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Aviation History
1981
1981 - 3342.PDF
Above The two Austin Airways-operated aircraft are seen here outside Austin's Timmins maintenance base. The airline's main business is serving a vast network in the Far North (£680,000) this year, "because our fuel prices have doubled in the last six months." But the airline has been much more successful financially than was origin ally expected—its ratio of revenues to expenses is now 80 per cent. "This is far better than the figures railway services in North Ontario and Toronto achieve: their revenue-to-cost ratio is only about 10 per cent, so the Ontario Government encourages us," states Wallace. "We also attract more busi ness to the area because we provide a more sophisticated and quicker ser vice, which particularly encourages people from, say, the Big Apple to come here, do business, and go back all in the same day." About 75 per cent of norOntair's passengers are travelling on business. Wallace is ultimately realistic about norOntair's money-making ability. "It won't make money until it gets Dash 8s. The norOntair idea is catch ing on with the public but it needs an airliner to make it really popular. The Dash 8 will bring a tremendous response from the travelling public, simply because its image is different from that of the Twin Otter. We know that the Twin Otter is a wonderful aircraft, but to the public it's a little 'plane." The Dash 8 will bring new sophisti cation and new problems; the airline will have to hire cabin crew for a start, and the Dash 8's network-wide range will mean that the carrier will have to modify its operational methods. Currently the limited range of the Twin Otter effectively segre gates each of norOntair's three opera tors into different corners of the net work; this handy division of operating responsibility will have to change. Expansion to destinations in the Northern United States (primarily to serve fast-increasing tourist traffic to Northwest Ontario) and cities further afield in Canada might come with the advent of the Dash 8, but norOntair's first priority is to improve internal services on its current network. The airline is introducing more flexible fares and customer services as a first step to expansion: it now offers a "Northern Skysaver" fare, and a "nor- Pac" small-parcel delivery service ("usually overnight") to any airport on its network for only C$4 an item. This service interlines with the US Federal Express system. Don Wallace defines norOntair's position: "Things won't change that much when we finally make a profit, because we have many more masters to serve than a straight commercial airline. But overall it's been a pretty positive experience, and it's certainly been a lot of fun." B3 This is the view that confronts norOntair pilots on short finals for Kirkland Lake Airport, one of the 11 strips built especially so that norOntair's Twin Otters can serve the local community. The terrain around the airport is entirely typical of North Ontario in general—enormous wooded areas inter spersed with hundreds of lakes. The town of Kirkland Lake, which is several miles from the airport, has a population of just over 13,000. This makes it one of the airline's more populous destinations wA-J-*t>f «r"*"ip* ,-•• * 1250 FLIGHT International, 24 October 1981
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