Image: Contributed
Because they’re located a little out of the way, and because their customers are mostly military and police institutions, many in the Okanagan know little or nothing about HNZ Topflight.
But the helicopter training facility is one of the oldest businesses in the Okanagan Valley, and has quietly become recognized as one of the best mountain helicopter training schools in the world.
Although it’s now slickly branded and operating out of a world-class new facility, HNZ Topflight can trace its existence back to Aug. 9, 1947, when an open-roofed helicopter flew from Yakima, Washington to the Okanagan Valley.
Image: Contributed
Back then, a company called Okanagan Air Services used the craft—which was the first commercially licensed helicopter in Canada—to spray insecticides on local fruit tree orchards.
The fledgling company would eventually become Canadian Helicopters, and in 1951 begin teaching mountain flying techniques to Canadian Air Force pilots out of its Penticton facility.
Canadian Helicopters has since grown into a national, multi-faceted company. Through it all, however, the Penticton base has remained one of the premier mountain training operations in the entire world.
“Everything started right here, and the company has turned into a worldwide company,” Dave Schwartzenberger said last month as he gazed at a framed photo of the craft on HNZ’s wall.
Schwartzenberger is a former RCMP pilot and flight instructor who now works as the general manager of HNZ Topflight.
In 2012 the Penticton team moved into its new facility, which is an impressive structure filled with cozy classrooms and sunlit common spaces.
“The whole idea was for it to be a world-class facility, and match the training we do here,” Schwartzenberger explained.
Image: Contributed
Today, a team of nine instructor/pilots train helicopter pilots from around the world, who come to the centre for advanced training in how to fly in the mountains.
The flight school runs monthly mountain flying courses, and any given course’s pupils might include pilots from the Canadian Air Force, the German Army, the Norwegian Air Force, the RCMP, U.S. government agencies, or others.
In the school’s main classroom an instructor sat in conversation with an American pilot. Lining the walls were small models of canyons, mountains, hills, and plateaus, marked with coloured arrows indicating how air moves around them.
Schwartzenberger explained that many of their students are highly experienced pilots, but that it takes a special kind of training to be able to comfortably and safely take a helicopter through mountainous terrain.
“What we teach is we teach about terrain airflow,” he said, gesturing his hands around one of the models. “Any time you put a building or a large object like a mountain in the way, that air vectors up and down and around the feature.”
You need to “know the wind” and be able to identify visual illusions to keep safe, he added, and that’s what they teach at the school.
Schwartzenberger said he’s surprised that many people in the Okanagan don’t really know what HNZ Topflight does, or in many cases that it’s even there.
Image: Conributed
That’s a shame, he says, because the school’s been bringing a steady stream of international visitors through Penticton for decades.
“It’s amazing what our clients do,” he said with a chuckle. “They do wine tastings, ATV tours, all the tourist stuff—more than I do in a year.”
Along with that, the school is also the biggest tenant at the Penticton airport.
The facility’s pilots also frequently fly on search and rescue missions and help fight forest fires. Thankfully for those pilots, Schwartzenberger said, the school has come a long way from its open-cockpit days.
All Biz Profiles Stories
