SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The president of a Yellowknife airline and star of the History Television show, Ice Pilots NWT, said the GNWT is missing out on a "massive" opportunity to market the territory to people outside of Canada.

Joe McBryan, president and pilot with the Yellowknife-based Buffalo Airways, said he and his crew were "swamped" with tourism-related questions from people from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, at an annual airshow in Wisconsin a couple weeks ago. - Terrence McEachern/NNSL photo

"We are the one's that will sell the NWT to the rest of the world, if they want to grab the opportunity," said Joe McBryan, president and captain of Buffalo Airways, the same airline company that is featured on the reality television show.

The opportunity McBryan is referring to is an annual airshow held in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. This year, the airshow celebrated the 75th anniversary of the DC-3, the same planes that Buffalo Airways uses. For this reason, as well as the popularity of the television show, Buffalo Airways was given centre stage at the event, said McBryan.

He estimates this year's airshow, held July 26 to Aug. 1, had about 13,000 planes on display and about one million people passed through the gates. But what surprised him and his crew was not the questions they received about the airline and the planes - rather, it was the number of tourism-related questions about the NWT.

"'How big is it, why is it so big, how do we get there, how do we get to do all the things we see in your (shows) - rivers, mountains, barren lands, the coast, wildlife,'" said McBryan of the questions he was asked. "We were swamped."

McBryan said at any one time, there would have been 500 to 600 people at the Buffalo Airways site. He added a lot of people asking questions about tourism in the NWT were from the U.S. as well as places where the Ice Pilots NWT television series is shown, such as the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

"The opportunity to market Yellowknife and the NWT was phenomenal," he said. "These people want to come here."

Although McBryan and his crew did their best to answer the questions, he said the GNWT should consider sending a team of delegates, comprised of politicians and tourism officials, to promote the territory at next year's event. "We need eight to 10 with their booths under the wing of our airplane," he said.

Doug Doan, assistant deputy minister for programs and operations with the GNWT's Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment (ITI), said the department would "absolutely" consider an opportunity to promote the NWT at next year's event.

"We do get lots of approaches from lots of people, and we can't do everything. But something like that, sure, we would partner up with NWT Tourism and look at it. If it was deemed to be appropriate, we would probably be very interested in doing something," he said. Doan explained that ITI partners with NWT Tourism, which handles the marketing aspect of tourism for the department.

Doan said ITI and NWT Tourism have worked with Buffalo Airways before when the McBryan family was invited to Northern House at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

"They were a bit of a hit at Vancouver," said Doan. "We had them selling T-shirts and hats and everything there at Canada's Northern House."

McBryan, 66, started Buffalo Airways in 1970. The company now has about 135 employees and a fleet of 30 DC-3 planes used for flying cargo and passengers around the North.

Some of the planes are used as firebombers. In the Yellowknife hanger, the company has a merchandise store selling Buffalo Airline shirts, hats and other products.

The airline was featured in the August 2010 edition of the American magazine Sport Aviation. The article, called The Ice Pilots - Living a DC-3 Life, has a subtitle on page two of the article. This reads "When you think of Yellowknife" and shows a picture of one of the planes in flight.

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