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The Pilot Project Podcast is an aviation podcast that aims to help new pilots learn what it takes to succeed in the world of flight, to help people in the flight training system learn what they may want to fly, and to give Canadians and the world a peek into life on the flight deck in the RCAF. We want to help pilots succeed and thrive! We interview real RCAF pilots for their exciting stories as well as the lessons they've learned along the way. We'll learn their tips to develop resilience and the tools it takes to make it in flight training.
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Bryan:Alright. We're ready for departure here at the pilot project podcast, the best source for stories and advice from RCAF and mission aviation pilots brought to you by Sky's Magazine. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. And with me today for the first of our two part series is special guest major Matt Neri, a CH one forty nine Cormorant pilot, CEO of one zero three Star Squadron in Gander, Newfoundland, and the creator of the YouTube channel, Matt from one zero three. Matt, welcome to the show and thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule as CEO to spend some time with us today.
Matt:Thanks for having me, Brian.
Bryan:So today we will be talking about what led Matt to join the RCAF, his training journey, his operational experiences, and his path to becoming the CEO of the busiest search and rescue squadron in the RCAF. But as always, before we jump into that, let's go through Matt's bio. Originally from Ottawa, Ontario, Matt began his military career in the army reserves, joining 30 in 2000. At the same time, Matt pursued his academic endeavors by obtaining a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Waterloo and his aviation endeavors by getting a private pilot license and instrument flight rating or IFR ticket from Ottawa Aviation Services. Upon completing university, Matt joined the regular forces as a pilot in 2007.
Bryan:After basic training, he was posted to Canadian Mission Control Center or CMCC in 8 Wing Trenton where he was first introduced to the SAR life. Matt conducted phase one and two on the Grove and phase three on the Jet Ranger and Outlaw all at three CFFTS in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. He obtained his wings in 2010. Shortly thereafter, Matt was posted to four thirteen squadron at 14 Wing Greenwood, Nova Scotia where he learned to fly the CH one forty nine Cormorant. After two short years, he upgraded to aircraft commander and two years later, he was posted to one zero three squadron at 9 Wing Gander, Newfoundland.
Bryan:At one zero three squadron, Matt grew to love the location and the squadron. It's also where he met his wife Jessica. In 2017, they were posted to the Joint Rescue Coordination Center or JRCC in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There Matt would learn a lot more about the SAR system and spend his time coordinating countless SAR operations. After many begging sessions to his career manager, Matt was posted to 103 Squadron in Gander, Newfoundland in 2020 and is still there to this day.
Bryan:After a mishap flying Kormorant nine zero three in 2022, Matt was promoted to major and took the role of deputy commanding officer in one zero three squadron. He was appointed as commanding officer of one zero three star squadron in July 2025. Matt is a qualified maintenance test pilot, instrument check pilot, and standards pilot on the CH one forty nine as well as being an aircraft commander. He has over thirty eight hundred hours on the core run and has an estimated 200 star missions. Today, Matt and his wonderful wife, Jessica, are still with one zero three Squadron in Gander, Newfoundland, enjoying life with her two cats and dog.
Bryan:Alright. So let's start with some of your early foundations. Growing up in Ottawa, what first sparked your interest in service or aviation?
Matt:I'm not entirely sure. One interesting memory I have is I think I was very, very young, 12, 13 years old, and we were driving through, I think it's Highway 17 through Petawawa. And just as we were driving through there, I saw two Griffins or what I think were Griffins back then flying in formation at low level and just flew over my car. And I just remember that being I still have that memory. So maybe that was it.
Matt:I'm not really sure, but it's just been an overall interest of mine flying military flying.
Bryan:What had you in the area of Pet?
Matt:I think we were visiting one of my mom's friends who lives way up in Northern Ontario. So we had to go through Petawawa.
Bryan:Okay. Nice. Yeah. My dad took me to Pet actually when I was younger too because he used to train there when he was in the army reserves.
Matt:Okay.
Bryan:It's an interesting spot. It's changed a lot though. It's come a long way.
Matt:Oh
Bryan:yeah. Speaking of the reserves, what led you to join the army reserves and thirty Field Artillery Regiment back in 2000?
Matt:So roughly around that time, I was about 17, 18 years old, I was seriously considering joining the Reg Force doing RMC, ROTP something, becoming a pilot in the RCAF. I thought it would be a good idea to a boost my resume and be sort of dip my feet into what the military life is as well. It's actually a very well paying job when you compare it to normal customer service employment. It's part time during the year and full time during the summer, which is when I had breaks from high school. I was still in high school at the time.
Matt:So it was it was, I guess, my window or my my entry into the military.
Bryan:Did you find that it was an effective way to dip your toes and kind of
Matt:test the waters? I think so, really. I mean, obviously the Army Reserves is vastly different than the right force RCAF, but it's still the military. It's still an understanding how the system works because up until that point, you know, my my only real knowledge of the military was TV movies. Even in the year 2000, the Internet, although it was there, was not as as prevalent in terms of social media and exposure to what the world is.
Bryan:Yeah, it was definitely a different world. Like a lot of our listeners are probably were born in the internet age and it was a different time in terms of accessing information. Like we were still getting information from CD ROM encyclopedias and things. So it's not like you didn't have influencers and No. YouTube channels and not in the way that they are now.
Bryan:Yeah. How did your reserves experience shape your mindset before joining the regular force?
Matt:I'm not sure. It it didn't sway me away from joining the right force. And following your Rag Force career.
Bryan:Do you think that there's something that you learn in the reserves, things that you learn in the reserves that you brought forward into your Regforce career?
Matt:Yes, absolutely. Starting with basic training, I'd already done basic a version of basic training. Doing it again, I wasn't as a rough exposure to me as well. Some of the people you work with, I guess, have a different opinion. You're looking at you a little different when they find out that you have had prior time as an NCM, as a private, even though it is just reserves, it's still time as a grunt.
Matt:Maybe they gave you a bit more cred for that, I guess.
Bryan:Yeah. I can give you a little social buy in almost because you haven't always been an officer. So you understand to an extent what it's like to be an NCM. Like I've heard from many people, many NCMs in fact, that they prefer serving with an officer who has been an NCM at some point.
Matt:Yeah, that's exactly it.
Bryan:So why pursue mechanical engineering at Waterloo and did that technical foundation help you as a pilot?
Matt:So becoming a pilot in the RCAF is obviously very, very competitive. And if I wasn't going to be a pilot in the in the military, I just didn't feel like joining the right force. So I needed a backup career as well. Becoming a pilot in the civilian world can be quite competitive or may not work out for many individuals. So this was my backup.
Matt:If flying didn't work either in civilian world or in the military, I would be an engineer. So I elected to go to Waterloo University, which is a fairly competitive school to get into. And I pursued engineering there. And it actually did help me a lot in in aviation. You learn physics, you learn thermodynamics, you learn energy.
Matt:And if you remember your time doing aerobatics, it's all about energy management and understanding how to convert kinetic to potential and back and forth for sure. So it helped me in that sense as well. When I'm talking to some of the engineers who are working in fixing the aircraft, say for IMP Aerospace and whatnot, when they find out that you have degree in engineering, they get a little more buy in into what you have to say or you can communicate with them just a little more easier. Again, you get a little more credibility when you're trying to explain what you think the problem is when you're talking to a guy, another person who has a ring on their finger.
Bryan:It's interesting. I've heard a lot of people talk about kind of the way folks with engineering degrees tend to approach flying, like with a very technical approach and a very structured approach of the way they think. Do you think that that is true of you as well?
Matt:Maybe, maybe not as much. I mean, in everything we do, it has to be kind of calculated. We're not just complete cowboys, especially in SAR. Flying is still an intuitive thing, at least for me it is. But yeah, being methodical and I guess that's what engineering teaches you from the ground up is just methodology, how to approach a problem and how to solve it.
Matt:I guess that is there in my background. You know, what are the variables? What do we need to solve? And how do I go forward? What matters?
Matt:What doesn't matter?
Bryan:I like what you said about flying being partially intuitive as well, though, because there are like the practical skills and like, here's how you do it step by step. But there's a certain element of flying that and I think that maybe some of it is innate that you have to have that intuitive feel for how do I take this from a step by step process to actually doing it and making it flow.
Matt:Oh, absolutely. I mean, we all know some people you teach them to drive, they pick it up right away and they can drive the car fine. And others, they just it just doesn't click. Every step has to be taught individually and they never get that true understanding or that it's not intuitive to them. It's it's an aptitude.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. And the more I think about it, I don't know if this will be controversial, but I think that that's one of those things that you either kind of you have or you don't to an extent. And certainly within the context of RCAF flight training where you're doing it on a very tight timeline.
