Time Air Historical Society

We had a great conversation with former Time Air pilot Howard Still earlier today. Howard filled in more details on the Queen's Flight, during Queen Elizabeth's visit to Saskatchewan in 1987. We now have the full crew information for each aircraft. C-GTAZ was designated as the Queen's transport. C-GTAJ was the Entourage Crew transport, and C-GTAD was for the Press. It was a short, three day visit in total, that took the Queen from the "base" in Regina, to Yorkton, Kansack, a...nd Kindersley over the course of two days. The journey for the fleet and crew started in Lethbridge on October 18th, and the actual flights for the Queen were performed on October 19th and 20th, with daily returns back to Regina. Howard was kind enough to forward copies of the Charter information for all three aircraft, and picture of the crews from all aircraft. Most importantly, we also recived a copy of a siqned thank you from Air Vice-Marshal John de M. Severne of the Royal Air Force, thanking Time Air for their service on the flights. A great piece of history, that we are more than happy to share! THANK YOU, Howard Still! Lastly, we have created a small commemorative poster that we would love to share with the surviving crew. If you were one of the crew, or have contact information of anyone who flew on these flights, please let us know! See more

It is with humble gratitude that we thank Daylon Thompson for a large collection of Time Air artifacts. Daylon's Grandfather Iver, and Father Richard both worked for Time Air, and this collection is a wonderful reflection of their service to the company. This is a preview... there are a LOT of items to document, and we will post a full album when completed. THANK YOU, Daylon for this important and amazing collection!

A sincere thank you goes out to Delaine Nedza, who donated these items to us. What great, rare items! We LOVE the flag! We also don't think too many flags were produced with a white background, making this near-mint flag even more rare! Also, the 1984 Annual report with the beautiful image of the Dash 7 in original Sky Dash livery... WOW! It will be amazing to be able to properly display these and all the items that have been donated, so far! If you are considering, please let us know! We are also especially excited for items from the pre-Canadi>n Partner (independent) days! Thanks again, Delaine! We are honoured to be able to be stewards of these items!

Any of our supporters want to purchase this model plane? We'd simply like to get a hold of the instructions and parts breakdown, to source the parts, and get the price down to a respectable level! Cool model, though! https://www.brickmania.com/c-23b-sherpa-us-forest-service/

We've finally had a chance to catalogue the Thompson Collection. Again, a HUGE thank you goes out to Daylon Thompson for the large collection of Time Air artifacts. Daylon's Grandfather Iver, and Father Richard both worked for Time Air. This is an amazing collection, and one we look forward to eventually putting on permanent display.

In 1964 Weserflug and Focke Wulf merged into the Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke VFW. In 1969 VFW agreed an alliance with Fokker to form Fokker-VFW in the Netherlands and VFW-Fokker in Germany. This collaboration ended in 1980, which means our 1976 F28 C-FTAV is a Fokker-VFW F28-1000. Of course Bremen based VFW and VFW-Fokker had some interesting projects of their own, like the VFW 614 regional jet with its engines above the wings. Not as well known is that VFW and VFW-Fokk...er made campers and truck tailgate lift platforms in the 1960s and 1970s, using their aircraft manufacturing experience. The campers were constructed with polyester sandwich panels and wood. They were strong and lightweight and were considered high quality. In the Netherlands these campers were sold under the name Fokker. Now the campers are hard to find, but if you manage to get your hands on one, you can become the proud owner of your own Fokker / VFW-Fokker. https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de//vf/1560194842-220-20006

A great 50's documentary on the Vickers Viscount. TCA/Air Canada flew the Viscount into Lethbridge until June 1971, a few years after Time Air had set up business to better serve Lethbridge and area. We hope to have more news on some more exciting developments very soon! In the meantime, please enjoy this National Film Board of Canada piece. Also a reminder, we still need more volunteers for our Fokker F28 Cabin Mock-up build! https://www.nfb.ca/film/routine_flight/

Nearly 20 years apart. The first picture is shortly after retirement, before being moved to YXE. All the other pictures are but a mere week old. Amazing how time can be a blip. With a second move within YXE, the trio of F28's coming back to Alberta, will rest until 2021. TAHS's C-FTAV, and the two private rescued planes: C-GTIZ, and C-GYCR. TAHS is now looking for volunteers to help us put together the "Fokker F-28 Cabin Mock-up Display". The majority of pieces for our first... major display, come from parts that were taken right before C-GTEO was sent to the wreckers. This display will be made to be portable, to use as promotional tool for fundraising, and putting something tactile on public display. We would like to start building the display in November. Anyone with any AME experience, construction experience, able to wield a hammer, or just curious... come one down! Proper precautions will be in place during the build. We have a couple people that can help, but we need as many as we can. Let's work together to get our first display up and running. Lets turn this dream into a reality! Please let us know in our various pages, and please send a message directly to us. YYC (Calgary) or YQL (Lethbridge) volunteers to the front of the line. The build will take place in the City that has the most people that can help. Time to get off the computer or phone, and put some time...into TIME!

