The Ice Pilots (12 page)

For a rampie, the step from the tarmac to the inside of an airplane is a huge one, regardless of the work. And for Buffalo’s rampies, flight attending is the most meaningful way to initiate that process. This is a career move you’d never have to make while working for a southern Canadian airline, but little about Buffalo Airways reflects most airlines’ reality. In other words, if you want to get behind the controls of a World War II legend, you first have to get acquainted with the coffee and the cookies.

Serving drinks and snacks to passengers on the Hay River–Yellowknife run may be a far cry from the romantic notions that most young pilots hold about their profession, but flight attending also gives rampies the chance to see how planes operate. If nothing more, flight attending is a great opportunity to learn the standard operating procedures (SOPs) of each aircraft.

Jordan took the course, and he even got to sit in the right seat of the DC-3 beside Joe a few times. But his bad karma seemed to follow him across Great Slave Lake. With each opportunity to advance that came Jordan’s way, there was something else that held him back. Perhaps not surprisingly, Jordan became one of the hundreds of rampies who never make it though their first year with the company.

High turnover rate is a fact of life at Buffalo, though people usually don’t have to be laid off. They just up and quit. Part of the problem is that once pilots graduate from flight school, they realize how few flying jobs there are in Canada. As a result, they send letters of inquiry to virtually every airline imaginable. If Buffalo happens to be the first one to respond positively, they throw themselves into a culture, climate, and geography unlike anything most of them have ever seen. In other words, to last at Buffalo, you have to want to be at Buffalo.

It’s a mantra that rings true for everyone who calls the North home, whether temporarily or permanently. The days can get pretty long and lonely in the dead of winter when your heart is somewhere else.

Back in the van,
Laurent Dussault may be overworked and underpaid, but he complained little as we worked our way through the morning delivering packages. He has a great rapport with his clients and seems willing to do anything to get in the pilot’s seat. He knows the opportunity will come.

“You do your ramp time, and at one point they’re gonna need a first officer [co-pilot], either because someone leaves or moves up the ladder,” he said, handing me a series of boxes for our latest delivery. “At that point they prefer to hire someone they know, someone who’s been working on the ramp and has proven themselves, someone they can trust. And that’s when they hire a ramp guy. Usually, it’s the guy who’s worked the hardest or lasted the longest.” In most cases, this happens after about a year and a half on the ramp, and culminates with the bronze ring of rampie life: being “checked out.”

Being checked out is the pilot’s final step to the cockpit, and means he or she has demonstrated enough proficiency with a certain aircraft to be able to fly it. But it’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination; the stakes are high and the pressure intense. The process involves a gruelling written exam covering all of the plane’s operating systems, followed by a flight test in which multiple stressful scenarios are simulated. Fail either one and it’s back to the ramp.

Two young pilots had just been checked out on the DC-3 and were still wearing smiles of success when I arrived at Buffalo. When not busting their humps on the ramp, Graeme Ferguson and Andrew Weich had trained for countless hours on the flight simulator Joe keeps in an upstairs office, where he once ran a flight school called the Buffalo School of Aviation. For Graeme and Andrew, it was a gruelling process: work all day until you’re teetering on the edge of exhaustion, fly the “3” on the simulator after hours, then go home and stuff some food down your throat before settling in with the plane’s hefty technical manual.

When the big day came, both young pilots had the pleasure of sitting down to a 111-item written exam. As part of this, they had to be ready to answer such questions as:

· What is the purpose of the Wing Flap Relief Valve?

· What is the maximum speed for lowering the landing gear?

· What is the normal operating pressure range of the hydraulic system?

· What is the power source for the surface de-icers? · What are the operating limits?

Stressful though it may be, the written exam pales in comparison to the air test, when the young pilot sits behind the controls and has to take the plane safely through a series of unfortunate events. Graeme had legendary bush pilot Arnie Schreder, who at the time was Buffalo’s chief pilot, in the right seat, with pilot Justin Simle, acting as the examiner, sitting directly behind. Hands shaking, Graeme took the “3” through its paces as the pair threw adversity his way: Engine 2 is failing and has to be shut down—
now
fly the plane. Land the “3” safely in Hay River—
without
using the flaps. Guide the plane through a series of steep bank turns—
and
don’t gain or lose more than a hundred feet of altitude in the process.

The mere thought of these scenarios is enough to leave me quaking in my boots, but both Graeme and Andrew passed with flying colours.

And while being checked out is a milestone event for a Buffalo rookie pilot, it doesn’t mean life becomes turbulence-free. They still have to sit in the right seat beside Joe on the DC-3. And if Joe McBryan happens to be in a bad mood, God help you.

Larry has worked as a flight attendant during several of Joe’s tirades against a rookie pilot. “I was wearing a headset and I could listen to what was happening in the cockpit. And I’ve heard Joe
unleash
on the first officer.”