Matt:Absolutely. It's there's a reason we have aircrew selection, which is essentially just a big fancy aptitude test. Yeah. And that measures not only your ability to fly, but like you said, it it measures how quickly they think you will be able to fly because that's very important to the RCAF. Yeah, yeah.
Matt:And that actually matters a lot more once you upgrade to an aircraft commander, because at that point you have to teach things yourself from that on. And the people who learn the quickest are also most likely the ones who are going to be able to learn from their mistakes by themselves.
Bryan:Yeah. And it's a whole different ballgame once you're an aircraft commander. Like at that point, the skills that you need to have go well beyond just being a good pilot.
Matt:Oh, absolutely. It's a massive undertaking and it's in the Kormont fleet, at least it's where we see, I think, the highest rates of failures. It's not the inability to hover or the inability to just fly the aircraft. It's the inability to upgrade the aircraft commander and the demands that come with becoming an aircraft commander.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. And we'll talk more about that in a bit. But it's a very, very difficult process in a lot of I think I think mostly it's probably because there's just so much thinking on your feet that has to be done and decision making. And you can only you can put yourself through unlimited imaginary scenarios while in discussions with peers, right?
Bryan:Like if this happened, what would you do? If this happened, what would you do? But you could do a thousand of those and then go out the next day and something that you didn't cover will happen.
Matt:Absolutely.
Bryan:So at the time you were also getting your private pilot license and instrument flight rating ticket. What drew you to flying as a young person?
Matt:I think it's that same. I don't really know. I had that thing with the choppers over Petawawa, but what drew me to flying? I loved riding bicycle. I love being reckless with a bicycle.
Matt:I loved flying or driving like little go karts or anything else. I had anything to do with driving, flying, piloting, maneuvering some sort of a powered vehicle I loved and I found myself very apt at it. So flying just made sense, right?
Bryan:Yeah. Actually, that sort of reminds me of when I did a short stint of riding motorcycles and I remember getting my license. I never ended up riding that much because then I had kids and decided it was too dangerous. But as I was doing the lessons and learning it, I was like, this actually feels a lot like the same feeling I got when I was learning to fly. Like it's very satisfying to learn to master a new machine and learn how to operate it.
Matt:Absolutely. It's the same. I love it. I too have motorcycle license and just like you, I don't go on the road. I find it too dangerous.
Matt:All my stuff is off road.
Bryan:I guess at the same time you knew at this point. Did you know at this point that you wanted to try to get into the RCF as a pilot?
Matt:Absolutely. Yeah.
Bryan:So this was it made sense to be doing some flight training as well.
Matt:It made it. And like I mentioned earlier, it's also a backup plan in case the competitiveness of the RCF didn't work out. I would then pursue try to attempt to pursue a civilian career.
Bryan:So let's talk about your time becoming an RCF pilot. What motivated you to make the jump into regular force pilot track in 2007?
Matt:The offer came in and I jumped on it. I wasn't going to say no. So I went for it. I was just leaving finishing up university. I think I worked for about six months at some engineering firm.
Matt:I had a lot of fun there. It was actually an outdoor engineering job, kind of fit with my style. But when the phone call came and said, would you like to join? I said, absolutely.
Bryan:So that must have been a direct entry officer? Yeah, was direct entry officer. I paid for my own degree, like a
Matt:Kind of jealous of those guys who went ROTP, put it that way.
Bryan:Yeah, I don't blame you. I paid for one year and then got in and no no regrets there for sure. And a note for the listeners, specifically for two listeners, my parents, I should have said that I split the expenses of first year with my parents. Your first posting was to Canadian Mission Control Centre or CMCC in Trenton. What does CMCC do and what was your role there?
Matt:They essentially track the satellites that pick up emergency locator transmitter PLBs, personal locator beacons and EPIRBs, which are emergency position indicating radio beacons, basically distress beacons from all over the world. There's a constellation of satellites that track them and they're shared by just about every single nation on Earth. And our job at CMCC was to track any activation that happened in Canada. At that point, I would take the information and send it off to one of the rescue coordination centers so they could prosecute it.
Bryan:Okay, so the chain is kind of it first is detected by CMCC and then it gets, you said the rescue coordination center. So that's the JRCCs. It goes from CMCC down to a JRCC and then they prosecute.
Matt:That that is correct. Or at least that's how it was, you know, fifteen, twenty some odd years ago. Sure. It's been a bit of a while. But yeah, they track the satellites, they dealt with the satellites and then it moved that information was then sent to RCC.
Bryan:Okay. What did that early exposure to SAR teach you?
Matt:It showed me that SAR is like I didn't really know very much about SAR up until then. I knew it existed. I knew what the letter stood for, but it really opened my eyes that it is absolutely ongoing all the time. It is operational 100% and it happens all the time. It's always happening in the background.
Matt:That was kind of the eye opening for me.
Bryan:Okay. Now you went through both phase one and phase two on the GROBE. Can you walk us through some of your flight training experiences for those phases?
Matt:So phase one, I was one of the only DOs on there. The rest of it was all RMC, ROTP people. So a few years younger than me, not much. It was during summer. It was a lot of fun.
Matt:I didn't struggle. Like, I mean, I took it seriously. It was a little weird being around those who who were struggling, you know, those whose dream was to become a pilot and you're just watching them have their dreams crushed. What do you say to someone like that?
Bryan:Yeah. Those conversations are something that everyone who goes through pilot training at some point has to have. And sometimes it's like you're really close friend and you're watching them go through one of the hardest times of their life and it's very difficult.
Matt:And I kind of, I don't want to say sail through it, but I didn't struggle. And I think on my course we lost about a third of the people. So that was kind of interesting for me. Phase two grobe was a lot, lot more fun. And it was one of the first phase two grobe courses there were.
Matt:And I found myself, all my mates were all or course mates were all kind of similar experience to me prior time in the military, all much more mature, much older, you know, ex sergeants, ex master corporals, ex infantry, ex techs. So it was great being around a mature adult like crowd, if you will. We policed ourselves and. That meant we were kind of left alone. You know, that was really nice.
Bryan:Plus you get when you work with people who have like past lives within the military or before the military, they kind of have like a wider breadth of experience that you can draw on and they'll have pieces of advice maybe that are from a totally unrelated career, but they have that experience that ends up being really related to what you guys are doing in that moment.
Matt:Yeah. Mean, it's it's all learning how to learn. Right?
Bryan:Yeah. Exactly.
Matt:It was also a much smaller course perhaps in the the Harvard courses. And we're the only course there. So we are a much tighter knit group of people, I'll say.
Bryan:Yeah. And I had when I was writing this outline, I had forgotten that that would have been really early days for the phase two grobe. So I think we were
Matt:the first course, the first true operational phase two grobe course.
Bryan:Wow. So did you find you guys were under a bit of a microscope for how you performed and how the course went or?
Matt:I think the microscope came afterwards when we were introduced to the phase three courses. Okay, just
Bryan:to sort of see how do you perform after phase two compared to people who went through on the Harvard?
Matt:Absolutely. That's I think where the true test came. And there was a bit of bitterness, if you will, from some of the Harvard people where think we just had a vacation here and we didn't work for it. Whereas they went through, you know, the the Harvard process, the the Moose Jaw process, which I heard is can be is quite different, if you will.
Bryan:Well, I can only speak to what I went through, which which was the Harvard. And I'll certainly say that we had a perception that the Harvard was the harder course, but it's interesting. I'd be certainly interested to hear, you know, how did you guys feel about that? Because you were probably getting that from from people.
Matt:We it was weird. The only static we got usually were from the people who barely passed the Harvard, which kind of makes sense, right? They barely passed and they think we just had the easy way. But once we got on to course, I don't think there was any perceivable difference in performance. Certainly not on the Hilo world.
Matt:I mean, you're learning how to fly a helicopter, something completely new. The interesting part I will say about learning on the globe, it relates almost back to car racing. It's a lot more fun and challenging to make a slow car go fast than it is to make a fast car go slow. Sure. A thousand horsepower on the nose.
Matt:You can do just about anything. Putting two fifty horsepower on the nose on a hot summer day trying to do aerobatics. You really, really do not have much margin. And so when we're doing those aerobatics, we're just bouncing off the stall horn, just trying to eat every little ounce of power out of that little engine. Whereas I think on the Harbor, were just used to slamming the throttles to firewall and just doing whatever you could.
Matt:So that was a bit of a difference we noticed. And when it comes to helicopter, you find yourself at the edge of the performance envelope, perhaps more often than not.
