Bring on the North!

Riding under the overcast layer southbound 'on the coast'

I'm already two months into my 6 month contract here at Air Creebec and can't believe how the time has flown by so far. Arriving in Montreal at the beginning of September started out at full tilt without a minute to spare, as the company was very short of Dash 8 pilots at both their Timmins and Montreal bases.

Early morning departure out of Montreal - eastbound for Quebec City

The morning after I arrived in La Belle Ville, I was to report to the company's hangar at the Montreal Trudeau airport to start the line indoctrination training at 6:45 AM,  doing one of the daily scheduled flights up the James Bay and Hudson Bay coast. The company, being very ambitious, had me on a schedule of 14 days ON, trying to get me push through the line training as quickly as possible, to have me released onto the line, in the shortest amount of time. The line training is a series of flights to get new pilots accustom to the aircraft, routes and general day-to-day operations under the supervision of a training captain. In my case, since I had just come off the Dash 8 at LIAT two weeks earlier, it wasn't so much learning the airplane, but the differences in the two airlines Standard Operating Procedures and the airports that I would now be flying into. Within about 4 days, I had my 'line check' with the Operations Manager and I was released onto the line.

Route map for our Scheduled service

Im having quite a bit of fun here at Air Creebec, with the diversity in the type of flying we are doing. On top of the daily scheduled flights from Montreal  up the coast of the James Bay and Hudson's Bay coasts, we do a range of charters for many different Industries. Air Creebec has had its hands in charters with the SEBJ (Société d'énergie de la Baie James)/ Hydro-Quebec projects - creating Hydroelectric dams on the rivers in Northern Quebec, charters for a company called Goldcorp - doing gold exploration in Northern Quebec and the Quebec Courts, bringing the judge and jury up to the small communities in Quebec for prisoners to stand trial and have their fate decided for them.  A lot of our charter work is for crew transfers; bringing the workers to and from the cities in the southern parts of Quebec and Ontario up to the mines and hydroelectric dams for their rotations.