My company... AirSprint Inc.

Well most of you know the company I work for. It's Canada's largest fractional ownership airline. We also do executive charters and things of that nature. But our main business is in selling "fractions" of an airplane to someone who can then use it like a time share. There is an initial buy in cost, then monthly costs and hourly costs depending upon your usage. We have 2 main aircraft that we use to make these things happen. The aircraft which I fly is the Pilatus PC-12, and we also operate the Cessna Citation Excel bizjet. So people buy fractions of these airplanes and are allotted so many hours a year to use them. Great for business write-offs and people with lots of money.

Pilatus PC-12 more info
Cost: $6,000,000 CDN
Seating: 7 or 6 passenger executive design with fully enclosed lav
Engine: Single engine Pratt and Whitney Turbo-prop (PT6-67B) produces 1200 SHP
Cruise info: 260knots (530km/hr) at 28,000ft

Cessna Citation Excel more info
Cost: $17,500,000 CDN
Seating: 9 passenger executive design with fully enclosed lav
Engine: 2 Pratt and Whitney turbofans (PW-545A) producing 3804lbs thrust each
Cruise info: 430knots (795km/hr) at 35,000ft but can and does go as high as 45,000ft!

So those are our main aircraft that we operate. This company is growing quite rapidly, a heck of a lot since I've been employed here. The prospects for long term employment are also great at the rate things are going. We operate 10 Pilatus PC-12's and 3 Citation Excels across Canada. This number will just continue to grow and grow. All the machines come to us brand new and maintained very nicely. We have future plans to operate bigger jets to allow our clients international travel. Pretty soon no place will be unreachable by one of our aircraft. That will be an exciting time for this company when we start to travel across the oceans and that time is not far off by any means!

In January we are expecting the delivery of a brand spanking new Learjet 40 more info. We will be managing it for a couple of our clients who have gone in together to purchase the aircraft.

We are also about to move into brand new facilities here in Calgary. We'll have our own set of hangars for the aircraft and a reception/lounge area for all of passengers when they arrive. The upstairs is also filled with office space for management and our flight coordination department, and there will also be some facilities for pilots to sit back and relax in as well. We're all looking forward to moving in as it is a bit behind schedule and we're currently operating out of temporary office space in our old facilities... not so fun.

So yeah, big things are on the horizon here at AirSprint Inc. It is certainly becoming the place where someone can be in my position and make continually progression right up the aircraft ladder to international flying. So who knows, I might stick around longer with AirSprint than I had originally thought. It's exciting to see the potential this business has. And the best part of it is the security. Our clients own the aircraft and we operate them for them. So there's always work. Not like an airline that needs to have people fly, we are in no trouble if our clients don't fly... but of course we do much better when they do, and of course it makes sense for them to use what they're ultimately paying for anyways!

So there you have it. A little insight into my company. Our website is AirSprint Inc.. So take a further look if it interests you. Post any questions you have, and if it's something along the lines of how much to charter us from Vancouver to Calgary and return... you're looking at roughly >$6,000CDN! We aren't cheap, but we provide the best service out there!

Home for the Holidays

well.. for the most part.

Just a reminder to all that I will be coming home and spending December 23rd to 25th in Vancouver on my scheduled days off. So I'll hopefully get to see some of you!

Other than that... not much to report. Still in a bit of a slow slump here at work. I did have one flight to Regina on Sunday night, but that was a quick drop off and before that I hadn't flown for a week. Well it's Tuesday night right now and I don't have anything on the books at all coming up. I do see a couple of flights, one to Texas and one to Arizona that haven't been crewed yet. So I'm hopefully I'll get to see one of those sunny and warm destinations.

Well that's all for now!

Crazy busy to crazy not busy

Yup. The story of my life lately.

I was super busy flying my ass of when doing that marathon flight last week that including transiting over most of the US and most of Canada within 3 days. Then we have times like right now where I haven't flown/worked in 3 days and now I'm about to go on my scheduled 3 days off. In the near future I see one flight coming up that's a trip to Kalispell down in the states, but that's right below the freaking border so all of an hour flight each way. I want to see more Palm Springs and Phoenix flights soon, they're great for racking up hours in the logbook, plus they're nice and warm destinations!

As for that flight down to Florida, what a disaster! We flew to the limits and then a little bit beyond. Hitting up Wichita Kansas, Marco Island Florida, then up to Latrobe Pensilvania which was only a stop so we could get adequate rest. The next day we continued on to Toronto where we swappend airplanes and kept on going all the way to Regina. A night in Regina where we both had the opportunity to eat a real meal (we had been working so none-stop that we really handn't eaten anything more than snacks the whole time). We went to Earls in Regina and each had big steaks with a couple of beers, ah the food never tasted so good! The next day we went to Edmonton and Penticton then to Vancouver for what should have been a drop off flight and then straight back home to Calgary empty. But we broke the plane in Vancouver and had to spend the night! Not a bad deal, except my entire family was on vacation in Mexico and we had housesitters at my house so I actually ended up spending the night in a hotel in my own home town! Oh well. The next morning the plane was all good to go and we flew home to Calgary. It was quite the trip, those 3 days accounted for 1 third of my monthly flying hours!

Well, time to get back to twiddling my thumbs here in Calgary. At least it's starting to warm up a bit.. we've spent a good week in the -20's! Brrrr... -7 ain't so bad right now!