“Quieter, cleaner” $1 million training plane arrives at Oshawa Airport

One of the biggest concerns from neighbours of the Oshawa Executive Airport is the noise from training flights, which make up most of the air traffic in the skies above the city.

The Canadian Flight Academy is taking steps to mitigate those noise levels and hopefully alleviate public complaints with the purchase of a Tecman G1000 twin-engine trainer which is not only quieter – noise levels are reduced more than 30 per cent – but also cleaner.

The aircraft, which cost parent company Enterprise Air about $700,000 US (nearly $1 million CDN), runs on unleaded fuel, which should reduce emissions by 60 per cent.

Oshawa Councillor Brian Nicholson, who chairs the city’s Safety and Facilities Committee, was at the unveiling and spoke of the “quieter, cleaner” plane that has arrived at the airport.

“One of our priorities is to reduce the noise impact and dangerous emissions and this new $1 million plane will help us achieve these goals,” Nicholson said. “This new training airplane will significantly reduce noise and dangerous emissions to the surrounding residential community.”

Nicholson was especially pleased with the unleaded fuel aspect of the plane, which removes “one of the most dangerous contaminants to our environment.”

Peter Ellison, a dispatcher with the flight school, said it was “rare” to find a training plane that runs on unleaded fuel. He also lauded the instrumentation panel in the cockpit – an electronic plate instrumentation that is not often found on trainers but is commonly found on larger commercial aircraft.

“This will really help students prepare for the job landscape.”

The purchase of the plane was fully funded by the private company and “shows their commitment to working with area neighbours to reduce impacts,” Nicholson said.

“The company could have purchase four of the old noisy (single-engine) plains for the same money but decided that they wanted to invest in modern technology to show their commitment to the Oshawa Airport and the city of Oshawa.”

Noise from training flights at the airport has been a concern for many years and the federal Transport ministry has implemented a series of limitations on flights to keep noise to a minimum.

• Only police, medical and industrial emergency flights are permitted to land and take off from the airport between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.
• Only 12 training aircraft are permitted to do circuit training on Runway 05/23 at any time.
• Flight training aircraft will not utilize a touch-and-go departure pattern on all runways after 4 p.m. on any Saturday or Sunday.
• Flight training aircraft are not permitted to undertake any circuit training on all runways on the Sunday or Monday of any federally regulated long weekend.

The City of Oshawa is currently embroiled in litigation with the flight school’s parent company, Enterprise Air, with the much-postponed trial date now set for May.

The City is committed to fulfill its agreement with Ottawa to operate the Oshawa Executive Airport until 2047 but this week’s announcement should ease tensions a bit, noted Nicholson.

“This is the kind of leadership that we are proud to see at the Oshawa Airport and we expect to see more modern planes such as this … as the industry moves forward as a good neighbour.”