- The Reno Air Racing Association has announced the new home of the National Championship Air Races, and it is Roswell, New Mexico. The first races will take place in September 2025. The host airport will be Roswell Air Center (KROW). It counts over 5,000 acres under its control and is currently also used as an aircraft ‘boneyard’ for the storage of unused aircraft. Roswell is also known for its annual UFO Festival, this year being held in July.
- WestJet announced Thursday (May 30) that it had ratified its first collective agreement with its Load Controllers, who are represented by the International Association of Machinists and Airspace Workers (IAM). “This outcome reflects our deep appreciation for our Load Controllers and is the result of great collaboration with IAM that achieved meaningful results for our employees, our airline and our guests,” said said Diederik Pen, President of WestJet Airlines The four-and-a-half-year agreement comes into effect on July 1 of this year.
- WestJet also announced on Thursday a tentative agreement with its Encore pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA-I). “After our pilots rejected the tentative agreement presented to them last month, citing the WestJet Group’s failure to address issues of central importance to the pilot group, we are very pleased to announce we have reached a new tentative agreement with management which addresses those issues,” said Captain Carin Kenny, chief negotiator for WestJet Encore pilots.
- Parks Canada hired a helicopter and contracted with sharpshooters from the United States and New Zealand to kill off deer overpopulation on a small, nine-square-kilometre island about five km east of Victoria airport (CYYJ) and under the approach path to its Runway 27. “It’s appalling for Parks Canada to be blowing $12 million on a project that local hunters have been doing for a decade for free,” Carson Binda of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) told reporters. Eighty-four deer were culled from the island, about 80 percent of which is in private hands as part of a strata subdivision. The CTF reported that, according to access-to-information documents, local residents killed 54 deer last autumn at no cost to the taxpayer. The documents also revealed that, of the total cost, $137.000 was spent obtaining “…firearms certification for international workers to use restricted weapons.”