A.i.p.

[Skidz]

Oh yeah, and when that started, I complained to the service station guy who replied " The air is free, yer payin' for the 'lectricity to run the compressor."

 

[cap]

That's the exact same reply I received and MY reply was to advise him that, believeable or not, there was electricity in Canada in 1959 and there was also something called "overhead".

 

This all relates to something that hapened some years ago, just after Nav Canada assumed their duties. I find it very funny to this day and can still generate a belly laugh over it.

 

I received a formal letter from Nav Canada advising of their plans to close-down many of their manned airport towers across the country and resort to the FSS only. In some cases, they were even going to terminate those and have RCO's. One of the places that they were going to eliminate personnel was at Thompson, MB. Thompson has much traffic and moreso duriing the summer months and with it also being a northern provincial fire-base HQ. They carried through with their plans shortly afterwards and produced a Notam about same. Approximately 6 months passes and then I receive a questionnaire from Nav Canada, wanting the opinion on a subject from all pilots within Central Region. They wished to get the pilots' opinions on why there was such a rise in "near-misses" at Thompson Airport and how we also thought that this rising danger might be alleviated. They also advised that there had been a 48% increase on "near-misses", but that traffic had not increased proportionately in that time-frame. I took the time to answer and it was brief. I replied on their form......"Reference Notam #xx"...referring them back to the Notam about the de-manning of the Thompson tower.