ATC Tours Prove Popular With BCGA Members (Filling Up In Minutes)

Each year in the fall the BCGA endeavors to arrange a series of tours at local Nav Canada facilities to give our pilot members an inside look at what happens on the other side of the microphone. These tours are valuable for pilots and air traffic controllers alike as they are given an opportunity to meet face to face and learn from each other.

Because the tours are occurring at an operational facility the group size must be managed and is typically limited to 10 participants. In the past 2 years tours typically filled up over the course of a week or more. Just this past week we announced a tour at the Vancouver Area Control Centre and at the Boundary Bay Airport Control tower, both of these tours filled up in minutes (8min & 20min respectively).

The popularity of these tours speaks to the hunger that our members have to learn and experience new things and to become more informed aviators. This level of engagement is fantastic and motivates us as an Association to strive to provide more programming like this to you. 

​Stay tuned as dates will be announced when we have them for a YXX, YVR & YYJ Tower Tour. 

How do we handle Sign Ups moving forward?

At our AGM in August we made a promise to the members that any events with limited space for atendees would go out to the membership via email 24hrs before being posted on the BC General Avaiation Facebook Group.  This promise was made in order to give all members a fair shot at registering for events. That said, with these events filling up in minutes is there a more equitable way to do this? Do we want to continue with first come first serve once the email is sent out or would we rather leave registration open for a fixed period like 24/48hrs and do a draw?

One thing we have done is tried to spread around the opportunities but only having members confirmed on one ATC type tour at a time. We are open to hearing your ideas.

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