John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport

I just called Glanford Aviation (Shell), the only FBO that appears to offer 100LL, and they charge a $25 facility fee for a single-engine piston plane (not waived with a fill-up) on top of the airport's $18.50 minimum landing fee. That means that you're out $43.50 + HST = $48.72 the second your wheels hit the Shell apron, before you even start to put fuel in your tank. Would you fill up your car at a gas station that charged almost $50 to just to enter their lot and park in front of the pump?

Even big-city airports are usually much cheaper than this (Pearson is, of course, an exception). I don't know what the city of Hamilton (and Shell) are thinking, except that they want to scare as many visitors as possible away from Hamilton, and make sure no one spends any money in the local economy.

I don't know whether it is still there, but Chipmunk #035 was once in the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum collection. It was the first aircraft I flew, and the one in which I flew my first solo. And it still looked to be in pretty good shape when I saw it there decades later, all shiny with the faint scent of nervous pilot sweat in the leathery cockpit!

Once when I was in the air over CYTZ, the Lancaster from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum flew 500 feet under me: beautiful plane. Someone told me that it's one of only two airworthy Lancs left in the world