Time Air society hopes to take flight with museum off the ground

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on August 5, 2022.

Herald photo by Al Beeber An old Dehavilland Twin Otter, once flown by Time Air, was among the planes at the static display of the Lethbridge International Airshow. The plane is owned by the Time Air Historical Society.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

The Time Air Historical Society has lofty ambitions to establish a museum at the Lethbridge airport in the old Trans Canada Airlines hangar at the facility.

The society was at the Lethbridge International Airshow on the weekend with the remains of an old Dehavilland Canada DHC-6, better known as a Twin Otter once flown by Time Air. Its last owner was the Maldivian Air Taxi but in decades past was part of the Time Air fleet.

“You need balls and bravado” and the society is going to push forward with its plans, said Rick Barry of the society under Sunday’s scorching heat.

“What the long-term plan and goal is, we’re already talking with the City of Lethbridge, is to establish a full aviation museum here in Lethbridge,” said Barry.

The Twin Otter wasn’t the first aircraft that was supposed to arrive here; that one was a Fokker F-28 that is presently in Saskatoon. The society is waiting for runway repaving which is the only way it can get the aircraft out via flatbed trailers, said Barry.

“The aircraft is partially disassembled and it will come back to Lethbridge and be fully re-assembled,” Barry said.

A couple F-28s flew here but were usually only used as substitutes for Dash-8s, Barry said because the largest Dash was 50 seats and the F-28 had 65.

“It was a little bit big for the city,” said Barry, adding it was mostly used for inter-provincial flights or taken down to the U.S.

That Fokker F-28 is one of only three that are coming back to the Alberta. Two are privately owned, he said.

The society has already taken apart an F-28 and put it back again and are the only ones outside of Fokker who have done that, added Barry.

“With the Fokker, which is basically our gemstone, there were only 241 manufactured. Time Air ended up with approximately 34,” said Barry, whose parents Pat and Carol both worked at The Herald for many years.

Time Air was founded in 1966 by Walter “Stubb” Ross. It flew Twin Otter for a couple of decades before Ross introduced the Short 330, manufactured by the Short Brothers in Belfast, Ireland, a plane referred to as a “boxcar” because of its shape.

It was the first company in the world to fly the Short SD-330 commercially. Time Air was actually the second company in the world to order the plane. A company in the U.S. was supposed to be the world launch customer but a change in American regulations prevented that. With Stubbs No. 2 to sign on, Time Air was asked to be the world launch aircraft so all the demonstrators that flew globally on sales tours flew in Time Air colours, Barry said.

The company also flew the Dehavilland Dash-8, landing the first Series 300 aircraftt in the world in 1989. Time Air also became the world launch customer for that plane.

The plane on display at the show had manufacturer’s serial number (MSN) 21 – “it’s very low in production. It was the 1967 Dehavilland Canada demonstrator flown around the world on sales tours. After the sales tours, it became a leased aircraft and around that time, Stubb Ross was looking to up-size from his 10-seat Beech 18, his six or eight-seat Cessna 402 up to a 19-seater. And this one was available,” said Barry.

“It never flew in Time Air colours. It flew in the Dehavilland demonstrator colours with Time Air written on the side of it and that’s it. When this plane is restored, we will pay tribute to the three fully purchased Twin Otters that they had and it will be repainted in Time Air colours,” he said, adding the society is going a step further by getting the logos for every operator that used the plane.

“Kenn Borek (of Calgary) had it for quite some time and they leased it out to three different companies. The last airline to operate this was Maldavian Air Taxi…it was flown with floats on it and when the lease it was up, it was returned back to Canada. They took one look at it and the corrosion on the airframe was too high to put it back in the air so it went from Kenn Borek to Rocky Mountain Aircraft (also based in Calgary) and Rocky Mountain took all the useful parts out of it and then the stored the fuselage,” said Barry.

As the society was starting up, members began looking for the aircraft and discovered the first Twin Otter Time Air had was sitting in Springbank near Calgary, he recalled.

The society approached Rocky Mountain and an employee there happened to be a former Time Air employee who made it happened,” Barry said.

Barry became interested in aircraft when Time Air would fly over the massive grain elevators near his parents’ southside home.

Barry said he discovered the E logo on the tail of Time Air craft was a representation of the profile of the common prairie tern when the bird banks on its side.

“Most people don’t even know that.”

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