As a youngster, Bob Michalchuk was fascinated by aircraft. Unlike most children, he never outgrew it.

After a career spanning nearly 40 years, Michalchuk is retiring on Monday from his long held post as manager of the Brantford Municipal Airport.

But the 64-year-old won’t feel grounded for long. The next day, he’ll be piloting a charter trip to North Bay, he said in an interview this week.

Michalchuk was born in Brantford and raised in the Norwich and Burford areas.

He earned his private pilot licence in 1965 and joined the Brantford Flying Club as an instructor in 1968. He also worked as a crop sprayer over Norfolk County tobacco fields.

Michalchuk joked that while working as a flight instructor, he was “hijacked” into becoming airport manager after the former manager left for Winnipeg to run a flight school.

“They were looking for someone to fill his shoes. The next thing I know, I turn around and it’s been nearly 40 years,” he said.

With instructing, piloting charter flights and recreational flying, Michalchuk has clocked 13,000 hours of flight time, including 8,000 hours of instructing. Put another way, he has spent 18 solid months, night and day, in the air.

As manager, Michalchuk was also required to know how to stay grounded.

He has overseen notable events and met fascinating people who set foot on the municipal tarmac.

Most memorable was the visit by Queen Elizabeth II in 1984. She arrived by plane from Windsor to visit the Mohawk Chapel.

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The monarch’s visit was months in the making, Michalchuk said. Of concern to military transport personnel who co-ordinated aspects of the visit was the 4,000-foot length of the airport’s main runway. It was considered too short and so was extended to 5,000 feet.

Security was impressive. Michalchuk recalls men carrying mysterious black attach‚ cases and military security snipers on the rooftops of airport buildings.Other notables have included prime ministers, premiers, Wayne Gretzky and family, Rob Blake, the Snowbirds and the SkyHawks parachute team.

Actor Gene Hackman flew in to shoot scenes for the 2004 comedy Welcome to Mooseport. Similarly, Kevin Bacon was here for scenes shot for the 2005 drama Where the Truth Lies.

While visits from a reigning monarch, an occasional celebrity and the annual United Way airshows are thrilling, most of Michalchuk’s days involved ensuring the safe and efficient operation of the airport.

Business opportunities for the city got a boost with a longer runway that allowed more corporate users to use the airport, Michalchuk said.

He is pleased with city plans for a $1.9-million runway reconstruction project.

“The city neglected us for a number of years,” he said, adding that a renewed commitment to the airport sends a message that Brantford is open for business.

Michalchuk is proud of the airport’s safety record. No fatal accidents have occurred on the airfield during his tenure, although there have been fatal crashes of small aircraft in nearby countryside over the years.

In 1968, before Michalchuk took over, an airshow accident claimed the life of a pilot during a simulated dogfight with another aircraft. The pilot looped too low and crashed, he said.

lucky landing

He also recalls an unorthodox but successful landing of a small plane that did not make the airport runway but made an emergency landing on nearby Highway 53 where it “slid into a snowbank,” Michalchuk said.

Luckily, the pilot’s only injury was a cut over one eye, he said.

“We’ve got a good safety record. I’m pleased nothing serious has happened.”

Changes in technology over the past 40 years, especially from ground-based to satellite navigation, have been tremendous, Michalchuk said.

“When I started flying in 1964, a radio was a real luxury in an airplane and if it worked that was even better,” he joked.

Michalchuk’s plan for retirement is not to make any plans, he said. He will continue working as a part-time flight instructor and conduct flight tests - the final “driver’s test” for would-be pilots.

“This has been a good place to come to work,” he said.

City Coun. Greg Martin says it’s about time Brant County paid its fair share of expenses toward the upkeep of Brantford Municipal Airport.

“We’re not getting any funding from the county even though they enjoy the benefits of having the airport in the community,” Martin said Tuesday. “They haven’t done anything except collect taxes. It would be nice if they kicked in.”

During a presentation to county council last week, Martin requested the county provide $600,000 in funding for airport capital projects during the next two years. Half of the money would be paid this year and the remainder in 2009.

The county funds would be in addition to $1.97 million the city has agreed to pay for capital upgrades at the airport this year.

“It’s a very reasonable request,” Martin said. “There’s businesses in the county that use the airport.”

County politicians will consider the funding request at a corporate development committee meeting next month.

Operating the Brantford Municipal Airport is a city responsibility, but the facility is located within the borders of Brant County. Because of its location, Martin said any municipal taxes paid on the airport property go into county coffers.

Martin said the county’s $600,000 would be used to construct new T-hangars, the aviation equivalent of single-car garages, which are needed because the airport is running out of space to house airplanes. The city’s $1.97 million will pay for runway improvements.

About 15 years ago, federal grants that helped pay for airport operations stopped flowing and the city was left to contribute capital to keep the facility running. Martin said Brantford has contributed as much as $90,000 a year to keep the airport open in recent years and the county has contributed nothing.

“Once the federal grants dried up, the airport was no longer able to sustain itself,” he said.

If the county does decide to provide funding, Martin said a name change for the airport may be considered, from the current Brantford Municipal Airport to the Brantford and District Regional Airport.

Brantford Municipal Airport manger Bob Michalchuk is flying high after city councillors cleared the way for $1.9-million in runway improvements.

“It’s wonderful news and we’re feeling really happy to be able to move ahead,” Michalchuk said Thursday of council’s unanimous support the evening before to include runway renewal project in this year’s list of public works projects.

“I’m really, really pleased that it was unanimous. We’d heard that there could be some opposition, which would not have been surprising because a lot of money is involved. But having everyone vote for it sends a big signal.

“We’ve proved to council and the community that the airport is an important component in the area’s transportation network.”

Plans call for reconstruction of the airport’s main runway and a secondary one.

The unanimity of the vote stems partly from Coun. Greg Martin’s persistent lobbying of colleagues from his position as chairman of both the finance and estimates committees.

“I was confident that it would win, but I was surprised that it was a unanimous vote because some I spoke to would not give a definite answer when I was lobbying them,” said Martin.

big turnout

He said the ability of airport supporters to get about 500 people to a public meeting on the future of the facility when it was up for a service review last year probably influenced many councillors.

“Obviously, the message that we had to show a strong commitment to improving the airport resonated enough that all councillors could support it.”

Local flyers are delighted.

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“I just spoke to a couple of people from the flying club and they’re ecstatic,” Dr. Lee Deimling, chairman of the airport commission, said Thursday.

“I think it’s fantastic news because those runways were almost to the point where they were unusable.”

A recent report rated one of the runways as being fair to poor, while the other was on the verge of becoming unusable.

One of the runways hasn’t been repaved since 1941.

Airport officials were also receiving complaints from corporations who said the landing gear of their planes is being harmed by the poor condition of the runways.

The Department of National Defence recently sent airport officials a letter highlighting concerns with one of the runways.

The airport is the site of the annual Brant United Way Air Show, a huge event featuring the Snowbirds that attracts thousands of people. Although no one from the Canadian Forces said the Snowbirds would not appear at the show unless the runways were repaired, local officials cited the letter as another reason to back plans to upgrade the runways.

“That letter really makes you think,” said Martin. “The military will tell us they’re not coming to the airport because of the shape of the runways, but how many corporate executives don’t tell us that? How many investment opportunities are we losing that we don’t know of, because corporate fliers don’t like the state of a runway?” Michalchuk said winning more corporate clientele is the way of the future for the Brantford airport

“If you want to get the corporate aircraft flying in, you have to make them comfortable with the facility,” he said.

“A lot of people don’t see the corporate aircraft coming and going, because they think mostly of small aircraft. We’re trying to build a better image for the city. The airport is the corporate front door.” The airport runways allocation is expected to receive final approval when the 2008 operating and capital budgets come before council later this month.

That allocation is part of a total capital works plan of about $3.1 million. The other $1.2 million is for upgrades to ramp areas.

Martin says he’s already working on gaining support for that project.

Just a note about the new runways…

Council voted unanimously for the improvements at the estimates committee
meeting. However, we still have to get through the budget process at
Council on the 21st, so we’re not out of the woods yet. But it’s looking
good! We just don’t want to count our chickens too early.

We’ll keep you posted,

We’ve finally been APPROVED for 1.9 million for TWO NEW RUNWAYS!!!

