Buttonville flight statistics/Why we should be concerned

Over the years, the areas surrounding Buttonville have changed significantly. What was once empty field are now densely populated communities where we live and work, where our children go to school. There is now hardly any open field or unoccupied space for emergency landing of aircrafts. The operation of Buttonville airport, especially one where 50% of the flights are for training pilots and for pleasure use with older single-engine aircrafts, leads one to be concerned about suitability of the airport given the density of today’s development and that which is planned for the future. Simply put, if a single-engine aircraft loses power, it will crash into a home, or school, or office in our neighbourhood as there is hardly any open fields in vicinity for emergency landing. It is a known fact that a high percentage of aircraft accidents happen during airport take off or landing.

Perhaps the following statistics may help to better understand the safety issue and the need to relocate the airport away from densely populated communities. Buttonville had 163994 aircraft movements in 2008 (aircraft take offs and landings, Statcan, NAV Canada tower), averaging 449 movements a day, composed of 80001(48.8%) Itinerant and 83993 (51.2%) local traffic. If we took the summer months from May to October, the average number was 552 movements a day with similar composition, and the peak hour occurrence was about 112 and peak day traffic about 1047. Furthermore, all the statistics quoted did not take into account the circulating activities of large number of training/pleasure flights that could easily multiply the air traffic many times. The frequency of these flights with the use of older single engine planes and with hardly any open field in vicinity for emergency landing is a disaster in the making. Postponement in relocating Buttonville and accepting the increased risk of crash landings and fatalities as an inevitable part of our future is plainly irresponsible.