessary to stop the aircraft increases.
At the same time, blocking the wheels increases the risk of loss of control of the aircraft. With these manoeuvers, my aircraft was supposed to stop quickly. However, a few seconds after landing, it started to vibrate and move to the right. I had no other choice but to apply a lot of pressure on the left brake and use full deflection on the left rudder trying to keep the aircraft centered on the runway. Nevertheless, the aircraft slowly headed toward the right side of the runway while slowing down. The landing ended with the left wheel on the runway and the right wheel in the grass.
During the last few seconds, it became obvious that I was dealing with a flat tire. The passengers were not too bothered by the incident because they only started to realize what was happening when we were almost immobilized on the grass. The tire was completely twisted but still on the wheel. Equipment failure is something a pilot knows he will have to deal with from time to time. So considering that it was part of the job, I continued to accumulate flying hours during the following weeks and months.
Note: For this real story, since I did not have a camera with me in the aircraft in the 1980 flight, I reproduced the flight on a simulator using a Piper Cherokee (which is the closest I could find that looks like the Grumman Cheetah).
Shortly after obtaining my private pilot license, in 1980, I was asked to pick up a plane parked in Earlton, Ontario, three hundred nautical miles northwest of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, and bring it back to St-Jean. To get to Earlton, I was in the company of an experienced pilot and we left together on a single-engine Grumman Cheetah. For the return flight, each pilot would fly his own plane, following one another. My companion would lead in his aircraft because he had all the necessary navigational charts to get us back to St-Jean.
Along the way we had to deal with a cold front which delayed our arrival to St-Jean. Before the journey started, I was assured that we would arrive before darkness. It now seemed a bit tight.
A nice evening light over the parc de la Vérendrye.
My companion had accelerated the pace. Two facts became obvious: first, the sunset was beautiful. Second, I did not have my night flying rating. This sunset meant that there was about thirty minutes left before total darkness.
I called him on the radio to enquire if he still believed that we would reach St-Jean on time. He answered that we were at the limit.
I then enquire about the possible existence of a button that would illuminate the instruments at night. The button was found and soon the instruments took on a pinkish color. Then came the questions about the essential tools for a night flight. He named the few.
Réserve du parc de La Vérendrye at night time.
With minutes passing by very quickly it now seemed impossible to arrive before the official night time as we had not yet crossed the Montreal Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau control zone.
Approaching Montreal, I tried to communicate with my companion but there was no more reply. The only navigational fix available for this improvised night flight was the small red rotating beacon on the tail of his aircraft. Strangely, its intensity was gradually weakening. My companion was getting away, his plane being a faster one.
Montréal in sight. It is the first time that I see Montréal from high above during the night. I did not expect I would do so while flying a plane without holding a night rating.
I increased the power and adjusted the mixture to gain a few knots, while focusing on the little red dot that could direct me to St- Jean-sur-Richelieu. I was not too happy with my performance. I should have insisted from the beginning, to have a copy of all the documents. But this flight seemed so simple. Lesson learned.
We flew through the Montreal international airport control zone. In the night, the strobe lights of big airliners were visible on the approaches to landings or during take-offs. Abusing the engine a little bit, I gradually decreased the distance from my companion’s aircraft. Unable to hear anything due to the lack of documents that would provide the local frequencies being used, I simply followed the aircraft ahead of me.
Suddenly, the distant red beacon started going down in the night. I supposed we were getting close to St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. My companion was certainly communicating with the airport control tower to announce his intentions. This was a frequency I knew by heart. I ran the risk of calling him on the tower frequency to ask for tips to land at night. The answer was short and uncertain, because he knew that radio communications were recorded. The only advice he could find was: “I do not know what information to give you, take your time.” The air traffic controller heard this and offered me the presence of emergency vehicles, an offer I politely declined.
A Lake Buccaneer seaplane pilot flying in the area heard the communication and told the controller: “Advise him to turn his landing light on!” I replied that it was not functional. It had been observed during the pre-flight checks at St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, but it was not supposed to be a problem since we were flying during daytime only.
The first step towards a landing is to know the relative position of the plane from the airport and its three runways. When you have never flown at night, the view is different and requires an adjustment. Once the runway in use was identified (runway 11), the next step was to imagine that the flight instructor who trained me was sitting next to me. He would require good positions in the circuit, exact altitude according to each leg of the circuit pattern, appropriate speed and flap degrees, and finally an approach with a suitable angle.
At the time, all I knew about night flying boiled down to one eminently practical aspect: there was a wooded area at the beginning of runway 11 and I did not want to descend too much and hit the top of those trees, invisible in the night. However, being too high above the runway threshold would mean that the wheels would touch too far away past the threshold and the remaining runway length would be insufficient to stop the aircraft the ideal way, that is to say in one piece.
During the final leg of the approach, although my attention was fully dedicated to the procedures, I could feel that the rhythm of my heart had accelerated. On short final, everything happened quickly. The plane flew above the wooded area, the runway approached rapidly and the two wheels of the main gear touched the runway gently. The brakes were applied immediately and everything was over.
The main issue was now solved. I requested guidance from the air traffic controller to taxi down to the flying club. He jumped on the opportunity to ask me, a smile in his voice: “Are you going to take your night flying rating now?“!