Runway 35/17 and 23/05 will be rebuilt in 2008!

I can’t begin to express my gratitude to everyone who has written letters,
made calls, sent emails, started blogs and websites, and showed up at
meetings to make this a possibility.

After years of neglect, the Brantford Airport is waiting on the tarmac to receive about $3 million in upgrades from city’s coffers.

Thanks to lobbying by Coun. Greg Martin, council has approved recommendations from its finance committee to put two high-ticket items into consideration in the 2008 capital budget:

$1.8 million to fund the replacement of a primary runway and a secondary one;

$1.2 million to fund repairs of airside infrastructure (a stretch of runway where planes are stored).

The upgrades are part of a long-term business plan drawn up by the airport commission.

Martin said the repairs are sorely needed if the city wants to develop the airport as an economic tool of the future.

“We put the airport on hold while we’ve been going through a service review and still its finances have returned to break even,” he told council.

good tenants

“Also, because of the review, we have some good tenants that we’re at risk of losing if we can’t sign long-term leases.”

Martin also pointed out that the business plan calls for an attempt to get Brant and Oxford counties to help pay for the airport’s upgrades because they benefit from the facility’s presence in the area.

“If council doesn’t put money into the airport, it will be hard to convince the county to participate in funding it,” he said.

The requests will be considered when council shorty begins its 2008 capital budget process.

Kincardine Council is looking at options for its airport.

Kincardine’s Airport Best Practices Committee presented several ideas to Council last night to make the airport more profitable.

Committee member Robert Ayres says they went out to airports in Hanover, Collingwood, Wiarton, Wingham, Goderich, Owen Sound, Stratford, and Brantford to learn what they do.

Ayres says one thing that really stuck out was the fact that the best operated airports have a governing body that reports to their municipal council or corporate services committee.

He says the reason for the success of the airport is because it has the support of council.

Ayres says the committee also suggested revenue generating ideas like a self-serve fueling station that operates 24 hours a day through a card lock system.

He says another recommendation is to turn the house on the airport property into either rental units or a place of business like a gift shop or restaurant.

Ayres says it is also important to have a manager that is really passionate about the airport.

He says an airport in Collingwood employs a manager who understands the needs and has raised community awareness of the airport.

Council has accepted the committee’s recommendations and will look to implement them in the near future.

By Stephan Kleiser STAFF WRITER
Tilsonburg News
Monday August 13, 2007
http://cgi.bowesonline.com/pedro.php?id=301&x=story&xid=330228

Any hopes Tillsonburg Airport could benefit from the possible closing of Brantford’s airport have been dashed.
For months now there has been speculation and optimism the town’s facility could benefit if Brantford’s facility closed its doors.
Many people expressed hopes many of those displaced businesses could come here because small municipal airports are harder and harder to find.
And it was true, as part of a service review, the City of Brantford did take a close look at its facility and there were offers to purchase the land and develop it, but Mayor Mike Hancock told the News this week the airport will remain open.
“We looked at this as part of a big review, we considered the pros and cons, but I think it’s fair to say we want to keep our airport open,” Hancock said. “That’s probably not the news your airport was hoping for, but I think it’s fair to say the vast majority of our council is in support of keeping the facility open.”
He added, if someone wants to purchase the airport and continue operating it as an airport they would certainly be open to that, but closing the airport is not an option council would support.

And even though there is no joy in benefiting from someone else’s misfortune, Tillsonburg airport manager Annette Murray said it could have presented a good opportunity for Tillsonburg airport to grow.
The town’s airport has experienced solid growth over the past few years anyway, but additional business would have been welcome news.
According to a late-2006 economic impact study on Tillsonburg airport, aircraft movements at the facility have more than doubled since the mid ‘90s, primarily driven by growth in local activity.
“While itinerant and local traffic have both increased significantly over the nine-year period, local movements have experienced the greatest growth,” the study found.
Total aircraft movements for Tillsonburg in 2005 rose above the 10,000 mark.
Together with the airport operator, a total of three full-time staff and four part-time staff are employed at the airport, representing five full-time-equivalent employees.
Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association, Spectrum Aviation and Interior, Lee Aviation and Delhi Flight School are the major tenants.