Bryan:You talked about how basically you got there's a little bit of static from certain people and then that sort of fades. I think that echoes my experience as well. Like I don't recall us really beyond maybe a little bit of light ribbing at the beginning and then you get into chorus and then you realize like, you know, we've all got essentially the same experiences. We're all performing essentially the same. It's not really something that is worth sweating over.
Bryan:And certainly as time has gone on, I never think of, oh that guy did phase two grobe. You know what I mean? Like who cares?
Matt:Exactly. I mean the very little static we did get were from a few individuals who there's always that person.
Bryan:Yes. Yeah. If it wasn't that, they'd be finding something else to gripe about. They're just that person,
Matt:which is fine. Cool. Enjoy being grumpy for the rest of your life. It's whatever.
Bryan:You talked about helicopters being on the edge of the performance envelope. How was phase three on the Jet Ranger and the Outlaw for you?
Matt:Totally different. You know, I mean, you're learning how to fly a helicopter, but nothing from an aircraft translates there. It's something new. So for the first ten hours, you're just struggling to just attempt to hover. And then all of a sudden around hour eight, ten, something in your brain clicks.
Matt:A few neurons, talk to another few neurons and form a pathway. Then all of a sudden, you know how to hover. No one knows why or how, but it just happens after about eight to ten hours. So the Jet Ranger, there's thirty hours of that just learning how to fly an old school kind of helicopter. And then from there we transitioned to the Outlaw, which is essentially a four twelve.
Matt:And the big step there is not so much a bigger machine or even two engines, although there's a bit of that. It's you're now for the first time ever in a multi crew concept environment. So leading up to that, you're shooting an approach in the grove. You know, you're in turbulence. You don't even have an approach plate holder.
Matt:You're by yourself. Instructor just sitting there, his arms crossed, not helping you one bit. You're holding the approach plate in one hand, manipulating the throttles at the same time, trying to keep it straight level, trying to do it all yourself, programming, talking on the radios. But then all of sudden you find yourself on the outlaw and you even attempt to do that as flying pilot, touch one of the radios and, you know, they'll full on pause the sim and tell you how bad of a person you're being because you tried to do two things at once. There's a huge difference in how you approach a problem.
Matt:But I think it's for the better because from then on, every single airframe you'll fly is going to be a multi crew environment.
Bryan:Yeah, it is a totally different way of operating. Same thing stepping from the Harvard to the King Air. You're just used to flying essentially single pilot, including when your IFR instrument flight rolls. And it's really challenging and all of a sudden you have to break the habit of being very self sufficient and realizing like, hey, it's okay to rely on these other resources that you have now. In fact, you have to rely on these other resources that you have now.
Bryan:You go from this really like standalone mindset to having to learn to manage teamwork and systems and all that kind of stuff.
Matt:Yeah. And there was obviously some very frustrating moments with that. I remember I think there was one NAV experience. I'm sitting here just trying to tell them which way to go and we're not allowed giving a heading or bearing. We have to walk the person's eyes onto it and so be it.
Matt:And I just want to grab the stick and just move it to the heading. I think I want to go and like, that's where we're going. But I don't know. I have to describe it, what we're looking at. But it's for the better.
Matt:That's that's the whole point of learning.
Bryan:Do you think that was the phase that challenged you most was NAV or what did you find was the most challenging on phase three?
Matt:I can't think of a single phase. Perhaps night was the more challenging part only because that's the only flight I had issues with.
Bryan:Are you guys flying on MVGs during the night phase? Absolutely.
Matt:Yeah. At least when I went through, we were.
Bryan:Yeah, I think I'm I'm sure they are now. I just was like, am I miss remembering this? Can you tell us what that is like for the first time?
Matt:Woah. Very different. I had obviously flown at night in the city world. That's easy in a Cessna 150 flying over Ottawa to Montreal. Just fly high and then you can go.
Matt:No big deal. The Prairies, a little different. It was very challenging, to be honest, trying to hover over grass at night with the grass just blowing in your downwash, causing all sorts of optical illusions. It was hard. It was challenging, but that's why we do it.
Matt:That's why we're learning.
Bryan:Yeah, I went for a flight once. I did my OJT at four hundred Squadron in Borden when they were still a reserve tackle squadron. And they brought me up for a night flight once with NVGs and just getting them properly adjusted and like I was just sitting in the back and just getting them having them properly adjusted and focused and looking outside and learning how to look through them and having to look under them if you wanted to look inside and all those different things. And I thought, holy cow, how does anybody do this and fly an aircraft?
Matt:It's it's hard. It's it was something very different, too. That was the that was the weirdest part. Like, I don't even wear eyeglasses, right? So having essentially what are bifocals looking through them, like you said, are looking underneath them to stare at your instruments was a whole learning experience.
Bryan:Yeah, I don't doubt it. So a lot of pilots go through phase two on the Harvard, but you stayed on the Grove. Do What you think were the main differences between flying the Harvard or flying the GROBE for phase two?
Matt:Yeah, the biggest difference, I guess, between the GROBE and the Harvard course, and you probably can attest to this, was it seems early from rumor that the Harvard Moose Jaw was a very fighter centric kind of mentality. Like you were there to learn how to fly fighters. And the only reason you went to multi or Hilo was because you failed from wanting to learn how to fly fighters. Whereas the Globe, it was just assumed you wanted nothing to do with fighters nor that mentality nor that culture. And you're just here to fly either helicopter or multi.
Matt:That's about, I think, a big cultural difference between the two. I don't know if it still exists to this day.
Bryan:I'm sure it does. It certainly did when I went through that Moose Jaw was very much fighter centric. It was run like a fighter school. And certainly those of us like for me, for example, who wanted multi actually almost had some envy for the guys who went like I was happy to be flying the Harvard. Thought it was the cooler plane.
Bryan:But at the same time, I knew that if I had gone phase two Grobe, I was guaranteed not to go fighters and just sort of narrow it down to, okay, instead of three choices where I want one of them, it'd be one out of two kind of thing.
Matt:Exactly. I mean, that that did play on me. I'm like, I can't go fighter some Grobe. And I think it shaved back then. There was a fairly huge delay for for Moose Jaw.
Matt:I think it shaved a good sixteen months off my training time, which that's that's huge.
Bryan:Yeah, That was the other thing I recall that a lot of people wanted to go phase two grow because it was a much faster pipeline to getting your wings. Absolutely. So you get through phase three, you earn your wings. What do you remember most about earning your wings in 2010?
Matt:I would say it's what do I remember most about the two days leading up to it? Okay. I remember how I said I found night challenging. So going through phase one, phase two, phase three, never had a failed flight, never failed a test, never even I think, marched a flight. That's to say achieved a marginal pass until my night flight test.
Matt:I failed it. For reasons I won't get into, but I failed. And the grad was in two days.
Bryan:Oh my gosh.
Matt:Yeah. So if you think about it, then I need a extra dual and an extra flight and then a retest. So I have two days and I got two flights to get in. So we went through the whole procedural process. Are you having any problems?
Matt:Blah blah blah. I explained what some of the issues were. They agreed that they perhaps have not set me up for success as they should have. I won't get into the nitty gritty details. There's no reason to air laundry.
Matt:So I did my extra flight. It went well. And then the next night, this is the day before the grad is when my retest is and it's summertime. So in the Prairies, it gets dark at like 11:00 at night or something ridiculous. Yeah.
Matt:And I'm my parents had already flown into Winnipeg and they're calling me or whatever, like, hey, we're still coming up, blah, blah. I'm like, hey, yeah, maybe don't check out in the morning without checking in in with me first because there might not be a reason for you to come here. So I remember that just everything just piling up like, wow, this is a lot riding on one flight. But that's life. That's aviation certainly in SAR, you know, like.
Matt:There will always be high stress or high things, a lot of things riding on a flight. And that's that was riding on that flight. I had to pass that or you know, that's it. I would have to tell my parents that you might as well just get back on the plane, go home because I'm not graduating. I'm not getting my wings.
Matt:Obviously, I passed. I think it was about eleven or one in the morning when I finished. And then, I was at morning briefing for eight in the morning to receive my captain's stripes. And as well, that is the day they were telling me where I would be going either Tackle posted to Edmonton or posted somewhere else. So a lot happened in those twelve hours, or even the two days leading up to it.
Matt:I went from not knowing where I'd go if I'd pass, if I'd fail to knowing that, yes, I got my wings. Yes, I got promoted. Yes, I knew where I was going. Yes, I was going SAR. So I remember, yeah, the the wings themselves don't really remember much.
Matt:The few days leading up to it, busy.
Bryan:That is some super high pressure to have to perform under.
Matt:But that's what we do in military aviation, right? Yes. We have to perform under pressure. I can't just turn around from a SAR flight being like, hey, you know, my cat's sick at home. I can't really go fly and rescue people today.
