Staff dinner

It was the Rockcliffe Flying Club's free dinner at Friday's for staff and board members and their guests, last night. In photo-journalist mode, as Chris' guest, I brought the camera with me; actually it was Chris who took most of the pictures. Here are the dispatchers and young instructors, René, Marc, Benoit, Stéphane, Stéphane's girlfriend, Joey and Adam. With a view to including this photo in a future edition of Crosswinds, I'm trying it out here in black & white.

I'm reluctant to make any additions to my 12-page January issue, as this is now ready for printing. If I were to add any more material, it would have to fill four more pages; I have only just realised that, for ease of stapling, newsletters need to be prepared in multiples of four pages—obvious, when you think about it, but I hadn't.

Don stood up half way through the meal and told us that 2008 had been a fantastic year, the most active in recent history, with 5,200 hours of flying time on the club aircraft. "As a team, it all works!" he said, praising instructors, staff and maintenance people (chief of whom is 'Red'—in the picture—wearing an extraordinary hat last night that had belonged to his father; someone on our table commented that it made quite a statement of its own). Our achievements have been amazing, said Don, considering the weather, and as we can't possibly have such bad weather this year, we're expecting 2009 to be even better.

Simon, Chief Flying Instructor, also made a speech, telling us that 2008 had been the club's second best year for flying (2003 was the best) and the best year ever from a financial point of view, despite the fact that the management was beset by challenges: not just the weather but also a high turnover of qualified staff, resulting in a severe shortage of instructors last summer. The aviation industry's expansion has slowed down, however, RFC has fast-tracked its Class 1 instructors and we now "have depth", with sixteen instructors employed by the club, eight of whom are currently in training for a higher rating.

At this juncture Simon made a joke about how it was the instructors' job to break the club's aircraft ("...and PHV will be fixed shortly!"), saying how the 'planes are being upgraded, a couple of them acquiring GPS, a new Cessna 182 added to the fleet, and a fully VFR-certified simulator on order to replace the old one. There's even a new toy (the recently acquired tractor-trailer-snowblower) for Steve. So Simon is looking forward to continued progress using all the available new technology. Meanwhile, to nobody's surprise, the clubhouse is in urgent need of replacement, the roof falling in, animals falling in, the walls tilting, the doors sticking, with leaking pipes, frozen pipes ... Never mind; Simon promises to manage the transition to our New Facilities (when we get 'em) and this year is going to focus on developing his staff, rather than standing in for missing instructors, and be altogether more managerial.

He thanked the board of directors for their "unbelievable" amount of support.