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Fly
in Style to a Fantasy Isle
by
Jerry W. Bird....................................................
 Flight-seeing
is a coined word that we first heard from
Mark
Duncan,
Director General of Transport Canada Pacific
Operations, who helped
us
create
and launch Canada's first and only "Air Highways
Supermap." That one word typifies a peak attraction
of British Columbia's Coast, Inside Passage and
Rockies. For Pacific Spirit Airlines, flight-seeing
is an everyday occurrence; the airline's area of
focus being the Gulf Islands. This
archipelago's first European discoverers were the
Spaniards, accounting for romantic place names like
Ganges, Galiano and Juan de Fuca. But even today,
the Gulf Islands wonders are still undiscovered by
most BC travelers, let alone our US and Asia
Pacific visitors.
 Pacific
Spirit soars 3 times daily from Vancouver
International Airport's South Terminal to the Gulf
Islands -- offering the most coverage of the area.
According to Manager Chris
Holmes, it's a flexible
schedule, stopping at any island in the group, with
optional landings at Pat Bay, next to Victoria
airport. And Pacific Spirit does charters
too.
For visitors, just imagine
skimming over the Coast Mountains beyond Vancouver,
or spinning off to Tofino, Harrison Lake, Sunshine
Coast, or any of 101 scenic trips within your
reach. You can almost reach out and touch the snow
capped peaks. And like the man says on TV, "the
price is right" &emdash; $60 for a scheduled flight
Vancouver to Salt Spring Island for example.
Pacific Spirit's fleet of Cessna aircraft will soon
be joined by a new Beaver, Canada's most famous
float plane. For times and fares, call Pacific
Spirit at 1-800-665-2359, or fax the same number
day or night.
 Fly
to Masset in Canada's Galapagos:
Masset,
Queen Charlotte Islands, BC: Give Grant Paulson a
stretch
of ocean to land on any day, even when the winds
are blowing
across the runway at some of Northern BC's more
challenging airports. "It's a whole lot easier to
bring your plane down on the ocean, providing the
waves aren't too high," says Paulson, who flies a
pontoon equipped Helio-Courier H295. Paulson is
looking forward to scouting out the landing
opportunities around Masset on the northern tip of
the Queen Charlotte Islands after taking advantage
of a unique real estate opportunity at the former
military base (Continued).
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