QUOTE:
“We looked at (closing the airport), we considered the pros and cons, but I think it’s fair to say we want to keep our airport open.”
- Mike Hancock

Muir, Gary
For: www.brantfordexpositor.ca

- Saturday, June 30, 2007 @ 09:00

What to do with an airport? The current debate over the fate of the Brantford Municipal airport brings to mind the discussions concerning the future of that property in the years immediately after the end of the Second World War.

In the early days of that conflict, land on the Burford Road was appropriated by the Canadian government to be used as a training facility for future Commonwealth pilots.

By March 1944, over 2,000 airmen had graduated from that base, known as No. 5, Service Flying Training School (SFTS). Along with army training base No. 20, it had contributed to Brantford’s wartime atmosphere and more importantly, to the local economy.

However, with the invasion of Europe a success and the end of the war in sight, it was announced that No. 5 would be closing down.

Brantford’s city council, well aware of the future value of the facility, immediately moved to have it retained as a commercial airport. Initially it looked as if they were in step with the thinking of the federal government when the Federal Minister of Transport, the Honourable CD Howe, declared that No. 5 would be taken over by Trans Canada Airlines and that Brantford would be on the main line of a proposed federal government aeronautical enterprise.

In response to this announcement, The Expositor crowed that “Brantford’s place on the postwar air map is thus assured.”

Then, on July 8, the newspaper had to admit that that “assurance was none too sure,” as there were “no concrete plans at the present moment for Brantford’s airport to become part of a chain of commercial airports.” And that “… the loss of No. 5 as a potential airport - on the main line of TCA - would be a serious blow to this community particularly in view of the aeronautical possibilities of this country in the postwar period.”

The air base was closed in November 1944, but the question remained as to what would be done with the airport.

A more serious crisis facing Brantford’s city council at this point was an acute housing shortage. In March 1945, a civic delegation journeyed to Ottawa to seek assistance from the federal government with this problem. As well as pushing for immediate action to provide new accommodation for soldiers’ and veterans’ families, the delegation also sought to have military buildings in the area converted into apartments for civilian use. During the meeting, the minister of national defense for air intimated that it might be found possible to convert the buildings at the former No. 5.

However, on April 9, city council received a letter from the minister stating that as the air station here was now being used as a reserve equipment maintenance unit and as the premises were being considered for possible post war use, none of the buildings on the station could be declared surplus to air force requirements.

Mayor J. P. Ryan was not impressed. “When we came back from Ottawa there was a mild ray of sunshine in the possibility that military buildings might be converted. That possibility is now gone. What we got from Ottawa has not solved our immediate problem.”

City officials still had to deal with that “immediate problem.” Three months later Brantford’s civic housing committee decided to once again investigate the possibilities of converting No. 20 and No. 5 Army and Air Force camps into living quarters.

In September, the government changed its stand and the director-general of real estate for the Federal Department of Reconstruction announced: “If a municipality feels it would like army barracks or airports for housing, we try to get a release. We are trying to expedite any request a municipality may have. The greatest need will be during the coming winter and the government is rushing to get ready for it.”

With this announcement, Brantford immediately renewed its application for the use of military buildings at the airport to provide civilian housing accommodation. As a result, the city sent the director-general a telegram stating: “City of Brantford interested in your appointment as Housing Administrator for this area. Would you meet City Council Housing Committee in Brantford and discuss your plans for securing military buildings for temporary living quarters? Very acute housing shortage exists here.”

Matters moved slowly. The purchase of the airport remained a key element in Mayor John Matthews’ inaugural address in 1946. What made this issue even more significant at that point was the fact that there was no longer any possibility of emergency housing at the former army base No. 20 in the east end of the city.

Negotiations for the air base continued through 1946. The housing crisis continued and worsened. Then on Aug. 31, in spite of the fact that the federal government had already turned down the city’s request to use the base for housing and had walked away from its own plan to make it part of a national air route, the property was declared surplus and was to be transferred to the Department of Transport for lease to the City of Brantford for use for emergency housing and as an airport.

In commenting on the transfer, The Expositor opined that it was “a matter of no small satisfaction” that the city had been able to secure the airport for housing purposes. Regretfully, “… there had been talk - even a promise - that No. 5 was to become a station on a transcontinental airline but this project apparently and most unfortunately for Brantford has fallen through.”

