Every 9 days Ornge (formerly Ontario Air Ambulance Corp.) needs the Billy Bishop Regional Airport to complete a life saving mission to or from Grey Bruce Health Services, the regional hospital in Owen Sound. This is averaged from data collected by the city over the last 18 years, but the airport has been providing these services since 1989. If you think that you or a loved one may every need your life saved by this service, please read on as the continuing operation of the airport is in grave doubt and you can personally change the outcome.Ornge can call the after-hours number and get fuel 24-7. In weather too bad to land at the helipad, Ornge uses the Instrument Landing Approach at Billy Bishop and with a 5-minute drive the ground ambulance meets the helicopter there.

Critical care cases from the Lion’s Head, Markdale, Meaford, Southampton and Wiarton hospitals are brought to Owen Sound, and if necessary, transferred out by Air Ambulance. Doctors talk of the golden hour after an accident or serious medical incident, and Ornge is a primary means of getting the seriously sick or injured to larger trauma centers with immediacy. You cannot make use of the golden hour with a three-hour land ambulance ride, especially if the roads are closed by a winter storm.

The airport is slated to close on December 31, 2022. In the meantime, changes have been made in how the airport is operated by the City of Owen Sound that will reduce service this winter and that put the reliability of winter airport operations in grave doubt.

City Council in Owen Sound has grown weary of being the only government body to fund the Regional Airport. I too do not believe that this is fair. I wrote a letter to the Hub recently reminding its readers that the airport was built with 80% Provincial Funds to provide a facility primarily for the use of Federal and Provincial stakeholders such as the military, OPP, MNR and Ornge. However ongoing financial support has fallen to the city. I also pointed out that it is the small aircraft owner that subsidizes the airport with fuel sales and hanger leases and not the other way around.

Jeff Becket is an Air Force veteran and has also been the contract airport manager at Billy Bishop. He told me of the following government users he has seen at the airport: Medivac; search and rescue missions by Military, Coast Guard, and OPP; search and rescue training flights; rabies and gypsy moth control flights and emergency planning for wild fire control by MNR; fixed wing and rotary wing support for 4th Canadian Division Training Center in Meaford; prisoner transfer by RCMP aircraft and as a regional access point in the event of a mass casualty event in emergency planning scenarios.

The city has been taking carefully managed steps over the last 5 years to make conditions favourable to closing the airport. These include putting the price of hanger leases up from $0.45 per square foot, to $1.56 for new development. As a benchmark, Stratford at the time charged $0.25. The hanger developments that were planned for Owen Sound were immediately cancelled and no new ones have been proposed since. The latest nail in the coffin of the airport has been a $35 landing fee, the only airport that I know of in North America to charge landing fees for small aircraft.

The one bright spot has been Owen Sound Flight Services. They are the largest purchaser of fuel, and rent the basement of the terminal, providing approximately $50,000 in revenue to the airport. They are only still flying because flight training has been granted immunity from the landing fee so as not to be seen to drive them out of business. However, they are charged $35 for every sight seeing flight and charter. This is a financial burden a small low margin company cannot afford.

Owen Sound Billy Bishop Regional Airport is being boycotted, and air traffic has all but stopped at the airport. The City Manager has admitted that the landing fees are not bringing in revenue, but there is no discussion of removing them. They are having the desired effect. The airport is dying.

The airport has always been managed by a contractor, and the city just awarded a new contract. Buried in the wording by city staff are two fundamental changes to how the airport is managed. They involve snow removal/grass cutting and marketing.The contract airport manager is no longer providing snow removal labour, as the city has taken that over. I am not sure that the City Councillors were even aware of that before voting on the new contract or were aware of what it will mean. I am sure that most councillors voted the recommendations provided by the city staff, and did not read and understand clause 1.5 from page 18 of RFP-21-050. It states: “The City will remove snow from the runways, taxiways, apron, parking lots and entrance roadways as required based on the City’s winter priority system, and treat the airport as a class 6 roadway.”

This is the lowest classification, defined as befitting a dead-end cul-de-sac. For the last 30 winters, the airport manager cleared the snow, 24-7. If the air ambulance called that they were coming for fuel in a winter storm, often as not the airport manager answered the radio from the plow truck, and as they were on their way to the fuel pumps, they were clearing the snow as they went. If there was an after- hours callout for fuel the manager would have the apron plowed before Ornge arrived.

Although it is not defined in the new contract, I guess that this winter the airport manager will call the afterhours number at the works department, and after all the roads are plowed in Owen Sound and they get to Class 6 priorities, the city will send a city employee out to plow. Ornge cannot just come back Thursday when the work is done.

In the past it was the contract airport manager who plowed snow and cut grass. The new contract will see the airport manager, who must be there anyway, watch from their air-conditioned office while city staff spend hundreds of unbudgeted hours cutting grass and plowing snow. Wait, what?

