Newsletters - Volume 55

Fire Consumes the Air Traffic Control Tower of 427 Special Operations Aviation Squadron

Article submitted by Denis Lewis, R&CS 6-2-3-5

In September 2009, a fire severely damaged the Air Traffic Control Tower offices and part of the Control Tower. After assessing the damage, 8ACCS was tasked by 1 Canadian Air Division A3 to deploy a Visual Flight Rules (VFR) trailer to maintain ATC operations at CFB Petawawa. In November 2009, 1 Canadian Air Division A6 RCS tasked ATESS/CCISF to remove all Air Traffic Management Systems (ATMS) equipment including consoles and racks and to evaluate the damage within the Control Tower. Luckily, 90% of the equipment was salvaged. In July 2010, after CE had completed building restoral work, an ATESS installation team returned to CFB Petawawa to re-install the ATMS equipment. In September 2010, DAEPM (R&CS) 6-2 successfully performed the Quality Assurance and Control of the communications installation. Representing 1 Canadian Air Division A3 AR, Maj Ron Stakes successfully performed the OT&E of the Control Tower facility. The Control Tower was granted a Provisional Operational Acceptance Certification (POAC) the following week and ATC operators have been operating from there since. On 24 March 2011, a new Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) was operationally accepted and the Control Tower facility received full OAC.

Air Traffic Control Tower in CFB Petawawa