All right, we're ready for departure. Here at the Pilot Project Podcast,
the best source for stories and advice from the pilots of the RCAF.
Brought to you by Skies magazine and RCAF today.
I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With me today is my buddy from
flight training days, Rich McDougall. Welcome to the show, Rich.
Thanks for having me on.
Yeah. Ah, man.
Um, all right, before we get started.
We'Ll go over Rich's bio. Rich grew up in Diep,
New Brunswick, and joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 2006
while attending the University Tay de Moncton under the
Regular Officer Training Program. After receiving his
wings in 2011, rich was posted to Four Three Five
Transport and Rescue Squadron in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he
flew the CC 130 H Hercules. While posted to
Four Three Five Squadron, he conducted NORAD and Air
refueling missions around the globe as tanker commander and
instructor pilot. In 2017, Rich
was posted to two Canadian forces flight training school to Instruct
on the CT 156 Harvard. Two aircraft.
Rich joined the Snowbirds in 2019, flying as
Snowbird Eleven during Op inspiration in 2020.
After a lengthy recovery, rich joined the team again for the
2022 airshow season. He is with the team again for
the 2023 season and acting as advance and safety
pilot. Rich has over 2500 military
flying hours. So, we've
known each other for quite a while. We were trying to piece this together,
but I think we met on land survival training.
I think so, yeah.
Uh, I have no idea the answer to this, though. So where did
flying begin for you?
Well, it started with the Cadet program. I knew
I wanted to fly through the cadet program
before joining, so there was a bit of a strategic move
where I lived in Diep in Moncton area.
And there's, like, well, there's two or three huge
100 member cadet squadrons there.
Okay.
I said, if you just go to a small town 20 minutes
away, you might have a higher ODS of getting a flying
scholarship. So I took that advice, and
for six years, I just took a bit of a further
drive to my cadet unit in Sackville,
New Brunswick okay. And went through the steps to get my
glider license there with a few good friends. Ashley
Cadet, who's here today, uh, as glider
set. And then we were again on the power course at the
Moncton Flag College there. Then joined the
forces in 2008, did my
Phase One here in Portage 2010,
started my Phase Two in Moosejaw
and onto the King Air here in 2011 for
my wings. And then that's where the military part of the
career kind of started.
So you're another guy that started out on air
cadets, a firm. There's so many of us. It's,
like, amazing the number of people that join the military
and join the military as pilots through air cadets.
Yeah.
How did you find your flight training experience in the forces?
I loved it. I think military flying training is
pretty unique, and it's really neat being able to do
right into military type, low level
navigation, aerobatics formation flying.
Yeah, totally.
I loved all of it.
Did you have any setbacks?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
You get the odd test failure, and you're on
phase two. Every flight matters, your
score matters, and you get a test failure, and you're.
Like, oh, no, my career is over 100%.
But I think that's one of those things that everyone has to go through
to realize you can have a bunch of bumps in the road and still
get to have an amazing career and get to go where you want
to go.
Right. Did you have any tools that you used to get
through those times just.
To not stress about it, try to think, okay,
every flight, wake up every day as though it's a new day,
and, okay, today is a new flight, let's go out and do what I know
how to do. If I'm worrying about what happened yesterday,
it's not going to help with today, so just concentrate on this flight
kind of thing.
So you ended up as a tanker pilot on the herc.
Was that what you were hoping to get?
Not at all. So I think that's another lesson that I got, is
that sometimes you get sent to an
airframe or a community that you weren't expecting, and
then when you get there, you realize that it's the best
squadron in the CF, is the feeling, uh, that
I had, and I think that happens to a lot of people. You get
to your first unit, your new unit, and there's
no bad cockpit in the CF, there's no bad
squadron. Every squadron has a
unique role and contributes differently
to the greater picture. So I definitely feel like I
won the lottery from, uh, going to four, three, five and flying the
h model and doing the search and rescue otu.
So all the search and rescue training, and then the moment I got
to the unit, immediately started all the air to air
refueling flying. So it was just the
coolest six years.
I loved it.
So at four, three, five, because they are a rescue and tanker squadron,
a firm, do you specialize in one or the other, or do you do
both?
You generally do, and it's changed every couple of years. You
can either be dual quald they did like to stream
members into one or the other because it's two complete different
training plans. So I mainly just
did tanking, and at the end, I started doing some search and
rescue training just prior to moving on to
moosejaw on the harvard there.
Very cool. Yeah.
So how did you end up on the snowbirds? Was that a lifelong goal or
something that just formed along the way?