The bad news is it usually takes at least three years to graduate from co-pilot to a full-fledged captain. And that’s only if you’re
really
skilled. The good news? You’ll learn more from Joe than any other DC-3 captain alive. Better news? You don’t have to spend all of your flight time beside Joe, because captains Justin Simle, A.J. Decoste, and Devan Brooks will also be sharing the cockpit with you. And their demeanours are decidedly less surly than that of their mentor, Joe.

As stressful as it may be to have a living aviation legend tear a strip off your quaking hide, Larry figures it’s all part of becoming a better pilot. “You’ve got this guy screaming at you, and you have to stay dead calm and concentrate on flying.” That’s a task made even more difficult by the retro planes in the Buffalo fleet. They are not easy to fly, and there’s certainly no autopilot button.

For Larry, a quiet Joe is a happy Joe. “From my experience, if Joe doesn’t talk to you, that’s generally a good sign. But if Joe starts yelling, he’ll yell at anybody in his path and not about the thing than pissed him off in the first place. He yells about everything that’s happening. Let’s say you’re rolling up an engine tent, he’ll unleash on you because the tent is dirty or you’re not carrying the seats right.”

As difficult as that may prove for a young man, Larry understands that his boss comes by his hard-to-please nature honestly. “That’s how old bush pilots are. That’s how Joe was taught, and that’s how Joe is gonna teach people.”

Most Buffalo pilots follow the same flight path as they move up the ranks at Buffalo. After getting checked out on the DC-3, they begin to accumulate precious flying hours sitting beside Joe on the daily sked between Yellowknife and Hay River. From there they move to other missions on the “3,” usually cargo runs, this time sitting beside Justin, A.J., or Devan. Then they’ll begin to learn the ropes by co-piloting another one of the planes in the Buffalo fleet, whether it be the DC-4, C-46, Electra, or CL-215.

Once they’ve become sufficiently familiar with a second aircraft they return to the DC-3 in earnest, where they push to accumulate enough hours to become captain. From there they return to their second aircraft to do the same. “Once you’re a captain on the ‘3,’ ” Mikey says, “it’s like you’re fast-tracked to be a captain on everything else.”

Assuming you can survive Joe, that is. For many rampies, Joe’s abrasive exterior can be difficult to handle. Larry takes it in stride. So does David Alexandre, another rampie I spent time with during my induction into the Buffalo family. A Toronto boy through and through, David looked like a rampie long shot when he arrived at Buffalo one cold February afternoon. What people didn’t bargain for was his old-world work ethic. Joe’s management style? No problem for David.

“The reason I get along with Joe is that he runs the company the same way I was raised as a child,” he told me. “My dad is kinda like Joe: very old school. That’s why I think I fit in so perfectly here. And if you know you did something wrong, admit to it right away. He’ll be mad, but he won’t be as mad as if you try to hide it.”

Not everyone adjusts to Joe quite as easily as Larry and David have done. “I think there’s lot of guys who are used to the new way of life,” David said. “You know, technology, your parents can’t hit you, this and that. And once those guys come up here, they find that it’s very old school. All the stuff that is done by technology in other places is done by manpower at Buffalo. And if you’re not used to givin’ ’er all the time, it’s tough.”

As we pulled
the van in to the loading dock behind the Yellowknife Walmart for one of our last stops of the morning, Larry informed me that this is where he also eats lunch most days. Given my status as an elder, I chose to eschew the Big Mac combo he opted for, one of the few things he can afford on his rampie salary.

That didn’t stop me from enjoying the warmth of the place. As blood flow gradually returned to our toes and fingers, I asked Larry if he planned on making a career out of Buffalo. “No,” he said decisively. “For me—and I think for pretty much everyone else—Buffalo is a stepping stone. And I think everyone knows it.”

At times he seemed like he had his whole life mapped out. “I came up here to fly these airplanes and spend about five years in total. Then I’ll move on to something else. I don’t want to make my life in the North. But in the short term, flying these planes is my dream.”

1 The Simpsons

2 Trailer Park Boys

3 Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

4 Monster Garage

5 Sons of Anarchy

6 Family Guy

7 Darkwing Duck

8 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

9 Mr. Dressup

10 Ice Pilots NWT

Michael Bodnarchuk has worked as both a director and videographer on Ice Pilots, and knows well the dangers of working around powerful machines and getting lost in the moment. On one occasion, Michael was filming a plane readying for taxi and takeoff outside the Buffalo hangar. “It’s fairly normal stock footage that we get,” he told me. “You get the engines starting, the pilots looking out the window, that sort of thing.”

On this day, however, one of the engines wouldn’t start, sending co-pilot Scott Blue to fetch a generator to help power up the sluggish engine while the other roared away.

“Scott comes back, walks around the back of the plane and plugs in the generator,” Michael said. “And without thinking I just ran under the plane to the left side, got my close-up of him doing his thing, and then retraced my steps and went back to where I was.

“And it wasn’t until I got back to where I was standing before that it dawned on me: for an instant I had entertained the notion of walking diagonally to get a cockpit shot. And if I had done that, I would have walked right through the propeller. I’ve never forgotten that moment, and I won’t ever go near a propeller again.”