Yet the newspaper continued to hope that the airport would also be used for aviation purposes. “However with aviation an increasingly important factor in modern life, especially in a commercial sense, it should be to the city’s advantage to lease and exploit to the fullest extent possible the property now declared surplus… The principal future of No. 5 … should be for aviation of course and under the cooperating auspices of the municipal corporation, the Industrial Commission and more especially the Brant-Norfolk Aero Club, much benefit should be gained from it not only by its air-minded users but indirectly by the whole community.”

Prior to the war, the Brant Norfolk Aero Club had been located on what is now Fairview Drive. The coming of the war had greatly increased interest in flying at this club so that by the end of December 1939, club members were logging more than triple the number of hours normally flown. Part of that increase had been due to the fact that in October 1939, the flying club began training Air Force personnel.

By 1941, civilian flying had ground to a halt and the following year the Aero Club temporarily suspended its activities until after the war. At that point the question facing the club was where to set up its headquarters. Initially Burtch was chosen but the club remained one of the prime movers in the efforts to secure the former air base on the Burford Road.

By September 1946 then, Brantford had acquired the facilities for a successful municipal airport and the buildings that it hoped would help solve its increasingly serious housing shortage. While the development of an improved municipal airport grew slowly but steadily, the question of housing at that facility became more and more fractious. But then that is another story.

Gary Muir is a local historian whose books on Brantford include the two-volume Brantford: A City’s Century 1895-2000 and the recently released photograph book, Images Of A City: Brantford 1895-1950.

County might help fund airport upgrading: Eddy

Michael-Allan Marion
For: www.brantfordexpositor.ca

« Previous Page

- Monday, May 28, 2007 @ 10:00

Brant County council will consider helping fund improvements at the Brantford Municipal airport.

So says Brant Mayor Ron Eddy, after he and a majority of county council attended a public meeting on the future of the airport last week. The event was part of the city’s ongoing review of 30 municipally run services.

“It’s an important facility, and it will be even more important as time goes on,” said Eddy. “We consider the airport an advantage for development in the area.”

He has learned from the service review documents and the public meeting that the airport’s operating budget is handled well, but the facility needs major capital investment to overhaul its aging infrastructure.

Eddy recalled that the city asked the county in the past few years to contribute to the airport. While the facility is owned by the city, the county collects taxes from industrial development there because it’s in its jurisdiction.

The request was rejected, Eddy said, because the two municipalities were encountering political difficulties in sharing some costs at the time.

Eddy noted the city had unilaterally decided to stop contributing its share of the maintenance costs of certain county roads that bordered the two municipalities. Under those conditions, county council decided it was politically prudent to contemplate a pact on investment in the airport.

“We couldn’t do it at the time,” Eddy said, but with the city examining the airport’s future more closely, “we’ll have to look at it again. It’s that important.”

City Coun. Greg Martin, an airport champion, was heartened by those words. He was grateful that so many county politicians turned out to the public meeting.

“It makes our job of selling the airport much easier,” he said. “If we don’t get more capital funding, we might as well close the airport. It will just die of neglect.”

Once the review of the first round of services - including the airport, the farmers’ market and the Arrowdale and Northridge golf courses - is complete, Martin said he intends to press city council for capital funding.

With the public meetings on those services complete, city staff are writing reports on each service, complete with records of the meetings, background statistical documents and the results of surveys.

“We don’t have a timeline yet, but hopefully this part of the review will be done shortly,” Martin said, because the airport’s future is largely in limbo until the exercise is finished.

“We have to get this thing resolved fairly quickly so we can move on.”

Martin said he will also push for formal presentations to be made to Brant, Norfolk and Oxford counties for matching funds.

All those neighbours would benefit from having a good airport that can contribute to development, said Martin. Businesses in Brant are already using the airport, a trend that will only continue to grow. “Hopefully Oxford may contribute some, too,” he said.

“With the Toyota plant in Woodstock, they’re going to need airport services. If we all work together, we’ll have a better airport.”

“It’s an important facility … We consider the airport an advantage for development in the are.a”