Flying

Viscounts Ecuadorian Styl e

Probably sometime around 1978 i had a call from a friend who knew that i had a Viscount endorsement on my license. Back in that day in Canada, an aircraft endorsement was valid for life just like the presidency of some third world countries. There was no recurrent or recency requirements to maintain it. To get on with the story...my friend was acting as a consultant for Beaver industries, a company that was disposing of Air Canada’s Viscounts.

“A pilot and engineer from a South American country”, he said, “were interested in buying a few and would like a demonstration flight. Would i do it?”

So even though i hadn’t flown one for ten years Eduardo, who said he was chief pilot for Ecuadorian Airlines and his chief engineer whose name eludes me at the moment and i went flying in one of Air Canada’s up-for-sale Viscounts that was sitting around Winnipeg gathering dust. What Eduardo wanted to do was go up to 10,000 feet, then configure the aircraft for an imaginary approach and landing down to 9200feet ASL which was the elevation of Quito’s old Mariscal Sucre airport. At 9200feet our imaginary runway, level off, apply full power, raise the gear, simultaneously reduce the #3engine to 60lb torque to simulate a critical engine failure, climb away retract the flaps on schedule and take the timing from applying full power until reaching 10,000feet again.

He had the engineer take the timing and make notes on our go around performance from 9200feet. He wanted to know if Air Canada’s tired old Viscounts were up to the challenge of sufficient performance margins to clear obstacles within the geographical constraints of the daunting missed approach procedures in force at Muriscal Sucre. We did that three or four times and they both seemed satisfied. Back on landing at Winnipeg i gave my best effort at showing Eduardo my aviating finesse by doing a short field landing. i fancied myself as quite the Viscount hotshot pilot...i was wrong. Eduardo in turn then showed me a Viscount short field landing Ecuadorian style. it involved leaving the outboards at idle and enough power on the inboards to provide good airflow over the elevators. His demonstration left me sulking for several days.

On January 5th 1960 TCA took delivery of its first DC8 jet airliner. The airline had insisted that Douglas Aircraft supply these planes with Rolls Royce Conway engines as the industry was experiencing problems with the Pratt & Whitney J75 at that time. TCA had ordered five DC8s at six million dollars a copy putting the airline in financial deficit for the first time in its history. There was also a lot of political jiggery-poke going on at the time with the then John Diefenbacker Progressive Conservative government effectively ignoring the Trans Canada Air Line Act by giving domestic and international route structures away to CP Air and foreign airlines all of which impacted TCA's bottom line. Further financial pressures resulted from the fact that Rolls Royce did not live up to their guarantee of the Conway engines as that British company was also undergoing some financial problems. TCA , later under the Air Canada name flew the DC8 for 34 years, longer than any other airline, they retired the type in 1994. in 1964 Air Canada, ordered eight DC9s in the 72 seat configuration and later ordered the larger 115 passenger models. These orders inflamed Quebec who were keen on the Sud Aviation Caravelle as their preferred choice. Gordon McGregor, president of Air Canada, held to his better informed decision in spite of being cited as the enemy by French Canadian adversaries. McGregor's choice certainly proved to be to the company's financial advantage as the DC9 became the most popular aircraft with pilots and passengers alike for its many superb aerodynamic performance features and the craft's fast turn around capabilities with built-in airstairs on Canada's domestic services where many airports had only minimum facilities. best seat in the house