Robert & Tommy Wong

Born respectively in 1917 and 1922, Robert and Tommy Wong grew up in Nanaimo and then Vancouver, British Columbia in a family that included ten other siblings. The two brothers loved aviation from the time they were children, with Robert especially spending countless hours building model aircraft. In the Spring of 1935, he and Tommy decided to try their hands at something a little bigger: a Pietenpol Sky Scout; Robert was 17, Tommy 13.

Inspired by magazines like Modern Mechanics and Inventions, which published plans for the Sky Scout in its 1933 flying manual, the two were soon underway. This was not just a homebuilt aircraft – it was an apartment built, at least until the plane’s wings and fuselage proved too much for the family’s Chinatown home. When word of the brothers’ endeavour got around, Boeing Canada offered them factory space to finish building the plane. George Sinclair, then an engineer with the company, helped to supervise the project and later attested that Robert’s workmanship was “the best”. Completing the Scout was really a family affair. While Robert and Tommy cut wood and began assembly, their mother and her friends, and their sister stitched the fabric to the fuselage. The plan passed inspection in July 1936 and was registered as CF-BAA.

Its first test flight ended with a crash caused by a hard hard landing and a faulty gear strut. Although not what they wanted, this did not deter either brother and, despite the crash, pilots and mechanics all assured the Wongs that their solid workmanship had prevented a more serious accident. Robert and Tommy went right back to work repairing and overhauling their plane.

Determined to fly their creation, the Wong brothers soon began flying lessons. As the Vancouver Sun had reported in July 1936, Robert maintained that “If the plane flies, I’ve got to fly it, haven’t I?” Tommy replied, “Me, too.” Taking turns riding their single bicycle, the brothers headed to Foggin Flying Service, operated by Len Foggin, where they trained in a Fleet biplane, CF-ANF. Robert flew his Scout successfully in July 1937.

After attending Vancouver Technical Secondary School, Robert then headed to Parks Air College in St Louis, Illinois, where he earned a BSc in maintenance engineering – aviation theory and practice covering everything from business and sales to aerobatic and instrument training. Robert returned to Canada in 1940, after the outbreak of the Second World War, to join the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan as a flight engineer and test pilot at #7 Elementary Flying Training School in Windsor, Ontario.

Tommy had also been active flying, having logged some 200 solo hours by 1942, when he joined the RCAF as a BCATP trainee. His war took him first to # 16 Magazine Depot, then #6 Initial Training School, #9 Elementary Flying Training School, #16 Service Flying Training School, and #3 Aircrew Graduate Training School, and he was awaiting posting overseas before the war ended.

With the war over, Robert and Tommy now respectively 28 and 23 years old, set their sights on making a career of aviation. They purchased two surplus RCAF Tiger Moths and, in July 1945, began testing the waters with the goal of setting up their own flying school. The Toronto Daily Star reported that month on one part of their plan: establishing an airline in China. They started operating out of Toronto’s Barker Field, named after the VC winning airman William George Barker (CAHF, 1973). The move to China did not come to pass, but there was interest from Chinese Canadians who wanted to learn to fly. Their first graduate, John Yea, went on to fly for China’s Central Air Transport Co. before returning to Canada and working for the Saskatchewan air ambulance service.

A hangar fire later that summer, which engulfed the two Tiger Moths, ended the brothers’ stay at Barker field. Thankfully, the insurance payout came just as the Toronto Island Airport was opening. Robert and Tommy submitted a successful proposal to the Toronto Harbour Commission and were granted permission to open the Island’s first flying school. And, having applied in 1946 to the Air Transport Board, they were subsequently granted a license to operate a commercial air service. Central Airways, as their company was known, had found a home.

With Robert acting as president and general manager and Tommy taking on the role of vice-president, the Wong brothers, along with their nephew Tony, who joined the team in 1949, began to build their business. The family was ready and well-equipped for success. In addition to being in the right place and the right time – securing a license at the outset of the post-war boom, which included a growing aviation industry helped immeasurably – they had also experienced hardship in inter-war Canada and, having helped their father in his grocery, logging, farming, and hotel businesses, they understood the virtues of hard work. The Wongs soon realized that interest in their school extended far beyond Chinese Canadians. People from all walks wanted to fly and the company grew quickly, expanding into charters, aircraft rentals, and sightseeing flights.