Matt:Like, no. Yeah. We have to perform when stuff's going on in our lives.
Bryan:Yeah. Hey, guys, you know, conditions are a bit tough. The pressure is kind of high. I don't know if we can do this today.
Matt:Yeah, that's what I remember.
Bryan:So you mentioned getting selected SAR. How happy were you at that moment?
Matt:Extremely happy. Yeah. When I remember when they were asking me like, where do you want to go? A lot of my course mates were basically making decisions based on location. And I was making a decision based on the color of the airframe.
Matt:I wanted yellow, I wanted SAR. And they asked me like, would you be willing to go Goose Bay? I'm like, not ideal, but it's I'm kind of single right now. Don't want to be celibate, but I'll do what it takes. I didn't end up in Goose Bay, although Goose Bay would have been a good time.
Matt:Yep. So I was very, very happy that I ended up SAR. In fact, I didn't even know where Greenwood was, but that's where I was going.
Bryan:I was going to say, so you were posted to Greenwood at 413.
Matt:That's in Nova Scotia.
Bryan:Yeah, Greenwood, Nova Scotia. That's that was my first operational posting as well. What were those early years at four thirteen Squadron like as you learned to fly the Kormoran?
Matt:So I remember walking into the hangar that day and it was very much an experience from do you remember the movie Gladiator? You know, Russell Crowe?
Bryan:Oh yeah, of course.
Matt:When they're going up to the Coliseum and there's I think his name is Jubu or this his sidekick there just stares at the giant coliseum and says like, I did not know a man could build such things. That is what I thought of the Coromant when I saw how big the stupid thing was. Yeah. I think it's massive. I didn't even know it was that big.
Matt:Right? And I'm just sitting there like, Oh my God, I got to learn how to fly this. Like, it's huge. I thought the four twelve was big. This thing makes the four twelve look like a toy.
Matt:No offense to the four twelve drivers out there. So that was, you know, that was very interesting. Just kind of being shocked at like having to learn this giant machine, having to fly it. But we got on with it. Yeah, it was fun.
Bryan:Yeah, the Kormorant is massive. The first time I really realized how big and powerful it was, was when I lived in the PMQs, which is the military housing on the base. And they would fly over our house regularly and the whole house would shake and like you could hear the dishes rattling in the cupboards. And like it was it's it's a huge, huge beast.
Matt:She's a big girl.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. You upgraded to Aircraft Commander in two years. At that point, did you feel ready or did you feel you needed to grow into it?
Matt:Absolutely not. No, actually I probably felt ready at the time and then looking back, really maybe wasn't upgrading two years in the cormorant is the I guess the goal. It doesn't happen very often. So I upgraded quickly and with very few hours compared to what I'm seeing nowadays. I also didn't see a lot of missions as a first officer, as an acting aircraft commander.
Bryan:Really?
Matt:Yeah. So, you saw some lots of flare sightings. Oh, geez, I could talk your ear off about flare sightings, but maybe I saw two operational hoists. That was it.
Bryan:No, that's not enough.
Matt:No, no, not enough at all. And I don't think I had been North Of Anacostia Island like I hadn't even been to Newfoundland. Oh, wow. I didn't really explore much. I just didn't know much.
Matt:So I upgraded in two years and then my first mission, I got a phone call. I wasn't even I think it was on my day off or something like that. It was up for a helicopter clash, you know, 300 miles north of Iqaluit. No. So I loaded onto a Herc, flew up there and then on the Herc, have nothing to do but just think about what I'm getting myself into and how maybe I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
Matt:I'd never flown where there weren't trees and there's no trees up there. There's just rocks, rocks and snow. So that was kind of an interesting challenger, a very interesting first mission. Thank God I had that that FE with, you know, that stereotypical crusty old FE with a lot of experience because he helped me through it a little bit or a lot actually, I should say. But brand new team lean, brand new first officer.
Matt:Like it was a challenge. We got the job done. Everything happened. No one died. But yeah, in those two years, it was a lot to learn.
Matt:But looking back at it as well, it's it's almost like what they tell you when you get your private pilot's license. It's a license to learn. Yeah, the final words of the very difficult examiner when he upgraded me to aircraft commander was he basically said, you're you're safe. I don't think you're going to go out there and hurt anyone. And you're baseline effective.
Matt:Which is basically you're to go out there and just learn how to do this and become better at it. You're just barely good enough that you're not going to hurt someone and you can probably get the job done. So off you go.
Bryan:Yeah. You're really getting by on the skin of your teeth there with that level experience. Like that's that's very challenging.
Matt:It felt like it. But maybe the examiners and maybe the people around me saw more than I saw in myself. I don't know.
Bryan:I'm sure that's true.
Matt:At the end of the day, we got the job done. Yeah. No one got hurt. We didn't run out of fuel. So what else do you need in life?
Matt:Right?
Bryan:That's such a classic first AC mission for it to be like something you've done all this prep work. You've probably run scenarios leading up to your upgrade. You've thought about all these, how would I do this? How would I do that? And then they're like, boom, you're going to Iqaluit.
Bryan:It's something you've never seen before and now you just have to make it happen. Yep. Classic Tsar.
Matt:Yeah. Just make it happen.
Bryan:Yeah. So what ended up bringing you to one hundred three Squadron in Gander, Newfoundland the first time and what were your first impressions of the place?
Matt:Well, I got posted here. They asked me if I want to go here. I've heard very good things about it. How the flying and the operationally focused squadron. It's a great squadron.
Matt:What did I first think about it? It was kind of like the Wild West, but with snow and bog. Lots and lots of bog. The flying there is none like anywhere else I found in Canada, at least from the Kormont perspective. You know, every other base has a massive map with sensitive citizens, places you're not supposed to fly, do this, do that.
Matt:There's no sensitive citizens in Newfoundland. They just don't exist. We can kind of fly. I don't want to say wherever we want. We follow rules, but there's a lot more freedom of where we can go and where we choose to train, what we choose to do.
Matt:On the flip side of that, there's also the missions, the operations. There are so many missions and operations like you're you feel like you're really doing your job. You know, I'm not going out for flare sighting or I'm not going out somewhere and getting it turned around halfway because another agency scooped us and did the save. Like when you get tasked, you're going to go save someone. That's 95% of every task I have results in someone getting saved in one form or another or medevac.
Matt:So it felt like you're really doing your job. You're at the pointy end. So I loved it there as well as Gander is a small town. It's not the greatest, but the base is very, very small. So you get that community feel as well.
Matt:You get more additional freedoms. I can take my snowmobile to work. I can take my quad to work. I don't think you're doing that in Trenton. Trenton, they get upset where you park your car on what side of the base.
Matt:But park my quad in the lawn. I take my sled. I just leave it on the on the snowbank like awesome. Yay. No one cares.
Matt:So you get that that certain freedom, if you will, which I take to quite well.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a difference between life on a big base and life in a more remote small unit. You even see that here to an extent in Portage just because the school is 50% civilian. It's a I found when I was posted here that it was a very different experience from being on in Greenwood.
Bryan:And it's a little bit freeing. It's like a little break after a while kind of being in the big machine for a while.
Matt:I found there's an inverse ratio between what the squadron life is and how good of a place it is to live. So if you take, for example, Comox, the supposed Shangri La, the helicopter community where everyone wants to go to, well, except me, you know, great place to live. Sure, you can ski, golf, snowboard, whatever it is they always talk about. Awesome. Great.
Matt:But I don't know what the squadron life is there if they have as tight knit of the community. Whereas someplace like Goose Bay, Yellowknife, Gander, where perhaps there's not as much to do outside the gate, that the squadron community seems to be a lot, lot tighter. Now, don't get me wrong, there's still a lot to do in Goose Bay, Gander or even Yellowknife. It's just all outdoor stuff.
Bryan:Yeah.
Matt:Which I'm having fun doing.
Bryan:Yeah. And and I agree with you because it's not to say that, say, Comox may or may not and actually having visited for for two in June, it seemed like they had a great community there. But it it that can come and go in a bigger base depending on the group of people. But it's it's a necessity in those places you mentioned, Yellowknife, Goose Bay, Gander, in these small places. Like out of necessity, there will be a community because that's your only option.
Bryan:Oh, absolutely. In a good way. In a Case good
Matt:in point, I think we had large snowfall here a week or so ago. And classic, you're going around snow blowing whoever's driveway is away on TD.
Bryan:And for listeners, TD is temporary duty.
Matt:That's just expected. It doesn't need to be asked. It doesn't need to be sorted out. It's just going to happen. I'm not sure that happens in larger towns or bases also because everyone just lives five minutes away from each other because it's a tiny town.
Matt:Yeah, yeah. But you get that here and I'm not sure it's it's available elsewhere.
