In his current job as president of Mitchinson Flight Center and as a captain for WestJet, Dan Glass gave his opinions on the challenges he faces in the industry. “Economics professors will say that, in textbooks, aviation is sort of at the leading edge of both a downturn, it’s the first one to suffer because it’s discretionary spending for most people, if they’re traveling for leisure or even for business,” said Glass. “A lot of businesspeople, if they’re under pressure, they’ll stop spending money on air travel. So, it’s sort of one of the first ones to be affected and one of the last ones to recover. I think in the last decade or two, that’s probably changed a bit. People love taking vacations, especially in Canada, we’ve got to escape in the wintertime and get to someplace warm. And then more recently, with the U.S. trade issues, the flying to the U.S. has really fallen off. The reports I’ve seen are as much as 20 to 30 per cent, the traffic to the States has dropped off. And traffic to Europe or to Asia and Mexico has increased as a result. So I think that’s sort of one aspect there that, that’s changed recently.” While it’s been six years since the COVID-19 pandemic, Glass says the ripple effects are still being felt. “The overhead and cost since Covid, a lot of the supply chain issues still exist today,” he said. How Prince Albert’s airport became a wartime flight school for pilots from across the globe “It seems like it’s a never-ending catch-up game. When we ship an engine out to be overhauled for the smaller piston engine airplanes, It takes two months, three months sometimes to get that engine back. So that airplane is potentially down for that period of time, that’s a lot of lost revenue. And then on the business side, it’s always increasing costs. In order to keep employees around with the amount of hiring and the pilot shortage and lately, the aircraft maintenance engineer shortage that exists globally, companies have to pay a more than a respectable wage to keep people around if they’re if they’re going to keep these employees and, keep them invested locally. Insurance rates are always a big part of it as well. They get affected if there’s a major accident somewhere in the world, it’s a ripple or trickle-down effect onto all of the operators that, insurance rates are affected. And then there’s government oversight. Government is always trying to find ways to cut costs. And it unfortunately affects the industry because that trickles down again into the industry. If you’re trying to get certification for a new airplane or get pilots licensed, it’s a slow process. And we work closely with the government, and they try hard. But it’s on the elected leadership that has to keep supporting their government offices that provide this service to the industry.” In 2018, the Glass Field Airport suffered a major fire that completely destroyed the old Second World War hangar. “That was one of the last,” said Glass. “It was the last remaining Second World War hangar. And it had been refurbished. I remember growing up as a kid there, we were constantly doing improvements to that hangar to keep it functional. They were supposed to be temporary, built just for the war to last, maybe five or 10 years. And that hangar lasted more than 50 years. But there’s not a lot of them left. There’s still a few in the province. I think Yorkton has some, Swift Current maybe. Maybe Moose Jaw. There’s still some of these old hangars around. I know the Prince Albert airport has been looking to reinvest there and, hopefully, build a new facility.” Glass says other painful memories include when friends or people he’s worked with lost their lives in plane accidents. “There’s been some accidents over the years,” he said. “I’ve lost friends, in aviation accidents across Canada, not just in Saskatchewan. But that’s always kind of a tough thing to deal with, seeing somebody you know or somebody you’ve trained with or even just a coworker or an acquaintance lose their life in aviation. It’s, the old saying in aviation, it’s not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater extent than the sea, it’s terribly unforgiving of any mistake or carelessness.” Part 2: How Prince Albert’s airport became a wartime flight school for pilots from across the globe While Glass remembers his first solo flight taking off in a Cessna 152 like it was yesterday, it was at an airshow in Prince Albert that he got a rare opportunity that stands out among the rest. “After my dad had passed away, there was an airshow in Prince Albert,” he said. “There was a, B-17 bomber brought in for this airshow, and I bought a ticket on it. I wanted to ride up in the nose, and sure enough, I got to take off in the in the nose of the aircraft. That was an incredible experience. And somehow I was chatting with the pilots before we left and they’re like, I introduced myself and talked about the airport a bit and they’re like, oh, well, anywhere exciting to fly around here? And I’m like, well, my farm is west of the city, my family farm. So we took off and sure enough, we headed right out west of the city and flew right over the family farm. And I was like, this is surreal. I can’t believe it. So yeah, it was really incredible. It was a great day, beautiful day for it, and, that was definitely a highlight.” Glass recalls some of the early days flying with his father. “Lots of great memories riding around with him in airplanes when I was a kid,” said Glass. “Flying over the farm, fairly low. We actually had an airstrip on the farm there at one point, and he and I would fly airplanes in and out of there. We farmed a little piece of land down by Saint Louis, and we would fly from the farm down to there to drop off parts or fly lunch down for the guys working in the field.” And Glass remembers one interesting close call his dad had. “There was a story he used to tell about an engine that he took off out of a small lake. It’s called Steepbank Lake. Just north of Kendall Lake there. And he took off out of there and had an engine failure and circled around, and he couldn’t make it back to the lake and had to land the plane in the trees. He walked away with barely a scratch on him, but he had to spend, I think a night or two in the bush before somebody figured out exactly where it was, because he was up fishing at his own cabin there. So yeah, some fun stories.”
