A shining silver star straight out of the history books touched down at Villeneuve Airport Friday in the form of a vintage Boeing 737 – and it will probably stay there for the rest of its days.
St. Albert pilots Mike Wilson and Tim Seehagel took off from the Edmonton City Centre airport at about 2 p.m. Friday in a 1972 Pacific Western Airlines Boeing 737-200, landing some 12 minutes later at Villeneuve.
The roughly 30 metre long, 31,000 kilogram behemoth was the largest plane still on site at the City Centre museum, and it had to be moved to its new home at Villeneuve before the City Centre Airport closed on Saturday.
The ticking clock
The 737 was the big question mark hovering over the new Alberta Flying Heritage Museum at Villeneuve Airport, which was announced Nov. 17. While the rest of the City Centre museum's collection is being trucked over, the $1.5 million Boeing was too expensive to haul, and staffers weren't sure if they'd get permission to fly it. If they hadn't, they would have had to scrap it.
On Nov. 2, with just nine days until the closing of the City Centre Airport, Transport Canada said the plane could fly if it passed a full inspection.
"Imagine a safety inspection like a car," said Tom Hinderks, executive director of the Alberta Aviation Museum Association, except the car is 30 by 30 by 13 metres, has thousands of systems, and hasn't been driven in eight years (the plane last flew in 2005).
"Imagine 15 guys going flat out for three days, 12 to 14 hours (a day), in order to meet all the requirements," Hinderks said.
Fortunately, museum staff have kept the plane in excellent condition since it touched down in 2005, Hinderks said.
"It's actually in even better shape than our guys expected."
After fixing a problem with an O-ring Friday morning, staff had the plane ready to fly at about 10 a.m., Hinderks said. That led to another long list of checks before Wilson and Seehagel were cleared for takeoff.
Flying history
Wilson and Seehagel fly 737s in their day jobs with Canadian North Airlines, and say they both trained on this particular plane.
Wilson said he and Seehagel have a lot of history at the City Centre Airport, having met each other and their future wives there through the Edmonton Flying Club.
Seehagel said he remembers watching the 737s roar off the tarmac there when he was first learning to fly and thinking, "That's got to be the coolest job in the world."
For Mike and I to be able to fly them is great, and to do this flight is real special," he said.
Seehagel took the stick for the takeoff.
"The airplane really jumped into the air because we had full power and an empty airplane," he said. "It launched off like the first day it was certified to fly."
It was probably the shortest flight of his career.
"It was straight up to Costco and turn left," he quipped.
Seehagel then turned the controls over to Wilson for the landing.
Its running lights and aluminium frame sparkling in the setting sun, the 737 swooped down upon the east-west runway in near silence, the roar of its twin Pratt & Whitney jets becoming more obvious as it closed in on the small crowd near the control tower.
"It's a thing of beauty," said local resident Leonard Riczu, who had toured the 737 when it was at City Centre. "It's really cool to see this old plane flying in here."
Wilson did a flyby of the tower to salute its operators, zipping past just 20 to 50 metres from the ground, before circling around for a perfect three-point landing – one much smoother than the last two he did, he joked.
After taxiing to the end of the runway, Wilson hung a right off into a field, gunned it up a small slope and parked the plane. A huge green tractor towed it into its near-final position just off Highway 633.
The 737 – likely the largest plane ever to land at Villeneuve Airport – will soon have about six buildings around it as construction of the museum begins, Hinderks said.
"This isn't the end of the airplane's life," he added, as it still has decades of work left to do as a museum piece.
But this was certainly the plane's last flight.
"St. Albert, Sturgeon County? You now have an aviation museum, because they are never going to let us move (this plane) again!"