Rik here with Jesse, back in YXE. Some winterization of TAV, and the two private purchases. Heard a loud jet buzzing around, and this favourite went past us.

CALLING ON EVERYONE... It's TIME to start on our first official display, and we need YOUR help! To more properly introduce the Society to the General Public, we are embarking on our first build of a moveable display. This display will be made from the parts harvested from the Fokker F-28, C-GTEO, which will represent a small cabin display. Projected completion date will be for the end of 2020, to be put on display for early 2021. Our location for the build (Calgary or Lethbri...dge), will be determined by the people who respond. This is an important first step to moving our story forward, and anyone interested in helping is urged to respond. We also have many other larger projects that are starting to come together, and will always be happy to accept everyone's help, both physically, and financially. For the cabin mock-up build, please leave a comment on this post, and message us with your contact details. See more

Morning view at YXE. Back in town to secure our F-28 for winter.

Without Trans-Canada Air Lines / Air Canada, there never would have been a Time Air. Another HUGE opportunity is coming our way. A means to be able to tell more of the full Aviation History of Lethbridge. This will need more involvement, so local Lethbridge and Calgary Charities, take notice. If you've been following our story... perhaps we can start to say "and then there were FOUR".

Some history on one of our Dash 7's:

An inspiration. The Lancaster as is today was a completely different aircraft when it arrived in Vulcan. Built near the end of the war, and never seeing the theatre of war. A dedicated crew has worked to bring this aircraft to a Vision of how it would have looked, had it served in WWII. The hours, the years... amazing dedication. Bomber Command, you are an inspiration to TAHS, as we work towards the beginning of telling a completely different Southern Alberta Aviation Story. Look forward to being able to liason with you in the future!

TAV's very last flight was August 31, 2002. This is officially documented in TAV's last log book. The route was YWG (Winnipeg) to YXE (Saskatoon). Pilots on the flight were Bartell and Crane. If anyone knows these pilots, we'd love to hear about her last journey!

For all this time we have been working on getting C-FTAV home in Lethbridge, we thought we knew much of its history. Just like many of her sisterships, "TAV" was originally delivered to Garuda Indonesia and then ended up in Canada through Piedmont Air Lines and USAir. But . . . there is more to the story! Back in July 1974 the Luftwafffe Flugbereitschaft BMVg placed an order for 3 Fokker F28-1000C’s to replace... 3 Convair CV-340s. This squadron of the German Air Force is tasked with transporting government VIP officials for the German government and beside the 3 aging Convairs a single Boeing 707 was operated but maintained by Lufthansa. Fokker assigned C/N 11106 (our C-FTAV), 11107 (C-FCRB) and 11108 to the Luftwaffe and the Luftwaffe had assigned registrations 17+70, 17+71 and 17+72 to these serial numbers. These planes were to be operated from the military part of Cologne/Bonn airport. Later in 1974, the order was converted to 3 Fokker F28-5000C’s. The F28-5000 was basically a F28-1000 with a new wing. This new wing had leading-edge slats but lacked the so-called lift dumpers (spoiler that fold out on the landing roll). This new wing produced more lift and the take off distance was spectacularly reduced. Despite the improvements of the take-off performance, the F28-5000 was never built, and the Luftwaffe changed the order from three F28’s to three German built VFW-Fokker VFW-614’s. Although the VFW-614’s were not a commercial success, the Luftwaffe kept operating them until 1998. Thank you to our friend Jan F. Homma of the Netherlands, for the information. See more

https://youtu.be/P4d5edi7kog Our few days with winterization of the aircraft for storage until next Spring, also gives us a chance to do some investigation into the wing to fuselage connections. Exactly as expected, a couple hundred bolts holds it all together. Forgive the stumbled speech... its been a few sleepless nights.

While in Saskatoon, Typewriter Thom Cholowski (yes, THAT Typewriter Thom)and son Hudson, came to say hello. The look of excitement on Hudson’s face with every new discovery was priceless. This is the reason for why we love what we are doing. Although not in Lethbridge, we were honoured by the visit!