Yeah, it's something I always wanted to do from
being 1214 years old, going to air
shows, and just anytime that the snowbirds were
coming into Moncton, where I lived, you
could see aircraft going to the airport. So we'd
always hop in the car, drive to the fence and see what
was going on. So I feel like it started there.
And then in 2014, a good friend of mine, um, on
Squadron, then moved on to the
snowbirds. So as soon as that started, it was one of those things where I
wanted to apply, okay, how do I work with you next
year? And we went through the process and, um,
basically to apply to do the role that I'm doing now.
And in discussion with the Co, it was just best for
my career to finish my tanker commander
qualification prior to moving on to something else.
So basically applied and then kind of retracted
my application for a later date.
Yeah.
And that's just because it's generally viewed as
best if a pilot finishes their upgrade
process on their first posting a firm.
Yeah.
So I ended up staying on Squadron for another three years after
upgrading, and that was the best way to do it.
I was going to ask if you were glad that that was the advice that you got and that you
took that.
Oh, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. Then moving
on to two years on the
Harvard Instructing at the Big Two. On phase two. Phase two and Phase
Three and the snowbirds are on the other side
of the ramp, so you're a lot
closer and you see a lot of your own
instructors moving on to the team and you're like,
okay, I think I could do that. And that's when the
interest reignited of, like, okay, let's apply
this year. Even a year before I thought I
would apply it's like, okay, let's just put my name in this year and see what happens.
Uh, and it worked out on the first.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I just did this interview with Blake and he was telling me about how basically,
when you try out, they might say, thanks for coming.
They might say, you're in, or they might
say, not this year, but come back.
Yeah, exactly.
And so on your first year, you got in.
Yeah.
And Blake McNaughton is also another big reason why
I'm on the team. I feel like, know, poked me a couple times
of, like, okay, yeah, you should probably, uh, put your name in. This would be a
good so.
That's funny.
He had a very similar story about someone doing that for
interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, mentorship, man, it gets passed down.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
He's the super snowbird.
Yeah. I love Blake. He was one of my instructors at
Moosejaws.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
It's very cool to see where he's been and where he's
going. How did you find the tryout
process to make the team?
I loved it.
Yeah?
It's very unique. It's very
stressful. It's designed to be
stressful, uh, I think, but it was pretty cool
to have never flown the jet. And
your very first flight in the jet, you're
flying in formation. So your first takeoff is a
stream takeoff. So you're doing your own takeoff, but
you immediately rejoin with another aircraft,
another tutor, and then every flight after that is a
formation takeoff and a formation landing.
So, uh, you barely
learn enough about the jet to fly it. It's more about,
okay, can you taxi it, take off, fly form, land it's
really just to assess how you're doing and what your
learning curve, I guess.
Mhm, is it's a good thing that you had been doing the
instructing at the time then, and already doing formation flying
regularly?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think without that, I guess,
the recency of just being on an airframe that you're flying
formalot, I think it would be more
difficult in the tryout. But, uh,
everybody is different. You might pop in there and
just, uh, be a rock star and it would just flow naturally.
Right.
Yeah.
Some people are just superstars.
Yeah, exactly. Like yourself.
I did all right. What kind of
person makes a great snowbird?
I think you can divide it
into two parts. You have to be
technically good at your job, good at
the flying aspect, and then there's the whole
public relations aspect of like,
how are you going to be in a crowd, how are you going to
interact with the public at the autograph line or
interviews? That kind of thing.
So you have to be a people person.
Exactly. Yeah. So I think that part is, uh,
just as important as the flying or the
maintaining and the technical aspect of it.
Yeah.
It's funny because I think for a lot of people, that's easy to forget
that you guys are a, uh, PR team, you're a relations
team. That's your mission.
Exactly.
And so that interaction piece is so huge for you
folks.
Exactly.
Yeah.
When do you think is the right time to try out for the
snowbirds?
I think the right time to try out for the snowbirds is
after complete your first tour on
another airframe and then apply because
you really want to have a base of experience
prior to, uh, coming in. You
also need an ejection seat tour.
So you either have to be coming in from the fighter
community or you need to have had an
instructional tour on the Harvard of the Hawk kind of thing.
I didn't realize that. I thought you had to have injection seat experience.
So I thought going through as a student on the Harvard was
enough. But you actually need to spend some time instructing.
I'll have to look at the, uh.
Oh, no, you're probably right.
The loading message, it might be worded differently, but I think the
idea is that you want to know generally
more than your seven formation flights. And that makes,
uh, your phase two on the Harvard. It's much
better if you have instructed for a couple of years first or flown
something else. I think anybody can do the
job. I think if you have that
recency, you're just going to catch on way
quicker. And, uh, it certainly helps.
