Winters Back

What I wake up to every morning

Well, another week has gone by and the weather has become more 'seasonal' once again. 40 below is the daytime high, and the average temperature until the end of the 5-day forecast, which leads me to believe that this is the 'real winter' which people speak about - where its -30 for an entire month at a time. When the temperature rises close to 0 (in May), I feel it will be t-shirt weather!

I've been keeping my truck plugged in constantly, and when I am not driving it for a few hours, I pop the terminals off the battery and carry it inside with me. Although the oil is like molasses at those temperatures, even with the block heater working, my car been getting me to work every morning while others have had to beg for rides when their cars are frozen solid. Even though my truck starts, it sure drinks it's fair share in gas, and digs deep into my pocket. In the 3 months that I have had it, I broke my first 1000km on it yesterday, yet am filling up almost twice a week! It sure is reliable for 25 years, but it definitely has some inefficiencies in the engine and exhaust system!

I'm not too sure if anyone caught the season premiere of 'Ice Pilots' which is a show based on an airline similar to ours called Buffalo Airways, flying out of Yellowknife, NWT. The greater majority of our flight crew and ramp staff all got together at Troy and Andrea's house last wednesday evening to watch it. it's funny how pilot's would love to watch that, even though its the exact same thing which we live every day. Anyways, in that particular episode, they were on the Northern tip of the Canadian Mainland stranded in the cold as they forgot to bring their 'Herman Nelson', which is a huge deisel-powered heater to warm up the engines and aircraft if it's shut down for any period of time.

That same day at work, before I got together with everyone I was helping a Twin-Otter Crew of South Nahanni Airways, from Fort Simpson, NWT. We were getting their aircraft and engines warm enough with our Herman Nelson, after it had been sitting on the ramp in the freezing cold for several days to depart on a return charter up to Yellowknife. We use it frequently when something happens and our back-up aircraft needs to be heated for a quick departure

Blowing Warm air in through the flight deck window early in the morning

Buffalo Airways and Northwestern Air Lease are similar companies in terms of their day-to-day operations. Buffalo provides scheduled service to many remote communities in the far north from Yellowknife, which is the hub for the north, and keeps their aircraft flying (and making money) by doing mainly cargo charters, in the far North.

At Northwestern, they connect Fort Smith with the North and the South (as it is predominantly a government town) by providing service to Edmonton and Yellowknife several times daily. Our aircraft are kept busy by doing charters to the diamond mines, as Fort Smith is home to many miners, as well as many other on-demand passenge travel. We have recently picked up a large contract with a company called Aluma out of Fort McMurrary. Northwestern is doing 3-5 weekly flights from Fort McMuray to Edmonton and Calgary for the to transfer the rig operators up north on their rotations. It's a big contract for the company and the pilots love it as it is alot of extra mileage (which is how they get paid - A Base salary + mileage).


To add to our Jetstream charters, our single engine aircraft do significant flying in the spring summer and fall when the ice roads are not open, flying in weekly supplies to places without road access (quite common up here).




Above is a picture of the Cessna 185 on Ski's leaving on a food run to a place called Kozo (I'm not exactly sure where it is) but they are delivering food to the prison up there - they get steak and ribs on a weekly basis. At Christmas they shipped up several turkeys and hams. Doesn't seem like such a rough life afterall. I've even seen sushi being sent up.