To keep the business growing, Robert and Tommy developed a flair for advertising. They bought ads in Toronto’s main papers: the Star and the Globe and Mail, sold cheap first-flight lessons, offered budget plans to help finance those bitten by the flying bug, and did most anything to gain an audience, from brochures to high school visits, to taxiing up Yonge Street as part of a publicity stunt for the opening of a new grocery store.

The Central Airways charter operation involved the use of some 15 planes, including its Fleet 80, a range of Cessnas and their Piper PA18 and PA23 aircraft. They concentrated mainly on short-range flights under 500 kms, although one time the company flew a Toronto photographer as far as Vancouver. Passengers were general flying for business, be that in sales, the law, or medicine. Engineers and architects were also common customers – mainly, as Robert once explained, because “a small plane can fly low enough to give its passengers a good look at what is going on below.”

But it was flying training that proved the bread and butter of the Wongs’s operation. Just a few short years after beginning at the Island airport, Robert and Tommy had grown their school into the largest in Canada. With its Class A rating from the Department of Transport, Central Airways trained students for multiple flying licenses: private, commercial, instrument, and multi-engine land and seaplanes. Their students ranged from those wanting to fly recreationally, to others learning for work, be it bush flying or even preparing to build the Distant Early Warning Line. Commercial transport trainees were another major part of their business and by 1958 more than 100 graduates were flying with Trans-Canada Airlines (later Air Canada). That number would only grow, with their pilot graduates flying for major airlines across Canada and in the United States. All told, Central Airways trained over 8,000 pilots. In a fitting turn of events, one of these graduates, Robert John Deluce (CAHF, 2017), went on to found Porter Airlines, which also uses the Toronto Island Airport (now the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport) as its base of operations.

During the many decades they operated Central Airways, Robert and Tommy earned a reputation for safety and thoroughness. Their instructors paid special attention to teaching students how to fly in poor weather, how to make forced landings, and how to recover from stalls or spins. The company’s commitment to maintenance was also second to none. It had to be. Unlike many flying school owners, their airport was not surrounded by open field – there was only Lake Ontario and the ever expanding (and rising) Toronto skyline. And while challenging for the beginner, the high standards needed to operate and excel in this environment proved to an important part of Robert and Tommy’s success.

Robert and Tommy retired in 1982 and sold Central Airways that same year. Both men were million-mile pilots. At the time of its sale, their company operated 35 aircraft for training and charter work and employed some 50 staff, including 18 instructors – a remarkable achievement considering it had started as a two-Tiger Moth flight school nearly four decades earlier. But the Wong brothers’ commitment to flying stretched back much longer, of course – for both brothers nearly a lifetime. The legacy they left, one that was honoured in Robert’s case by being made an Honourary Life Member of the Air Transport Association of Canada in 1983, continues to resonate today. Indeed, when word spread of a movement to nominate the brothers to Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame, former students and colleagues from across the country wrote to support them and their ‘Wong’ way of teaching Canadians to fly – a fitting tribute to their importance to Canadian aviation.

Robert passed away in 1988 and his brother Tommy did so in 2006. In 2018 and 2022, two important discoveries helped to ensure that their history will live on for years to come. The first was the realization that in Flamborough, Ontario, on the outskirts of Hamilton at Barn Full of Parts, there sat a 1956 Piper Apache bearing the registration CF-KFX in the livery of Central Airways. It was one of Robert and Tommy’s aircraft, itself noteworthy as perhaps the earliest example of a Piper Apache used in Canada. Then came word from rural Saskatchewan that CF-BAA – the brothers’ Pietenpol Sky Scout – had also been found. The Piper Apache has since been restored and is now on display at the Eva Rothwell Centre, in Hamilton, where it will stand as inspiration for students pursuing science and technology. Once both planes return to their former glory, they will surely stand as a record of an important piece of Canadian aviation heritage: the part played by Robert and Tommy Wong to train so many to fly.