floats in Canada

[jay mcbride]

I am currently in Toronto and nearly done PPL
soon to star commercial. Wondering how to go about getting float rating and job in BC.Ie should I do my rating here or BC,how many hours does a employer want,What are the working hours and coditions like???
any helpful hints and tips would be great

[Silkman]

Jay
Give Kenn Borek a call in YYC. I was recently down in the Maldives and was talking to some of the guys from Boreks who are there for the Maldivian summer(our winter).They have 15 twin otters on floats at Male, they then go back to Canada for the summer.I believe they have upwards of 60 aircraft so guess they may have a school also.

[Dockjock]

Negative. And Borek probably gets in the range of 10+ resumes per day from low-timers looking to get on. Twin Otter PPC a must for getting hired there...

As for float schools, you will need 50 hrs on floats with 20+ on type C180 or better. Check out these well known schools:

Air Hart (Kelowna, BC) www.air-hart.com (http://www.air-hart.com)
30,000 Island Air (Parry Sound, ON) www.islandair.ca (http://www.islandair.ca)
Sudbury Aviation (Sudbury, ON)

All are good, but I would recommend doing the flying on a C180 as that is what you will be flying when you get hired, most likely. Also, though not from personal experience, I've heard that Nelson Mountain Air in Nelson, BC is a definite place to AVOID. Good luck!

[low n' slow]

Hey Jay!
My advice to you is that if you're going to get certified on floats, make shure you fly regularly and often. Build routines that are safe and fly together with experienced pilots. Especially if it is calm on the lake on which you are operating from and to, we've had many accidents here in sweden involving calm conditions.
And also avoid a/c that are too weak, such as the C172, we had one of these fitted with floats, and it never got airborne!
Be careful out there and fly safely!/lns