Aviation Memorabilia Newsletter

Next Meeting: Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Meetings: Second Tuesday of every month (except July, August, and statutory holidays)
Location: Richmond Cultural Centre, 7700 Minoru Boulevard, Richmond, British Columbia
Time: 1900 Hours
Landing Fee: $2

Our meeting location is the Board Room, on the Main Floor of the RCC, down the hall to the right, behind the main Auditorium.

Dr. Stan Copp

Professor Stanley Copp -

Ph.D., Professor of Forensic Anthropology; Instructor / Lecturer in Anthropology / Archaeology / Forensic Archaeology 

For our November meeting, we have Professor Stanley Copp's talk about Aviation Archaeology. He was able to speak since his travel plans to China have been postponed. If all goes well, he hopes to be off to Xi'an to recover the remains of a wartime pilot from the 23rd Fighter Group. Also, he has been investigating some wartime RCAF crash sites in B. C. as well as in the Aleutian Islands. He is also involved in the U. S. group that recovers and identifies human remains from military crash sites in places such as Vietnam.

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All interested are welcome to attend! For more info Click here!

1962

• January - Super Constellation aircraft retired from scheduled service.
• February - Jetliner service inaugurated between Canada, Trinidad and Barbados.
• March 2nd - Service between Canada and Brussels suspended due to low loads. 
     Originally inaugurated in April 1958

1980 - January  1st - Contract signed with Boeing Commercial Airplane Co for twelve B767-200 aircraft.

1981

• February 1st - "Connaisseur" service started for full paying pax on selected routes.
  - " Reservair" introduced to capture information on "travel planners".
• June - Company announced the purchase of 29.3%interest in Guiness Peat Aviation Shannon Ireland.
• October 26th - First DC-8-63 converted from passenger to freight use entered service.

Family Affair Specials to Switzerland! To promote the Switzerland service this winter, AC is offering employees great Family Affair fares to and from Zurich and Geneva for travel until February 28th, 2011 (some blackouts apply). You must book by November 21, 2010 to take advantage of this great offer. Remember that these Fares are also available to your family traveling without you. Please review the eligibility and booking procedures by clicking on the News & Policies then the Family Affair tabs on the Employee Travel Site on the Portal.

With the departure of AC 7971 on Saturday, October 30, Air Canada inaugurated daily, non-stop service between Toronto and New Orleans. Flights to The Big Easy are operated with 75-seat, Jazz CRJ 705 aircraft.

President meets Southern managers -
On a recent visit to New York,  Pierre Jeanniot, President & Chief Executive Officer, took time out from a busy schedule to appear in this photo with Bert Chapman, General Manager, South, and his Managers.

Left to Right: Back Row - Jean-Marc Trottier, Manager, Haiti; Mr. Jeanniot; David Burke, District Manager, Barbados. Front row - Leslie Nanton, Manager, Antigua; Mano Gibbons, Manager, Trinidad; Mr. Chapman; Guy Delahaie, A/District Manager, Guadeloupe and Martinique; John "Buch" Buchanan, District Manager, Jamaica; and David Young, District Manager, Bermuda.

LGA handles small packages -
The company recently opened a Small Package Acceptance Counter at the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York. A reception, at which light refreshments were provided for current and potential Customers, was held to mark the occasion.

Left to Right: Eileen Riska, secretary to Ed Parisi, Regional Cargo Sales & Service Manager, U.S. & South, New York; Joe Pareti, Passenger Sales Manager, New York; Dudley Porterfield and Frank Cangialosi, Customer Service Agents, Cargo; Maria Poswinski, Secretary; Henry Fleming, Lead CSA; Bill Walsh, CAS-Cargo; George Hoban, Cargo Sales & Service Manager, JFK; and Janls Blake, secretary to the General Manager, Northeast U.S.

35 Montreal employees unite to form their own flying club.
The idea was first formed in the mind of Yves Larouche, Ramp Supervisor. Dorval, two years ago and he devised a plan whereby he could guarantee a flying club, a certain number of hours flown per month in return for a considerable discount on each flying hour.

At first his efforts proved fruitless, but persistence led to an agreement with Person's Flying Service, situated at Cartierville Airport, five miles from Montreal International Airport.

As the idea caught on and the club expanded, its members were divided into two groups in order to allow an even greater discount to those who were flying a considerable number of hours each month. At the beginning of the month the members of the first group paid for three hours which they promised to fly that month. By doing this, a reduction of $5 off the normal rental price was given to them. Those of the second group received a $3 discount but had no minimum requirements.

