Flight 6

This documentary short takes you on a tour of Trans-Canada Airlines’ maintenance shops in Winnipeg before taking off for a trial flight on the British-built Vickers Viscount airplane, the first propeller-turbine airliner.

This short documentary from the On the Spot series—“the National Film Board’s up-to-the-minute report of what’s happening somewhere in Canada”—invites us aboard a transpacific flight. Host Fred Davis, on his way to shoot stories in Japan and Korea, interviews the pilot, navigator and flight attendants.

This short documentary offers a reflection on the development of the North, where towns are increasingly being remade in the image of the South and bush pilots are slowly becoming obsolete.

For more background info on this film, visit the NFB.ca blog.

The NFB's 27th Oscar®-nominated film.

Director Bill Mason's short film focuses on his friend and fellow filmmaker, Blake James. In his never-ending quest for freedom, Blake pilots his own plane. This film is Mason's view of his friend as a "hobo of the skies," but it is also an adventure that beckons the viewer to come along for the ride.

This documentary tells the story of Max Ward, a former bush pilot whose company grew to become one of the major airlines in Canada. A study of entrepreneurship, the film focuses on Ward himself, depicting his distinctive style of hands-on management. Between hallway meetings, informal chats with the staff, checks on maintenance, flight preparations and in-flight conversations with vacationing customers it becomes apparent that the president's personal touch is a key element in Wardair’s success story.

For more background info on this film, visit the NFB.ca blog.

A film showing how the introduction of jet travel changed traditional ideas of space and time. The jet pilot in this film sped from northern cold to tropical heat in only a few hours. The film is a dramatic illustration of how high speed-travel shrinks the world and brings people together.

This short film takes a look at Saskatchewan’s air ambulance service, organized and operated by experienced flyers who provide speedy hospitalization and treatment to the ill and injured. Within 15 minutes of receiving a desperate phone call for help from a remote area, a plane is on its way, guided to the patient with the help of landmarks such as a coal bin or a thin column of smoke on a northern lakeshore.

In this short documentary, Fred Davis visits the De Havilland Aircraft factory in Toronto, circa 1954. He interviews two test pilots, talks to one of their wives, and goes for a ride in a new Beaver airplane.

This short documentary celebrating a half-century of flight (the first human flight, powered by the Wright brothers, took place on 17 December 1903) examines the state of aviation in the late 1950s. The question, at that juncture, no longer was whether men could fly, but how fast and how far, and the film describes and reviews the top aircraft of the day: turbo-jets, stratocruisers, and missiles that outstrip the speed of sound. Part 3 of Salute to Flight, a 3-part film series about aviation.

This short animated film is about Wop May, one of Canada's leading bush pilots in the 1920s.

This documentary from the Salute to Flight series links the barnstormers and bush pilots who explored Canada's vast hinterland with the aviation heroes who flew the Bolingbrokes, Ansons, Mosquitoes and Hurricanes of World War II.