Bryan:Yeah, we have the same thing here in Portage where there's got to be somewhere between five and ten of us all in one block, basically. So everyone's always helping each other out and we have such a tight knit community here. And not that Portage is, you know, super remote, but it is a bit of a smaller place and a smaller footprint within with the military presence. And I I find it lends itself to a much tighter community. Agreed.
Bryan:So you also met your wife Jessica there. How did the two of you meet?
Matt:The internet. Oh yeah, classic. Classic online dating back in the day, man.
Bryan:What was it? Plenty of fish or what?
Matt:Probably, I don't really remember. Mean
Bryan:That's how I met my wife. So I
Matt:think it's before the days of Tinder, that's for sure. But yeah, something like that. Whatever website Back it
Bryan:back when internet dating was kind of like not not as like now it's the norm, right? Like everybody who's single is using some app or something. But back then, like, people kind of look down their sleeve at you a bit if if they're
Matt:like, But oh, you met I mean, you're living in Gander, right? Like it's I wouldn't say slim pickings, but it's you're not living in Montreal.
Bryan:Well, you don't you don't like know a bunch of people. It's not like you have friends and family who are locals who you can meet people through or whatever. Right? Like it's when you're when you're a single person in a relatively small community where you don't have friends and family outside of the military community that much, it's really difficult to meet people.
Matt:Absolutely. And one of the things I advise people who come here as well is try to make friends, try to do something outside of the military. Don't just get only military only play sports. There's there's little leagues and stuff like that here where you can just do something outside of the military and try to get your spouse to do so as well. This place is very difficult on or can be very difficult on spouses I've seen over the years.
Bryan:Sorry, but your wife is is from Gander, right?
Matt:Well, she grew up about an hour away.
Bryan:Okay. How does she handle the hectic schedule and the risks of the Saar life?
Matt:She's gotten used to the schedule. It's a little more challenging now that we have a dog. You know, it used to be just the two of us and some cats where it didn't matter if both of us were gone for the day or two days. Right. The cats would be fine.
Matt:The dog, not so much. So even now, just with a dog, it is challenging at times to sync our schedule, especially the the schedule just changes so quickly. I almost ended up in a cowlet the other day, two days ago. But again, the the squadron comes through. If the dog is stuck here, there's a couple people who can come by and and take care of the dog.
Matt:So she she's adapted to it. She just knows that, hey, when I say I'm going to be home at 04:00, it means you may get a text at 04:00 saying I'm on my way to Goose Bay. Yeah. Such is life. I guess she's she's gotten used to it.
Bryan:What about the risk side of SAR? You don't have to answer that.
Matt:I don't know. It's not that I keep things from her, but perhaps I don't share as much of Certain risks or certain things that happens in an aircraft, obviously now with YouTube, it's a little different. I guess she well, she knows more than anyone else that there are certain risks. It wasn't was what, three, three and a half years ago, I think I was laying on my back on the runway with, you know, with a broken back, actually calling her on the phone saying like, hey, little incident at work, not going to be home, going to the hospital instead. Yeah.
Matt:That's not easy on anyone. So but I would say she's gotten used to it or she she handles it. Strong woman.
Bryan:Which is great and a huge, you know, very important quality, I think, to any spouse of a pilot is that they need to be strong. They need to understand some of the risks that are coming with it and and they need to be okay with that to an extent. However it is they manage to handle it because otherwise it's going to add a real element of friction.
Matt:Yeah. A good example of perhaps, I won't say keeping it from people, but just not showing it. I had my mother-in-law staying here taking care of the dog just for a day. And I came back from a mission and I just walked in and I like, oh, hey, how are doing? Blah, blah, blah, the normal stuff.
Matt:And then she went on her way. And then a week later she saw the video of that mission and her words because she could see in that video that that's perhaps the stress or the elevated voices or everything that was going right and everything that was going wrong. And she said, when I walked in that door, she was like, you would have never known. You would have never known he had that happened to him today. He was just perfectly normal.
Matt:And it's at this association, I guess you have to have as well of not taking your work home or the stresses of work.
Bryan:I would imagine that within a breadth of experience like you get at one hundred three, where that kind of almost becomes your, not your every day, but you know, a regular occurrence. I would imagine there's some adaptation that you folks tend to go through as well where you tend to normalize. Okay, well, that's just another Tuesday.
Matt:Yeah, it's weird. You know, there's certain coping skills, but yeah, there's just it becomes the norm and maybe it shouldn't, but it does.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about what you said there about it. Maybe it shouldn't. I think it's a bit of a survival mechanism that is almost essential.
Bryan:Maybe it depends on how long can you do that for is maybe a good question. But I think if you weren't adapting and normalizing, then I don't know how you'd go out and face that every day.
Matt:I'm not sure. Obviously, now the the RCAF and the CAF in general has put quite a bit of emphasis on on mental well-being. In terms of strategies, tools, mitigations, measuring sticks, I guess you could say, just to see how we're doing and how to deal with stuff. And we've taken to it at one or three. We do talk about it amongst ourselves, but perhaps we don't share it as much with our spouses.
Matt:Or perhaps we only just share certain details or just come home and say, you know what? I had something that happened to me at work today. Perhaps I'm not Okay, but I will be Okay. I just need a bit of time to process it.
Bryan:Yeah. Know, Thinking back to this early period, these first two tours, are there any missions from that time that really shaped your approach to SAAR?
Matt:I can't think of any individual one. SAAR is a bit of an unusual anomaly, if you will, in terms of the Canadian forces. Unlike almost everything else in the CAF where they kind of try to picture what the next war or or operation is going to look like based upon what the last operational war looked like and try to plan and game and exercise based upon what they think it's going to happen, AKA, well, Afghanistan looked like this. So we're kind of training to make it look like we have another Afghanistan. All of a sudden Ukraine pops off and they're like, okay, so maybe the next war will look like that.
Matt:SAR is constantly doing it for real. So we're just evolving at a very slow pace. But every little mission we do, every little thing we do, just there's a couple of lessons learned or a couple of things you get from that and it changes your approach. It's a very slow, but sorry, not slow. It's a constant evolutionary process versus the rest of the military, where it's just these big evolutionary jumps from operation or war to war to operation to operation.
Matt:So is to get back to your question, are there any early missions specifically that made a big change or shaped my approach? I can't think of any, but I think it's just every single one over time has.
Bryan:You talk about this like evolution of tactics and procedures and things. And TTPs, as we say, techniques, tactics, procedures. Is that a personal process or is that something that's like institutionalized? Yes.
Matt:It's both. Obviously, it's a very personal thing. How you approach problems are procedures and stuff are manual is rather thin. And that's by design because aircraft commanders and crews and team leads and everyone else has to kind of just problem solve everything we're going to see is it can't be written down in a book, right? We're going to have to problem solve.
Matt:We're going to have to figure out things that perhaps are not in the manual. Want creative thinkers. Do we also institutionalize it? Yes. Whenever someone says like, hey, this happened to me and this was bad, I think we need to change our procedures or change our rules about this.
Matt:Then obviously there's mechanisms to do so. That has a bit of vetting. It has to get buy in from the entire community. But little things of like how you how much fuel to decide to take on a mission that other than the rules of what your minimum fuel required is, that's not really in any manual. But you have a bad experience where you had too much fuel or had too little fuel.
Matt:You're going to learn from that for the next mission. Maybe you pass it along when you're teaching an FO, but or when you're debriefing as a group. But yeah, so I would say it's both institutionalized and internalized.
Bryan:Okay, now we're talking about SAR from like kind of taking a step back, looking at the big picture. At this point, you were posted to the Joint Rescue Coordination Center or JRCC in Halifax. What was it like transitioning from the cockpit life to the JRCC? Did you find it was an adjustment to sit on the other side of the radio?
Matt:All I can say is boy, was I wrong. Oh boy, was I wrong in how I approach every mission. Perhaps I was arrogant and cocky by then. But I would say I used to think that RCC worked for me. And then I went to RCC and I learned I learned that that approach is wrong.
Matt:It's as an asset, you are working for RCC. Perhaps that wasn't taught or emphasized as well as it should have been in my upbringing, something I've taken steps to correct for others. So that really changed my approach. I think like RCC is just there to do my bidding as I solve this case all on my own. That's wrong.
Matt:That is really, really, really wrong. I have since learned and thank God I did that to our agency, because I think it made me a better aircraft commander as well to know how it is on both sides and and how it all fits into the bigger picture of prosecuting and solving SAR cases. But I did get used to the schedule at RCC. It is it is vastly different just working so many days and then really no secondary duties. And when you're off, you're off.
