Red River College aviation program lands donation of retired Coast Guard chopper

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/03/2019 (2648 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The aviation program at Red River College has relied on donations for nearly its entire fleet of a dozen aircraft.

It chalked up another one on Thursday when the Stevenson Aviation Campus was gifted a former Canadian Coast Guard chopper – a Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm BO10510.

The federal government is bestowing 10 of the helicopters to campuses across the country. The models have been retired and replaced in the government’s fleet renewal plan with 15 light-lift Bell 429s and seven medium-lift Bell 412 EPIs.

“If we didn’t have donations like this, the federal government this time, other times from the industry, we couldn’t run a program like this,” said Paul Vogt, Red River College president.

“The investment that would be required to give students the experience of actually working on a real aircraft wouldn’t be possible.”

Even equipment to work on the aircraft is donated to the campus, he said.

“It really does speak to the relationships it takes to train the next generation of aviation engineers,” Vogt said.

The model of the coast guard chopper sells on the aviation sector’s version of Kijiji for close to $500,000 US if serviceable. However, these helicopters are not ready for flight. To remove liability, the federal government had them decertified.

“For three decades, these helicopters were the workhorses of the (coast guard) fleet,” said MP Doug Eyolfson (Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley), filling in for Fisheries, Oceans and Coast Guard Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

But the helicopters would need significant investment to fly again. “For the government agency, it’s a great opportunity to provide something useful to the community,” he said.

It’s the fourth helicopter in the fleet at Hubert Kleysen Hangar on the Stevenson Campus. For example, one of its choppers is a “Huey” (Bell UH-1 Iroquois), a type used in the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

The aircraft donated by the coast guard was in use for 30 years. “That’s not old for aviation,” said aviation instructor, Jonathan Epp. “A lot of airplanes still flying were built in the 1970s and 80s.”

Epp said the campus will get 10 to 20 years worth of use out of the latest addition to its fleet.

Students train by taking apart and putting back together various sections of the chopper. Of special interest with the latest addition is the rotor that rotates the propeller and the engine, which are unique to the flying machines already on campus.

About 400 students are in training at Stevenson Campus each year. There is a waiting list of up to a year to gain admittance, Epp said.

To become an aircraft maintenance engineer is a four-year course with 17 months in the classroom and two-and-a-half years of on-the-job training. From 80 to 90 per cent of graduates find employment.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca