Blair's Blog

Woo hoo! This past weekend was the grand opening celebration of the new 14000′ parallel runway at Calgary International Airport. Brenda had been working with the YYC marketing department for the past 5 months to get a selection of vintage aircraft for the static display portion of the event. Brenda had nearly 50 aircraft that had expressed and interest – on the day of the opening celebration, 15 June, there were 36 aircraft. A few had dropped out due to mechanical, paperwork or scheduling difficulties. Then the weather kept a few more away.

The aircraft that showed up ranged all the way from a 1929 Gypsy Moth to a brand spankin’ new Boeing 787 with most every decade in between represented. Two of the pilots that participated were Dave and Drew Watson – brothers who each fly a vintage Harvard. They are based out of Ponoka and fly their aircraft as “Yellow Thunder” – an airshow acrobatic team. As Brenda was working with Dave and Drew to get their registrations for the static display sorted out, she also managed to sort out a passenger for Drew’s back seat on the flights between Ponoka and Calgary.

… and that’s how I got two 45 minute flights in a vintage 1942 Harvard Mk II!

What a great adventure – I drove up to Ponoka the night before and had a bit of time to hang out with Drew and Dave at their hangar, but the real excitement was on Sunday morning. We were out to the planes about 6:15 am and did the walk-around and swung the prop through before strapping in. We had a beautiful sunny morning and took off in formation into a clear Alberta sky. We flew in formation all the way to YYC and even landed at the international in formation. We taxied over to the new runway (17L-35R) and parked amongst all the other vintage aircraft, food trucks and bouncy castles. Unfortunately the fine weather in central Alberta didn’t reach to Calgary – it was a cold blustery day. Not that it chilled my enthusiasm for the event and the flying!

At the end of the day, we strapped back in and taxied back over to the active runways – right behind Air Canada’s new 787 Dreamliner. There was a line of about 8 or 9 vintage planes behind the 787, it was quite the sight. The flight back to Ponoka was great, breaking out into the sunshine again as we got north of Carstairs. The landing was a highlight as Drew and Dave flew the circuit in formation with a battle-break for the landing. We hangared the planes, sat in the sun with a Coke and chatted about how great a day it had been.

Definitely a better bucket list item than the last one!