Grass cutting is actually a safety priority at an airport and not cosmetic as explained to me by the owner/chief pilot Dave Kalistchuk. “Already this summer we have seen the grass grow 3 or 4 times longer than would have been acceptable under previous management. The risk is that birds can nest in the long grass and create a hazard to aircraft on approach. When the grass is kept short, wildlife moves away from the runway to the perimeter and is far less hazardous. Airport managers know this, they go to school for this, city officials do not.” He goes on to say:

“I am very concerned with winter operations. Plowing snow at an airport is not like a city street as there is delicate infrastructure sometimes inches from the plow blade. If runway lights are struck we are talking about expense and time and potentially runway closures. If a snow bank is too close or too high, an aircraft wing can strike it causing serious damage and injury. These plow operators also have to understand that you can't just bring a salty truck off the road as salt is extremely corrosive to aircraft and can lead to structural failure. “ In fact it is against the law in Canada to spread salt on the air-side of an aerodrome, if you mean to or not.

“The city has further declared that they will treat the airport as a Class 6 snow clearing area, which means we are basically last on the list of places to be ploughed. When snow clearing was under the airport manager’s operation, snow clearing at the airport was priority 1. You can see a great example of this on our Facebook page where the manager was out in a blizzard clearing snow for a medevac flight that could not land at the hospital, but did make it in and out of the Owen Sound Airport. Over the years, thanks to these efforts, lives are saved.

“What will happen to those medevac flights when the runway is closed for days at a time because of snow clearing delays? What will happen to the businesses on the field? How will the local maintenance engineer survive when none of his clients can land at the airport for aircraft maintenance? How will the flight school survive when the airport is closed half the time? For the last year, I have been working on the application to the Private Career Colleges of Ontario to once again offer Commercial Pilot Flight Training here in Owen Sound so we can train pilots right up to credentials needed to get an airline job.

I'm sad to report that those efforts are now on hold due to the uncertainty of this airport and most notably, the dire situation looming for this winter. Those students would have kept us busy during the winter months when most recreational pilots take time off, but career driven students continue flying. We were moving forward, now we're moving backward. I'm really not sure how we will afford to keep
staff on payroll.”

The other change is that the new airport manager becomes responsible for marketing the airport.

Clause 2.16 states: ‘The contractor is responsible for marketing and developing commercial, industrial and business use of
the Airport … with the intention of increasing the revenues from user fees, fuel sales and hanger leases.’

That must be akin to writing the marketing plan for the return trip of the Titanic. The city has imposed a hanger lease rate that is 6 X the price that Stratford charges, and the landing fees have resulted in aircraft based at the Owen Sound airport being sold. The airport is being actively boycotted by pilots who are not willing pay an additional $35.00 fee to land to buy fuel.

So where do the ratepayers of Grey County and the Municipality of Meaford come in to save the airport so it can continue to support the air ambulance? By letting your councillors know that you think they shouldfind a way to help support it. They can’t do it without your public support.

The Meaford Deputy Mayor, Shirley Keaveney, sent an email to the ad hoc committee that is trying to save the airport. It states:
“At our last Council meeting I asked the question…..What is our role in the decision of Owen Sound to possibly sell this facility? The response from our Clerk, Matt Smith is that Owen Sound owns this airport.

“The business is in the Municipality of Meaford as we know so the tax levy comes to us. Mr. Smith suggests that our council has no ability to influence this discussion.’

Two takeaways. All of the taxes from the Airport come to the Municipality of Meaford, yet they do not financially support the airport for the services it provides to its ratepayers. The staff of the Municipality of Meaford does not think their council can influence the discussion to sell or close the airport. I submit that they sure could influence the discussion if they sent the taxes back to Owen Sound, asked for an airport advisory committee to be set up and had a seat on it.

The Meaford Deputy Mayor is also a Grey County Councillor. In her email she reported: ‘Grey County Council has engaged recently in conversation regarding our three airports. A report was presented with recommendations for investment and expansions to the Wiarton Airport. At that time members of county council felt that it wasn`t a fair approach to support one local airport financially over another.
Further discussions will happen at this level.’

What is being missed here is the critical role that the Billy Bishop Regional Airport serves in the timely support of the air ambulance service to the County. It is located 5 minutes from the Regional Health Center and for 30 years Ornge has needed that airport every 9 days to complete a lifesaving mission.

In further correspondence with me Councillor Keaveney wrote: "I am hopeful a new business model can be established that eases the financial burden on Owen Sound while allowing continued airport service.”

The Grey County budget is approximately 3 times the budget of Owen Sound. The City Council has clearly communicated that they are unwilling to continue to finance the airport by themselves. The present city manager has stated that he will support the airport at the $105,000 to $110,000 yearly budget requirement. The difference can be made up by Grey County providing funding of $125,000 per
year, equivalent to 0.6% (about half of one percent) of the county’s $20 million transportation budget.

I am confident, having chaired the last Airport Advisory Committee, that re-establishing such a committee of stakeholders can successfully lower the cost of operation if rates and fees are appropriate to attract rather than drive off users of the airport. Stakeholders include the City of Owen Sound, Municipality of Meaford, Grey County, DND Base Meaford, the Flight School, Hanger Owners and others.

So, if you believe that you or a loved one may ever need to take a life saving ride in the Ornge helicopter, please contact your local councillor and make your feelings known. The airport is dying and it needs your life saving support.

Sincerely,

Jim Farmer