Matt:That is something I hadn't experienced in a very long time where even on my off days here, I'm checking emails. Maybe I got go into work to deal with something. I got to come back like that. RCC was I didn't even have a smart device. I didn't check emails on my days off.
Matt:I just I did my own thing. Yeah. That was a massive change as well.
Bryan:Which is it kind of speaks for like a a number of things you've said speak for why, you know, a ground posting is not always the worst thing in the world. Like a lot of pilots look at a posting that is not flying as like, oh my gosh, like don't put me in there. I don't want anything to do with that. But it can be good for you to have a regular schedule for a while to learn some of the bigger picture stuff and learn how the system works. Like those are good things.
Matt:Oh, absolutely. I mean, if I had kids, they would have been amazing just to spend that much time with the kids versus being at 103 where it's it's a brutal grind at times when you have a very high op tempo.
Bryan:Yeah. What's something the public doesn't realize about how JRCCs work?
Matt:I don't really know because I don't I never had the public tell me like, oh, I didn't think that's work. It worked that way. But I would say I think there's a misconception of how much bureaucracy there is to getting an aircraft off the ground. I think the public sees or thinks it's all this red tape and you need all these approvals to get a Herc or Korma airborne on a case and everyone up to Winnipeg and Ottawa and the Pope and everyone needs to get their say on it and approve it. But no, there is so little bureaucracy when it comes to getting an aircraft off the ground for a SAR case.
Matt:From the moment a phone call from 911 comes in that there's a person seen struggling offshore, a swimmer drowning to me saying to an aircraft that, hey, get going. It's fifteen seconds and I don't have to ask anyone. Me as a little captain by myself in RCC had all this this authority to send aircraft on their way to to consult or to prosecute missions. So maybe that's a bit of a misconception from the public. They think, you know, the federal government D and D were seen as a big bureaucratic dinosaur.
Matt:But and certainly there's aspects of of D and D that is. But when it comes to prosecuting SAR cases, I would say that is completely the opposite.
Bryan:Okay. If you had to guess roughly how many operations do you think you handled during your JRCC time?
Matt:Oh, I struggled with that question. Somewhere between somewhere less than 500. Wow. Maybe it was 200. I don't really know.
Matt:But hundreds? Yeah. I mean, the phone rang all the time. How many times did I actually launch an aircraft? I don't know.
Matt:One to 200, you know?
Bryan:Okay.
Matt:Maybe I could be vastly wrong. I never kept track.
Bryan:Was there any star operation that really stood out like a really big event or something like that?
Matt:There's several that stood out, but mostly because how funny they were or how different they were.
Bryan:Okay.
Matt:Not like, oh, you went out there, you know, I never had to deal with an airline or crashing like that. One that stands out, there was a Coast Guard cutter, a small, small guy. He docked, but I guess he forgot to close his sale plan, which is kind of like a flight plan, I'm assuming. So he went overdue and they started looking for him and none of them were answering their phone calls. And he wasn't on any sort of radar, if you will, like the marine version of radar.
Matt:So the rescue center was like, well, did something happen? And they're all starting to swoop up. They're like, maybe we should send a helicopter and we got to send a plane. They're doing all the protocols. And me being the lazy person I am, I didn't want to send an aircraft needlessly into the air.
Matt:So I just quickly looked on map as to where they're supposed to have docked, and I realized there was a pizza joint across the street. So I actually called the pizza place and I got a hold of the guy, minimum wage, 16 year old kid flipping pizzas. And I asked him like, hey, dude, can you do me a favor? Can you do me solid? Like, look out your window.
Matt:Just see the big ship. He's the cutter. He's a guy. I'm like, what's the name on it? And the Coast Guard cutter, baby duck or whatever the name was.
Matt:He's a guy. See. I see the baby duck right there. I'm like, Okay, sweet. Done.
Matt:Thanks, bro. You know, hang up and I'm like, Hey, guys, it's off. Don't you know, you don't need to do anything. It's all good. The pizza guy said the boats there.
Matt:They're safe. So that was one of the weird ones where, again, we're taught, you know, all jokes aside, we're taught to think creativity. Yeah. Both in terms of RCC as well as aircraft commanders, you know, problem solve, figure out solutions. So that was one.
Matt:There was another one. This was the case of a person who had gone kayaking in South Coast Nova Scotia. Beautiful summer day, beautiful weather. I believe he was an adult, but perhaps a bit special needs. His father had been there.
Matt:They let him go on his own. You know, it's good. That's awesome. But I guess he went a little missing very quickly. One of the Coast Guard ribs located him.
Matt:He was just on a on one of the many islands there, just kind of stuck, no distress. So that was going on. At the same time, I got a phone call from this lady in Toronto who was this person's, I guess, older sister. And it was a classic case. She's calling.
Matt:She's trying to figure out who do you call? Who do you call if your brother goes missing in the ocean? I don't know who you call. Right. Most people don't know.
Matt:Anyways, they got a hold of me. I was the air guy. The Marine side was very busy dealing with all this. So I just took I answered the call. She was like, hey, told me the whole story.
Matt:She's like, is this the right number to call? I'm like, yes, it is. I'm like, and I took down her name and number. I'm like, cool. Like, listen, I have your name.
Matt:I have your number. As soon as we find out something, we'll call you back. Anyone who's ever talked to the federal government or CRA or anyone else knows that when someone just takes down your phone name and phone number.
Bryan:Good luck.
Matt:Fiftyfifty if they're ever going to call you back. Right. Who knows? Like, we've all dealt with customer service before. We all know where this is going, right?
Matt:So you could just hear in her voice that she had nothing else she could say or do. She's like, Okay, thanks. And then right away, I just looked at Marine side. We get the info. We figure out he's already on the Coast Guard Rib.
Matt:He's going to go to where his father is at such and such a place and he will be there in like twelve minutes. So four minutes later, I call her back. I don't remember what her name was. And I'm just like, Hey, it's so and so from rescue center. She's like, Oh, okay.
Matt:Do you have any updates? I'm like, Absolutely. We found him. He's on a Coast Guard cutter he's going to be dropped off at your father's location in approximately eleven and half minutes. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Matt:And you can hear on the other end how just stunned she was at that efficiency that no one ever expected the federal government to be this efficient, which, you know, kind of brings back to the misconception people may have about the SAR system. She she was at a loss of words. She didn't know what to say. It's just one of those funny moments. Right?
Bryan:That's awesome. You did your tour at, JRCC and you've said that you practically begged to come back to 103. What does the squadron mean to you and what made it such a special posting?
Matt:So I think the first part is I wasn't quite ready for a ground tour at that stage my life. Had I stayed at one of three for maybe another two years, I would have then stayed much longer at RCC. Had I been sufficiently tired of the flying schedule in SAR, I would have then transitioned RCC and probably stayed there a lot longer. But I was quite eager to go back to flying. And out of the two squadrons I knew one hundred three and four thirteen, I definitely wanted to go back to one hundred three for the operational perspective.
Matt:Living in Newfoundland is a lot more fun than living in the valley, at least for me. And, you know, Jess, I'm sure wanted to go back to, the island as well. Yep. So it is a special place for me. And quite frankly, hope I don't leave.
Bryan:Yeah. That's fair. With three operational tours and one JRCC tour, SAR has basically been your whole career. How does that shape you as a pilot and a person?
Matt:It's it's kind of strange. I don't perhaps fit in very well to a lot of the other RCAF areas because SAR is so different than the rest of the Air Force at times with how we integrate into like a C2 structure or command and control. We're kind of a little outcast, if you will, because our role and our jobs are vastly different than warfighting, which is essentially what the rest of our CF and CAF in general does. So perhaps I'm very good at SAARA, but terrible at other things. RCF, it was also a weird transition, too, for for myself from being.
Matt:Perhaps not knowing a lot and having to rely on others to somehow I can't pinpoint a certain day, but I became the adult in the room. I became the grown up. I became the person who should know better than everyone else. And that that's been a big change. Yeah.
Matt:I have to be the responsible one that now kind of sucks.
Bryan:Yeah. It's like all of a sudden you're like, oh, I've been around here now for like ten or fifteen years. Like, people are starting to look like I'm not the the new young captain on the squadron anymore.
Matt:Yeah. Absolutely. It's a it's a weird transition. Right? Yeah.
Matt:One day I was a 20 year old kid. Now I'm 40. It's I don't know what happened.
Bryan:Yeah, it happens fast, though. Yeah. You estimate you've flown around 200 star missions. What does that represent to you?
Matt:It's probably a lot more than 200. I'm never kept track. I probably should have, but I didn't. What does that represent to me? That that represents all the work I've done, all the actual operational flying I've done, not just the training, not just the practicing, but the doing it for real, which I think it kind of matters to me.
