GOOSE IS LOOSE ON THE EXPRESS

Robert Blais, Kal (Maverick) Sidhu and Gerry Visser took me for a neat ride to Victoria and back on Tuesday aboard Island Express Air. Fun time and fast.


Adele and Dave Nicholson figured a visit to Vancouver Island and Victoria’s Royal BC Museum would be a novel way to spend a Tuesday. Eighteen minutes after sharing that info at Abbotsford International Airport, the mom-and-son tourist team was doing exactly that, minus all the usual ferry hassles.
Little did they know their initial experience aboard Island Express Air would include a face-to-face chat with affable co-owner, Gerry Visser, and comical commentary from nervous wingmen “Goose” and “Maverick.”
Allow me to explain a bit.
Sales rep Kal Sidhu, one of the punctual coffee guzzlers in our newspaper’s hardest working department (wink, wink), popped his head into my office on Monday asking if I’d like to go for a “plane ride.”
Considering your scribe had spent the past 48 hours in a butt-numbing chair listening to country musicians croon about cheating hearts and runaway dogs at Rockin’ River Music Fest in Mission, sitting some more in tight quarters initially sounded as fun as taking an extended vacation with your Star Trek-obsessed in-laws.
However, Sidhu sold me on the idea of getting out of the stuffy office and meeting some passionate folks who plan to change the way we travel in and out of this city.
Twenty minutes later I receive a short text message, sent from a coffee shop where Sidhu was working harder than ever: “See you at 6:30 a.m. Ice Man.”
We had a problem. First of all, pal Kal had neglected to mention the rooster-ish departure time. And how does a guy who’s afraid to fly get to be Ice Man? So, we decided on Top Gun nicknames the way “real men” make decisions in this day and age – we played Rock, Scissors, Paper.
Visser, who will celebrate the big 5-0 in February with the birth of another child, is stoked on this morning as he loads the Nicholsons on his newer style twin-engine Piper Navajo that seats six passengers and two pilots. He explains this plane is equipped with the “very latest in GPS” navigation, including live satellite XM weather downloads. His firm is also one of the
first smaller carriers to invest in this new Avionics Technology.
The trip to Victoria takes 18 minutes. From 2,000 feet on a clear morning you can see Bellingham, White Rock, Vancouver, Birch Bay and all the BMWs on the toll-free Sea-to-Sky Highway. You can see fishing boats, whales and slow-moving ferries, all while soaring 320 kilometres per hour with nary a roadblock.
“It’s the greatest thing to come to work and see this view every single day. The novelty never wears off,” says Visser, who has been flying commercially since 1996.
Best known as the long-time owner of Gerry’s Automotive in Matsqui Village, Visser is betting his airline will literally take off in the months ahead. He sees the main clientele as being the “laptop crowd,” who understand that a $165 roundtrip from Abbotsford to Victoria is money well spent and time well saved.
Island Express Air also flies to Nanaimo and Pitt Meadows – and other places by request. Next year, Visser hopes to add a “milk run” from Abbotsford to Kelowna, Kamloops, Williams Lake, Quesnel and Prince George. But he and business partner Robert Blais, a chief pilot in the front seat on this flight, are being careful to not overextend budgets.
They offer charter service and hope to make golfing or skiing getaways a lot more attractive out of Abbotsford. For now, people can place a flight request online – www.islandexpressair.com – and someone will call them back within two hours to confirm the arrangements.
The Nicholsons, by the way, were back home in time for dinner. Goose wrote this column over lunch and Maverick went home after that 39-minute exercise, no doubt exhausted after another long, hard day at work!