During the peak summer flight training period, many of our western members faced a fuel shortage due to a production issue at the Imperial Oil Strathcona facility. Imperial tries to build up an inventory for general aviation and flight training in anticipation of the better weather and extended hours available during the summer. However, a temporary operational issue reduced the inventory and many western based schools were forced to ration what they had on hand, and/or buy fuel from distributors in the USA.
At ATAC, we surveyed members to understand the scope of the issue and then sourced an alternate distributor in addition to pushing Imperial for some answers and a resolution. Unfortunately, transportation costs and timing of deliveries was not always viable and some schools restricted activities to ration fuel if they could not obtain an alternate supply.
We have put this issue on the conference agenda to discuss the impact and develop some ideas to mitigate a shortage in the future.
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