Matt:I know in speaking on Reddit or other places listening to, say, soldiers complain of having never deployed, never doing something for real, even though the only deployment they can do is go to Latvia, which is important. Don't get me wrong, but it's perhaps not the same as the troops who went off to Afghanistan. This this is this is many operations for me. I will never deploy somewhere unlikely, but each one of those missions was almost a mini deployment. I got to do what I trained to do for real.
Matt:And that's kind of important to me.
Bryan:Yeah. SAR is unique in that sense that they're constantly operating.
Matt:Absolutely. That's one of the things I love.
Bryan:Yeah. Now this is pretty crazy. Last year alone, you flew five hundred hours and 50 missions. How do you sustain that tempo?
Matt:Getting close to burnt out. For the first six months of that, was also acting CO and DCO at the same time.
Bryan:Oh my gosh.
Matt:Yeah, it was a very busy year. 2024. May, 50 missions. Yeah, it was nonstop. How do I sustain that?
Matt:Well, I had Jessica at home helping a lot. Yeah, I had Pete Wright, SEAL who came in halfway through the year and helped me out a lot with that, too. Not only in doing CEO roles, but helping me again take care of the dog. It was hard to sustain. To be honest, it takes a lot of buy and devotion to the job, right?
Matt:I don't have kids. That makes the world a difference from what I've seen in my ability to perhaps work more than I should. Perhaps that's why I'm owed thirty days off.
Bryan:Perhaps. Can you put that in perspective for the listeners? Like five hundred hours, I know that's a lot. Like, that'd be a good year for me on the Aurora, which flies, you know, eight hour, ten hour flights. How crazy of a year is that?
Bryan:Like, what would be a more normal year for you?
Matt:I think most other quarter mile pilots outside of Gander try to get to the three hundred hours a year.
Bryan:Yeah. So you're flying like twice as much or more
Matt:that year. Me, myself, I had more operational hours than the entirety of like four forty two Squadron Cormark flight.
Bryan:That's crazy.
Matt:And I think I basically tied four thirteen. Like we just had a very, very busy year and I lucked out into being there on a lot of missions. I think that year we had something like six fifty operational hours. We end up being roughly somewhere between half and a third of all our hours. We do our operational mission hours.
Matt:I think this year we're running at around 45%. The last time I looked at the stat Wow. Of of how much our flying is just actually done for operations. It is it's I wasn't kidding when I said we're at the busiest star squadron. We are very busy.
Bryan:And I would guess like which is crazy because outside of transport, I would guess that it's like 10%, maybe 20% of flying would be operational in most fleets at at on a good year.
Matt:Yeah. I like I mean, I I don't know what the other fleets do, really. And I I don't know what a fighter considers operational if if doing a patrol over Latvia is considered operational or not.
Bryan:I think it is.
Matt:Yeah. I can't speak to how they they work their numbers. But yeah, we're we're very busy. So yeah, is it easy to sustain that tempo? No.
Matt:Do we have issues with myself and others being certainly unable to sustain at certain point? Yes. But the problem is we are our worst known enemy when it comes to that. Right. Unlike a lot of other jobs in the world, most of us really have a lot of buy in into the mission, into the job.
Matt:You don't need to convince anyone here that why that what they're doing is important or to do it. They truly believe in it. And but we are a worst known enemy, right? They will keep doing it. They will not accept that we go SAR red, that is to say we don't have a crew to maintain SAR posture.
Matt:They will come in on their time off because they they know it's important, even though it sucks. And maybe they shouldn't come in. Maybe we should go star red and just have make sure everyone's getting the appropriate rest they need. So in that aspect, we are a worst known enemy. And I'm not quite sure how to balance that sometimes.
Bryan:When you're maintaining this kind of a tempo, how do you handle the emotions that come with it and decompress?
Matt:I try to keep emotions out of it. It's it's very strange. I mean, that's easier said than done. You know, it's just flying a lot is not necessarily emotional. I mean, obviously there's going to be moments of higher awareness, if you will.
Matt:And yeah, our job, you know, there's a lot of good and bad news. It's a lot of life and death. But maybe I look at it a little differently that. Life and death or saving or not saving someone is not necessarily the only measure of success. I know that sounds terrible, but maybe it is.
Matt:Did we do our best? Did we do everything professionally? Did we do everything we should have? Then yes, we were successful, even though the outcome is not successful for the individual. But maybe we couldn't have changed that.
Matt:Although the other way to look at it is, yes, you save someone, you're successful, but maybe that save was not well executed. And so, yes, the eventual outcome is good, but perhaps how we did it wasn't that great. So maybe I can't I guess I look at it a lot more pragmatically. Having done this job for a long time as to just making sure we're doing our job to the highest professional standard and then the outcome is the outcome. I don't know if that makes sense or not.
Bryan:No, it does. It makes a lot of sense. I think that that's almost the only way you could look at this and survive it long term.
Matt:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's there's lot of cases where the outcome is written before we even get the phone call. Someone falls into the Atlantic without a life jacket at night in four degree water and doesn't know how to swim and he's 200 miles offshore. Yeah, we'll go look for him and we will 100% do our best and try our hardest. But the science is there that the outcome is very unlikely to be positive.
Matt:Physics is physics. So again, by that measure, yeah, we may not have saved that person. Does that mean we weren't successful? Well, yes, but also no, because we went out there the quickest we could. We did everything professionally.
Matt:We just blasted off there. We searched the hardest we could. We had good search patterns, blah, blah, blah. So in that sense, we were successful. And at least at that point as well, we can tell the family members that we did everything we could.
Matt:No one gave up until it was time.
Bryan:Yeah. And you can put your hand on your heart and say we did our best.
Matt:Yeah. And then you're providing at least some closure maybe to the loved ones that no one gave up. Yeah. So success there? I don't know.
Matt:But yeah, keep trying to keep the emotions out of it. Try to keep it more dispassionate, I think is a word we used at RCC.
Bryan:That makes sense. Your furthest missions were 300 nautical miles North of Iqaluit and 300 nautical miles East of St. John's. Can you give the listeners an idea of how remote those spots are?
Matt:So going from Gander to 300 North Of A Tallow, it is roughly the same as going from Toronto to somewhere in Saskatchewan Alberta border.
Bryan:Wow.
Matt:So that's pretty far going 300 miles offshore usually involves bouncing off one of the oil rigs to refuel. So it would be going from Toronto to Ottawa refueling, doing a mission in Montreal and flying all the way back to Toronto. It doesn't seem like far if your only experience is an airliner that flies at 600 miles an hour or whatever they do. But when you're in helicopters at 120 in strong winds, it's a long time. The challenges there are fuel planning.
Matt:Really, that anything else doesn't really matter. It is fuel planning. You better have done a good job because there's really no coming back. You're not pulling over anywhere and get more fuel. And if you got it wrong, you're ending up in the ocean and it's cold.
Matt:It's bloody cold.
Bryan:Now, I know when we were planning fuel critical type operations over the Atlantic in the Aurora, we would have like, I would have me, my FO, my flight engineer, like everyone's running a fuel calc. Are you guys doing that as well?
Matt:Not for the initial get go because I usually get called at two in the morning and I'm sleepy and groggy. And I just quickly bust out the iPad, come up with a plan in about two minutes and go. That's how much I usually spend on flight planning.
Bryan:But what about when you're on scene trying to decide when it's time to go home?
Matt:That being it, you're taking off at a St. John's with a full belly of fuel. Now you have a lot more time to constantly think, consider a bingo fuel, take a look at the wins out there, recompute a bingo fuel, talk about a bingo fuel again and just keep doing that over and over and over again. What I like to do as a technique is I think of a bingo fuel myself, have the F. Think of a big old fuel himself, and then we compare numbers and hopefully they're close.
Matt:Yeah. If they're completely different, then we got to talk. Yeah, yeah. And then we'll still talk and figure out how we came to that number and make sure we're not missing anything. But yeah, that's that's the big one going far.
Matt:And even like when you're going north to Calhoun. Yeah, if you're over the ocean or over overland in the wintertime up there, there's there's only so much difference. Setting down in the middle of Baffin Island in the dead of winter. There's no one else coming, right? Like you are the search and rescue asset.
Bryan:That's
Matt:right. Like you're the one guy and you're on the ground like there's there's no one else coming.
Bryan:Yeah, it's marginally better than being in the ocean.
Matt:It is. Don't get me wrong, but it still sucks. It's going to be cold.
Bryan:Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk a little about your leadership experiences. You were appointed as deputy commanding officer or DCO in 2022. And recently in July 2025, you were appointed as commanding officer or CO.
Bryan:What was the transition like from DCO to CO of one zero three Squadron?
