Does the Winnipeg police helicopter have a vanity plate?
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/12/2010 (5599 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Caveat: I know next-to-nothing about the process of registering a plane or other aircraft. Readers, if you can add context, that would be great!
Okay, so on Monday the Winnipeg police are set to unveil their new police helicopter. I am not going to debate its merits here, although I think it’s a pretty poor use of resources, and it kind of seems like a vanity project.
Then I saw a photo of it in this story on the Winnipeg Free Press site:
Yes, that is the actual helicopter that will be chasing baddies in Winnipeg. It’s a Eurocopter with a fancy in-tail rotor, which I love, but it’s no Airwolf.
Anyway, what caught my eye was the registration number. Did you notice?
All aircraft registered in Canada start with a C, but I don’t know if you can request specific numbers or letters after that. I thought it was like license plates on your car — you get what’s next up. Of course, on your car, you can pay for a vanity plate, and maybe that’s what the Winnipeg police did.
Because the police helicopter is registered as C-GAOL.
If you’re not up on your British variant spellings, "gaol" is, of course, a version of "jail." Headingley Correctional Institution is even on Gaol Road, just outside of Winnipeg.
Either someone at the Winnipeg Police Service has a clever sense of humour, or they totally hit the registration jackpot.
UPDATE: You can search the registration numbers of aircraft online, but I can’t see if it tells you how the numbers are assigned.
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Speaking of British variant spellings, on my recent blog post about snowplows, someone hit the "report error" button and reported that it should be spelled "plough" throughout.
While I love a good ploughman’s lunch — especially paired with a frosty something-or-other on draught — I’m afraid that the Canadian Press Stylebook asserts "plow" and not "plough."