Air Nunavut adds speed to its line-up

ALISON BLACKDUCK

IQALUIT — Air Nunavut is betting that Nunavummiut have a need for speed.

That’s why the Iqaluit-based charter airline recently added a 1979 Dassault Falcon 10 to its fleet, making it the owner of the first small charter jet operating out of Nunavut’s capital.

“We debated what was the logical step [for our company],” Air Nunavut president Jeff Mahoney explained. “We asked what we could we do for our customers, and decided that if we look after our customers, that looks after us by default.”

Looking after Air Nunavut customers — like as employees of the Nunavut government and land-claim organizations, and medical patients — means reducing their travel time, Mahoney said.

“For people who travel a lot, travel becomes a grind,” he said last Sunday morning while preparing to fly the Falcon 10 down to Toronto for avionics work and an equipment upgrade.

Part of the planned upgrade will be enabling the jet’s communications equipment to receive and transmit radio frequencies used for air travel in Europe. This will allow Air Nunavut to expand its service to Greenlandic customers who must travel occasionally to Denmark.

“Our clients work hard and they have to be in two places at once. Now, we can get them there in short order.”

— Jeff Mahoney, president,

Air Nunavut

“Getting to the airport, checking in, going through security. . . waiting an hour after you arrive to get your baggage — the Falcon will streamline those travails,” Mahoney said.

Air Nunavut brought the jet to Iqaluit May 1. It was purchased from an anonymous “corporate entity in Idaho,” but Mahoney says the decision to buy the Falcon 10 was made last November.

Given that the average cost of a pre-owned Falcon 10 is more than $3 million, the decision was not made lightly.

“Our clients work hard and they have to be in two places at once,” Mahoney said. “Now, we can get them there in short order.”

And twice as fast.

The zippy eight-seater jet travels at almost double the speed of Air Nunavut’s King Air — 880 kilometres per hour, rather than 464 kilometres per hour. That means, weather permitting, it can travel from Iqaluit to Cambridge Bay in less than two-and-a-half hours, and to Yellowknife in less than three.

Chartering the Falcon 10 isn’t cheap: Air Nunavut charges a rate of $5 per mile, plus about $600 per hour in fuel costs. For a flight from Iqaluit to Cambridge Bay, that comes to around $12,000.

The Falcon 10’s speed is as impressive as its pedigree.

“The Dassault Falcon is really a whole family of aircraft,” Rénald Fortier explained in a telephone interview from his home in Ottawa.

Fortier is a senior researcher and curator at Canada’s world-renowned National Aviation Museum.

“The family has been in production for quite a while – there’s even a Falcon with three engines.”

For Fortier, the length of time the Falcon family has been produced by France’s Dassault Aviation is a testament to its quality: “It’s a nice aircraft and it’s well-built.”

Designed as a series of business jets, the Falcon family earned its wings on May 4, 1963.

Ten years later, 14 Falcon jets, loaded with packages, took off from Memphis International Airport in Tennessee, thereby beginning what would eventually become the world’s largest courier company — Federal Express.

But Fortier is quick to point out that business jets like the Falcon 10 don’t only serve business interests.

“The governments of Quebec and Canada use business jets to medevac people out of remote places like the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” Fortier said.

That observation is echoed by Mahoney, who admits that “the public might feel [the Falcon 10] is an extravagant perk” without acknowledging that it’s a way to get more work done, or get patients in need of emergency medical treatment closer to appropriate care.

While Air Nunavut’s Falcon is the first charter jet operating out of Iqaluit, it’s the second in Nunavut.

Adlair Aviation in Cambridge Bay operates a Lear 25, which it uses to provide medevac services for patients in the Kitikmeot region.