Matt:It was pretty good. Pete, right? I I think you're doing an interview with him.
Bryan:Yes. Next week. Next week. Yeah, you are.
Matt:Super, super good dude. You know, he took over and we work incredibly well together. I mean, Pete and I go way back. So we kind of we are on the same page the whole entire time. So taking off or taking over after all the great work Pete did was essentially easy.
Matt:I never really disagreed with anything Pete did, which was great for continuity in terms of leadership, squadron morale. And I think the whole squadron saw that as well. The biggest fundamental difference, I guess, in shift of a mindset or whatnot is as DCO, which is the real job titles, aircrew leader, I'm there to lead operations, lead the aircrew, basically looking inside, looking inside of the squadron and running the squadron day to day. As CEO, my job is to look outside. Got a DCO to run the place.
Matt:I just need to give them guidance, a bit of the arcs of fire and then that's it. Just let them go. No need to micromanage. Just let them do their own thing. But yes, CO now I got to look out.
Matt:I got to deal with the wing. I got to deal with all those different entities across the Air Force who I don't even know because I've been in SAR my whole life that I didn't know these entities existed, which led to some interesting. First few months where I may or may not have gotten a bit of trouble for certain things I did, but whatever we call that learning. But yeah, that was the biggest difference. But yeah, Pete did a great job of laying a lot of foundation for me.
Matt:I get asked like, what are some major changes you want to do taking over? And I'm like, none. Like, Pete and I are on the same page. Don't want to change anything like, let's just keep going, you know? So that's been really good.
Bryan:Yeah, it's good to inherit a ship that's already running smoothly versus a place that really needs like an overhaul.
Matt:Not only running smoothly, but going in the direction that you also want to go. Yeah. So it's it's been great.
Bryan:Awesome. You've said you basically worked everywhere from the mail room to the CEO's office of 103. What does that journey mean to you and how do you think it helps you now as CO?
Matt:It's it's kind of strange. From my understanding, that's not very common in the the Air Force, even the military to be promoted from within like that. No. To go from captain to DCO to CO. It's fairly rare.
Matt:It's perhaps a little more common at one hundred three for whatever reasons. So on one hand, it's nice that. I've done most jobs, I know the roles, I know what everyone does. I've got that background. On the other hand, just that familiarity with it as well is I have to constantly watch myself to make sure I'm not getting into someone's eye, that I'm stepping back and letting people do their job and I'm staying away from it, even if I think I could do a better job of it.
Matt:No, I can't do a better job. That's not my purpose. My purpose is to make sure they do a better job, make sure the people in the right place and leave them alone. Train them, mentor them, guide them, let them grow, develop them, whatever. But don't do their job for them.
Matt:Let them do it and leave them alone. And and hopefully they come to you when they need help. So it's kind of a duality. In some ways, it's good. In some ways, it's perhaps not as good.
Bryan:You talked about hopefully they come to you when they need help. How do you try to foster an environment where that happens?
Matt:I mean, are leadership principles, right? Which I'm still learning to this day, but they shouldn't be afraid to come see you. You should never criticize, mock them or anything like that when they have a problem or they've done something wrong. Just discuss it. Explain why you think the end result is perhaps not what it should have been and then go over it together and figure out what they were thinking, how they thought the path they took was the better one and explain perhaps why you thought it wasn't.
Matt:And then hopefully they learn from that. And it's a positive experience. Like I made a lot of mistakes as becoming SEAL and I had one or two really good people outside of here at actually at Winnipeg. One guy in particular kind of just listened to what I had to say and didn't ostracized me right away and then just explained to me how I could have done a better job. And that was great.
Matt:Now I can always know I can turn to this guy whenever I screw something up or I need help and it's going to be a positive experience. I guess that would be the biggest thing is the first time they come to you for for help or that they've done something perhaps not well, that it's just still be a positive experience.
Bryan:Yeah, it becomes more of a mentorship opportunity than like disciplinary experience.
Matt:Just learning. That's all. Yeah. And I mean, stuff's gonna happen. That's part of it.
Matt:It's not a big deal. Mhmm. You know, we just had a couple of incidences today of things that went wrong, but we're just gonna fix them and move on with their lives. Yeah. Did anyone die?
Matt:No. Okay, cool. Well, can't be that bad.
Bryan:Let's learn from it. Yeah. What's unique about leaving the busiest star squadron in the country?
Matt:It's busy. It's very busy. Stuff's always coming up. It's hard to to keep on top of it sometimes. Not only do I always want to be flying, but I have this other big job to do.
Matt:And leading is is hard. There's lots of everyone wants to get involved. Everyone outside of the squadron wants to get involved, wants to get their fingers in it sometimes And trying to almost protect the squadron from outside influence at times can be quite challenging. I know that doesn't sound like the correct answer, but it sometimes feels like that where I'm just like, listen, the people here know what they're doing. Please just let them do their jobs.
Matt:But everyone wants to help. And sometimes that's actually not helpful. It comes from a good place and you have to acknowledge that.
Bryan:You talked about this a little bit. How do you balance leadership responsibilities with staying operational?
Matt:I just have not as many days off as I should. I think that's that's how I've come to the conclusion. Yeah. Again, thirty days old, thirty days off my mode. That's probably the solution I found.
Matt:Yeah. Was to was to do both. Yeah. You know, it's it's hard. On the one hand, I try my hardest not to use my position or rank to take flights away from people.
Matt:That's super important. I do not ever give orders to the scheduler. He comes up with a schedule himself. I stay away from that, and I'm trying to be as transparent as I can that I'm not taking flights from people. On the flip side, the schedulers all know me.
Matt:They all know that they can call me at two in the morning and say, Hey, can you take this flight? And the answer will always be yes. Yeah, yes, I can. I can take that shift. I can work that weekend.
Matt:It's not a problem. And that's how I end up usually flying quite a bit was being available to take shifts. It just means I'm not at home very often.
Bryan:Yeah. So for our last question for today, we've talked about that you actually inherited a squadron that was running really well. You didn't want to change anything. So instead of saying what kind of culture are you trying to build? What kind of culture are you trying to maintain at one hundred three Squadron under your command?
Matt:Self motivated people, people with initiative, people who find problems out and find solutions for themselves, people who are not afraid to come to me for solutions. You know, we've often heard the saying, know, don't come to me with problems coming up to solutions. I particularly hate that scene because if someone has a problem and a solution, why are they come to me? Just fix it. And if someone has a problem without a solution, then yes, come to me.
Matt:Let's talk about it. Let's figure it out. Maybe I don't know the answer, but maybe we can find someone with the answer or with a solution. You know, very kind of an adult like culture. I don't want to babysit anyone.
Matt:I don't want the leaders here having to babysit anyone. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Do you treat people like adults and they start behaving like adults or do you wait for them to behave like adults and then you treat them like adults? I don't know. I guess that's that's the overall culture.
Matt:But I. And in leadership, I guess the important part is make sure that you put the correct people in the right places and then just give them a bit of guidance and then it should work and you should just stay out of it. I'm naturally a fairly lazy person, so I try not to get involved in things. Just let people do their things. I don't know.
Matt:I know I just talked in a bunch of riddles and cliches, but does that kind of make sense?
Bryan:Yeah, for sure. Although I do think it's funny that you're talking about yourself as a lazy person who flew five hundred hours last year.
Matt:Well, it's mostly transit, so it's not real hard work.
Bryan:Fair enough. Okay, Matt, that's going to do it for our chat for today. I really enjoyed hearing about your path into the star world, your early flying years and how you worked your way up to being a Cormorant aircraft commander and now the CO one hundred three squadron. When we reconnect, I'm looking forward to digging into some of the missions you've been part of, your approach to leadership, the story of the Outcast nine zero three accident and how you balance the demands of command with running Matt from one hundred three. Thank you so much for being here today.
Matt:Thanks for having me, Brian. I I had a lot of fun.
Bryan:Yeah. I did too. Fly safe. Cheers. Okay.
Bryan:That wraps up part one of our chat with major Matt Neri, better known to the public as YouTuber Matt from one zero three. Tune in next week as we talk about the Outcast nine zero three accident, his time in command, as well as running his YouTube channel, Matt from one zero three. Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this show? Would you or someone you know make a great guest, or do you have a great idea for a show? You can reach out to us at the pilotprojectpodcast@Gmail.com or on all social media at at pod pilot project.
Bryan:And be sure to check out that social media for lots of great videos of our RCAF and mission aviation aircraft. As always, we'd like to thank you for tuning in and ask for your help with the big three. That's like and follow us on social media, share with your friends, and follow and rate us five stars wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for now. Thanks for listening.
Bryan:Keep the blue side up. See you. Engineer, shut down all four. Shutting down all four engines.