Building success:
IAMAW members and Canada’s aerospace industry

by Gérald Tremblay

Yves Ouellet applies a final paint touch to a Challenger 300 business jet.

More than 45,000 Canadians, including 15,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), were employed in the original Avro CF-105 Arrow jet interceptor program when it was cancelled in 1959. We were proud to have been involved then and we are proud now to have taken part in the building of a life-size reproduction of the Arrow RL 203, the new centre-piece of the Toronto Aerospace Museum.

The Arrow replica dominates the traffic area in front of the hangar, just as its predecessor did half a century ago. This replica is an exact reproduction to scale of the supersonic fighter (some 80 feet long, 21 feet high and 50 feet wide). Although the replica’s external measurements are exact down to the last of its 100,000 rivets, it has no engine and weighs a little more than 7,000 pounds (compared to the original’s 49,000).

It took highly specialized industry workers more than 28 months to build the first Arrow prototype in the ’50s. With the help of 140 Toronto Aerospace Museum volunteers, it took eight years to build this replica — all the Arrow prototypes, jigs and working drawings were destroyed in 1959 by federal government order. Of the volunteers, Peter Allnutt, a retired IAMAW worker (now 73), was the only one who had worked on the original and had experience assembling aircraft.

Jobs – Innovation – Development

The Arrow was built from the ground up, like most of the technology used in its construction. It saw the light of day because the Canadian Air Force was unable to find a jet interceptor anywhere in the world able to meet its requirements for defence against a perceived Soviet bomber threat. The Canadian Air Force thus turned to A.V. Roe Canada, an aircraft manufacturer that had developed and built the Jetliner, the first jet in North America (nine years before the launch of the Boeing 707 in the US), and the CF-100, the first jet fighter to be developed and built in Canada. (The CF-100 remained in service for more than 30 years.) The Arrow was to represent the next stage in this evolution.

Avro brought together the best scientific minds and aviation specialists in the world to build it. At its height in 1959, Avro and its sister company Orenda Engines Ltd. employed more than 15,000 IAMAW members; Avro was the third-largest commercial enterprise in the country and more than 45,000 Canadians worked directly or indirectly on the Arrow project. The Arrow was years ahead of its time. Nothing in the world came close to it technologically and it was a Canadian creation.

Test results were impressive: the Arrow prototype reached a speed of Mach 1.96. In addition, innovative engine designs promised to establish new world speed records. The project never reached fruition, however, because the Diefenbaker government cancelled it on February 20, 1959, citing excessive costs and that a jet interceptor was no longer necessary. In one afternoon, 45,000 Canadian workers — including 15,000 IAMAW union members — lost their jobs. A dream and a source of national pride were also ended, along with Canada’s status as a world leader in aviation. Leading edge technology The original Arrow RL 203 reached a recorded speed of Mach 1.7 several times during its 13.5 hours of test flights.

A full-size exact replica of the Avro Arrow RL-203 was unveiled at the Toronto Aerospace Museum in October 2006. The supersonic jet fighter represented the pinnacle of Canadian aviation technological achievement in the 1950s.

It was the only Arrow to carry a passenger on board. Spud Potocki accompanied Red Darrah in the weapons officer’s seat to test the electric flight-control system, which was revolutionary at the time. This system used electronic signals transmitted by wire instead of rods and cables to link the pilot controls to the aircraft’s actuators.

The Arrow was technologically 10 or 15 years ahead of the Americans. The plane and its engine were designed at the same time with no prototype… coming straight off the assembly line. The 70-minute test flight conducted on February 19, 1959 marked the 65th test flight in the program, and the 12th and final flight of the RL 203.

Two aerospace workers prepare to join the cockpit to the fuselage of a Challenger 300.

Imagine how large Canada’s aerospace industry might be today if the federal government had not cancelled the Avro Arrow program. It is very possible that Canada might have benefited from exceptional technological breakthroughs resulting from the program and become a world leader in the defence and aerospace fields. Opportunities not to be missed In spite of that lamented loss 50 years ago, today Canada’s civil, military and business aviation sectors are all growing.

