Ready for the skies of Oshawa
Goodyear blimp makes its home in Oshawa
The most famous family of blimps and airships in the world, Goodyear’s Wingfoot Two is currently being stationed at Oshawa Airport. The airship will be taking to the skies of Oshawa and beyond, capturing aerial shots for the Toronto Blue Jays and the finals of the World Cup of Hockey.
By Graeme McNaughton/The Oshawa Express
Residents may have noticed a familiar blue and gold figure inching its way across the Oshawa skyline over the weekend – and they will likely see more of it throughout the week.
Oshawa’s airport is the base of operations for one of the famed Goodyear blimps, making their first stop in the Toronto area in nearly a decade. The airship’s arrival over the weekend capped off a two-day journey that saw it travel from its home base in Akron, Ohio.
Jerry Hissem, one of the airship’s pilots, says this airship – dubbed Wingfoot Two – has a top speed of just over 110 km/h, although it usually cruises between 50 and 65 km/h. It will need that speed to make its way to Toronto, where it will be capturing aerial shots for sports events such as the finals of the World Cup of Hockey and of the Toronto Blue Jays. There are also plans to capture images of the Toronto skyline.
Brandon Challman, the operations manager for the airship’s ground crew, was keeping an eye on things while Wingfoot Two was tethered at the Oshawa Airport. Plans to take the airship for a ride on Monday were aborted due to poor weather conditions.
And journeys such as these are no easy feat, as can be attested by James Kosmos, another of the airship’s pilots that made the trip with Wingfoot Two north of the border.
“It’s not like a plane, where everything can be proceduralized. You can’t do that in a blimp,” Kosmos tells The Oshawa Express.
“It’s like flying a sailboat in 3-D.”
Kosmos, who has been with Goodyear for about six years, says blimp pilots have to take a lot more factors into account and make various decisions – no pun intended – on the fly.
Because the lighter-than-air helium that causes the blimp to stay airbourne is so susceptible to temperature changes, pilots need to make adjustments constantly and be ready to improvise.
In fact, the learning curve on flying a blimp is so difficult, Kosmos says it takes him between six months to a year to train a commercial pilot how to fly one.
“With an airplane, you have a checklist, where as here you have to have a feeling for everything going on,” he says. “You have to guess how much the helium weighs.”
Unlike regular planes, the airship is not able to fly in as many types of weather, which is why some rainfall kept Wingfoot Two tethered when The Oshawa Express visited the airport.
However, despite the weather delays and steep learning curve of flying such an airship, Hissem says this job provides plenty of great memories for him and the crew.
“Flying the blimp is real fun, it’s kind of like barnstorming, where you go into a town and the thing gets a lot of attention. Basically, the best part of the job is the people that I get to meet,” he says.
“I really like meeting the people across the country, you get to chat with ‘em, get to know different areas, different cities. There’s a lot of places I wouldn’t go in my life if I didn’t have the blimp to go with me.”