|
About Sunwing Airlines By 2004, Sunwing Vacations had become the second largest tour operator in the Ontario area. That year, a former Skyservice employee named Mark Williams approached the CEO of Sunwing Travel Group, Colin Hunter, and asked if he wanted to start an airline. A few weeks later, official plans to launch the airline were in place. In November 2005, a Boeing 737-800 departing from Toronto was the airline's inaugural flight. In December 2005, Sunwing flew its first direct flight from Sudbury, Ontario to Varadero, Cuba, making it one of the first international flights directly from the Sudbury Airport. In November 2006, the company flew its first flight out of Montreal. |
 |
|
The Spruce Goose. The largest wooden airplane ever constructed, and flown only once, the Spruce Goose represents one of humanity's greatest attempts to conquer the skies. It was born out of a need to move troops and material across the Atlantic Ocean, where in 1942 German submarines were sinking hundreds of Allied ships. Henry Kaiser, steel magnate and shipbuilder, conceived the idea of a massive flying transport and turned to Howard Hughes to design and build it. Hughes took on the task, made even more challenging by the government’s restrictions on materials critical to the war effort, such as steel and aluminum. |
 |
|
Six times larger than any aircraft of its time, the Spruce Goose, also known as the Hughes Flying Boat, is made entirely of birch wood. The winged giant made only one flight on November 2, 1947. The unannounced decision to fly was made by Hughes during a taxi test. With Hughes at the controls, David Grant as co-pilot, and several engineers, crewmen and journalists on board, the Spruce Goose flew just over one mile at an altitude of 70 feet for one minute. The short hop proved to skeptics that the gigantic machine could fly. The Spruce Goose was kept out of the public eye for 33 years. After Hughes’ death in 1976, it was gifted by Hughes’ Summa Corporation to the Aero Club of Southern California. The Aero Club then leased it to the Wrather Corporation, and moved it into a domed hangar in Long Beach, California. In 1992, Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum co-founders Michael King Smith and Delford M. Smith submitted the winning proposal to provide the aviation icon with a proper home. The Flying Boat was disassembled and transported by barge up the West Coast, then up the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, to Portland, Oregon. It remained there for several months, until water levels permitted the huge structures to safely pass under the Willamette’s many bridges. Finally, in February 1993, the aircraft was transported by truck for the last 7.5 miles to McMinnville, Oregon. In 2001, re-assembly of the Hughes Flying Boat was completed in its new home. Source: evergreenmuseum.org/the-spruce-goose Editors' Note: Photo below taken by Wayne Albertson at the Evergreen Museum, in May 2014, of the actual Spruce Goose with a replica of the Spirit of St. Louis in the foreground. |
 |