In 2007, excluding China and the former USSR countries, total worldwide sales were in the order of 330 billion dollars US. The US aerospace industry alone generated 175 billion dollars US in sales and directly employed 635,000 people of a total of 1.3 million in the industry in the world.

Roger Roussy fixes the landing gear on a Challenger 300.

Globally, air transport has always grown faster than the economy. The current situation is no exception.

In 2005, according to figures compiled by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the total number of passengers increased by 7.6%, exceeding the 2 billion mark for the first time. IATA estimates that world demand will continue to increase and could grow 5% per year over the next 15 years, i.e. in 15 years, the number of passengers will be double: 4 billion a year.

Canada obviously has not missed either this tremendous growth or the increasing global competition. Canadian companies compete with strong aerospace companies in the US, the UK, France and, to a lesser degree, Germany, Italy and Japan. As well, over the past 10 years, emerging countries have been carving out their own niches. Brazil‘s Embraer is a great rival of Bombardier in regional transport aircraft and soon in business aircraft, and more recently, companies in Russia, China and Japan have begun manufacturing entire aircraft. In North America, Mexico is also building an aerospace industry.

Maurice Bossé (right) helps a co-worker install the
windshield on a Challenger 300.

In all those countries, governments support aerospace manufacturers financially in research and development for new aircraft and components. Aerospace research investment projects are 60% government-funded in the US, 50% in Europe and up to 30% in Canada. The Canadian aerospace industry, however, has no domestic market it can count on in which to launch a product. In addition, it targets the same buyers as its competitors in the US, France, England, Germany, Brazil, and soon Russia and Asia too.

Learning from our mistakes

On February 20, 2009, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the saddest moment in Canada’s aerospace. We must recognize our mistakes, learn from them and never repeat them. This industry is largely concentrated in the Montreal metropolitan area where, within a radius of 80 km, all the components for building aircraft can be found. Montreal ranks third in the world in the aerospace industry, just behind Seattle in the United States and Toulouse in France.

More than ever, in order to grow and survive in this very competitive sector, Canadian aerospace companies need increased government support for research and development that will allow them to innovate as before with the Avro Arrow program.

The IAMAW believes that the Canadian government must continue to support its aerospace industry, which exports almost 80% of its production and which provides approximately 80,000 high-tech jobs, of which more than half are in Quebec. If the industry were supported at the same level it is in other countries, we believe that the Canadian aerospace industry would rise much higher on the world stage.

This article by Gérald Tremblay was published in the Summer 2008: Aerospace in Canada issue of AviNation, the quarterly magazine for members of the Canadian Aviation Maintenance Council (www.camc.ca).

Author Gérald Tremblay is a Grand Lodge representative of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW). His primary responsibility in the union is to coordinate labour contract negotiations in the aerospace sector. He successfully helped workers at Messier-Dowty and Héroux-Devtek on Montreal’s north shore to join the IAMAW. He is the union co-president of CAMAQ (Comité sectoriel de la main d’œuvre aérospatiale au Québec) and he is on the Board of Directors of the Montréal Aerospace Trade School (ÉMAM).

The IAMAW is the largest aerospace and air transport union in the world. It represents more than 700,000 workers in North America, including 50,000 in Canada; of these, more than 230,000 work in the aerospace and air transport industry, including 25,000 in Canada.

Our members are proud of the working conditions negotiated by the IAMAW in such companies as Bombardier Aerospace, Rolls-Royce Canada, Air Canada, Air Transat, L3 COM, Boeing, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Aircraft, United Technologies (Pratt & Whitney), Cessna (HR Textron), Magellan Aerospace, Messier-Dowty and Avcorp Industries.

For more information or to join the IAMAW: www.iamaw.ca or www.aimta.ca.
E-mail: info@iamaw.ca