In forming this club Larouche had several ideas in mind. In the first place, every member would have a great deal in common with the others in that they were all employed by TCA and they were all interested in and enjoyed flying. He also realized that as a group they would be able to obtain substantial discounts on the rental price and thus enable more to enjoy the sport.

Pictured here from the left are: Yves Larouche, John Bernier, Les Barr of Pearson's Flying Club, Pat Flood, Eric Lilje.

(Does this club still exist? - We would like to have an update to pass along - eds)

Lori Howard was the first female Flight Dispatcher in North America.

In 1973, Lori was the first female employee of any North American airline to gain entrance to the then exclusive male dominated world of Flight Dispatch opening the door for other women to follow in this profession. In 1998 out of a department of 35 dispatchers, there are two other females - Cherie Andrews and Sandi White.. The profession is no longer a male fiefdom.

Russell Brown has sent us this information regarding the article in Alan's space; in NetLetter 1134 -
I enjoyed the DC-8 Video in the last newsletter.(1134) 

The DC-8 prototype shown was called "ship one" by Douglas and was initially registered N8008D (c/n 45252/1). It  flew as N8008D for its' life time except for one year, from October 1966 to October 1967, when it was in Canadian Pacific Airlines livery as CF-CPN "Empress of Santiago". I was qualified as F/O on that aircraft at Abbotsford BC by Capt. Jim Gardner on November 2nd '66. Sadly N8008D was broken up as scrap in 2001 at Marana Arizona. It should have been preserved as a piece of aviation history.

Another CP DC-8, fin # 602 CF-CPG, was famous as the first jet transport to fly supersonic, ie: faster than mach1. Douglas Aircraft had made a range guarantee to Canadian Pacific Airlines for the North Pacific routes and they were testing engineering assumptions on the improved 4% leading edge wing extension during this flight. You might find the attached photo and news release of interest.
  cheers
 Cpt. Russell Brown
( CPAL retired) 

Here we have another "Flypast" from the LHR newspaper "Skyport" Sept 17/10 saved for us by Jack Morath -

A rare Britannia flies in - IT WAS quite a surprise when Czechoslovakian state airline CSA began operating Bristol Britannia's on flights between Prague and Heathrow in the early 1960s.After all, the country was in the grip of communism and, with other Eastern bloc countries, was expected to fly only Soviet-built planes.

The Britannia, on the other hand, was, as its name implied, as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

So what was this Filton-built four-engine turboprop doing operating in the colours of one of the nations peeking out from behind the Iron Curtain? Surprisingly, CSA had leased the Britannia's from another country now indelibly linked with communism - Cuba.

In the months before the revolutionary leaders seized power in early 1959, Cubana had introduced several Britannia's and another British classic, the Viscount, on routes to the US and across the Atlantic.

Their levels of comfort and speed, compared with the piston-engined types they replaced, made them popular with passengers and crews alike.

Many of them continued in service long after the revolution and, with CSA eager to introduce transatlantic flights, it was Cubana who stepped in with a leasing arrangement for two of its trusty Britannia's.

Flights from Prague to Havana, via Newfoundland or Shannon, were code-shared and began in February 1962, with the Botanies occasionally operating into Heathrow. CSA, which announced last week it is to withdraw its Heathrow services, ending a link which goes back decades, was founded as far back as 1923.

After the Second World War, the airline was re-equipped with Soviet- built planes, principally the Ilyushin IL-12, and was one of the first airlines in the world to use jets when the Tu-104 went into service in 1957.

Turboprop-powered llyushin lL-18s became familiar sights on the London run 50 years ago and later the CSA's Tu-134s, Tu-154s and even IL-62s - nicknamed VC-l0-skis - were seen regularly at Heathrow.

But the venerable Britannia's were the only western-built type to fly in CSA colours until the airline's first Airbus airliners were ordered in 1989.

Vern Swerdfeger found this article -
Even though the Aero dwarfs the largest commercial airliners, it requires less net space on the ground than any plane because it doesn't need a runway. The airship takes off and lands like a helicopter, straight up and down.

This is not a Blimp. It's a sort of flying Queen Mary 2 that could change the way you think about air travel.  It's the Aeroscraft, and when it's completed, it will ferry pampered passengers across continents and oceans as they stroll leisurely about the one-acre cabin or relax in their staterooms.

During takeoff and landing, six turbo-fan jet engines push the ship up or ease its descent. This two-football-fields-long airship is the brainchild of Igor Pasternak, whose privately funded  California  firm, Worldwide Aeros Corporation, is in the early stages of developing a prototype and expects to have one completed by 2010 .