What about time in life? Do you think there's a best time
in life to kind of go for it?
I don't think so.
I think we have some of our pilots in their late twenty
s and into your late
40s. There's quite the range of, uh
yeah, I don't think there's a good time. It's whatever the best
time is for you, I think.
Okay.
I like that. So you mentioned this
a little bit when we talked about who makes a good
snowbird. You mentioned that proficiency is important, and then
you said it's important that you're either a good pilot or a good
technician. So can you tell us more about the relationship
between pilots and technicians on the snowbirds?
Absolutely.
I think, uh, it really reminds me of
my H model, herc days where
you're flying with a variety of trades in
your crew and where at the
end of the day, you're traveling as a family.
The rank relationship is
nonexistent. In a way, you're all there to do a
job, and the
maintainer aspect is the most important
part. So at the end of the day, I feel like it's
their aircraft and they loan it to us for
1 hour at a time. For us to do, uh, our job,
it's very important we rely heavily on our
technicians.
Yeah.
Do you find that you form some pretty close friendships through that?
Very much so, yeah.
When you transit, they fly with you?
Generally speaking, yeah. We now have a support aircraft,
so we're able to carry extra personnel. But
generally the idea is that you would have eleven
aircraft on the road with ten
technicians and your public affairs officer
occupying all 22, uh, seats in the air.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
What does the advance in safety pilot job
entail?
Well, the safety
pilot aspect is what Snowbird Ten
and eleven do at Show Center,
where you're on the radios. You've got
four radios, you got your UHF VHF, you're monitoring
the boss's frequency. You have a secondary.
When you say boss, you're talking the air boss of an air show.
So boss snowbird one.
Okay, got it.
And also the AirBoss. So that's another frequency as
well.
Yeah.
And the air boss, for listeners is like the coordinator of the air
show.
Right.
It's almost like air traffic control gives the air boss
the airspace. During that four or five hour window,
the air boss controls the air.
Okay.
And for our 30 to 40
minutes portion of the show. The air boss basically
gives the safety pilot the
airspace.
Okay.
So they act as a little bit like a mini boss. And part of
our training is that we do the air boss course as
well.
Very cool.
And it's all about monitoring the
radios. It's about helping with certain
smoke errors or anything that might
benefit the formation to speak up
for the show.
Can you give me an example of that?
Well, very often, so we have two smoke
tanks. So the most obvious one is that
each member switches partway through the show.
So if one member is
puffing, if they're running out of smoke, it would be the safety
polish job to say, okay, six puffing. And then they would
switch sometimes inverted mid
maneuver. It's pretty slick when it's done
properly like that.
That's very cool.
And we're also there with our checklists if there was any need
to deal with any sort of red, uh, page or yellow page
emergency. And then we would clear the
airspace and assist as required.
Okay.
My role this year, being the
narrator, you're kind of monitoring what
Snober Ten is doing, but you're also the connection
to the audience. So if something is
going on that is not part of the regular show, you'd be able to
communicate that to the audience as well.
Can I ask you a question?
Yeah.
Do you have like, an announcer voice that you use?
100%.
Introduce the snowbirds for me with your announcer voice.
Oh, goodness. Well, I would
say, uh, good afternoon,
Portage la Prairie, your
2023 Canadian
forces snowbirds and then kind of move on
with the rest of the script from there, but awesome.
Anyway, that's going to make me sound.
Funny, but no, you're good.
Yeah, I love it.
So tell me about the advanced portion of the job.
That's really kind of the meat and potatoes
of what Snover Ten and Eleven do. In a way, we're kind
of like the band manager, the tour manager, in
a way. If I want to put a tie into the music
industry when it just comes to coordinating with
aircraft control, show sites, hotels,
cars, as required, even the advanced part,
it would be just being ahead of the rest
of the formation by an hour or two to make sure that everything's
squared away on site prior to the rest of the team's
arrival. Yeah, we kind of
oversee everything to make sure that we have a smooth show
season.
Yeah.
So I would imagine that that takes a certain type of person
to do that and do it well. Attention to
detail, someone who enjoys helping
others. Am I on the right track with, uh, that? Yeah, I
feel like some people's personalities wouldn't be well suited
to doing that.
It's similar to being an OPSO in a way.
You're monitoring all the pieces of the puzzle. You're
juggling, uh, everything that's being thrown at you. You make sure that
it all falls into place at the right time.
Does the advance in safety pilot go through the same tryout
process?
I think it depends on the
individual. I think some members will go through the
tryout process and the tryout process
is all about seeing where people are best
suited.
Okay.
But there also have been members who have been brought in
specifically for the advanced and safety pilot
where you wouldn't have to do that tryout, but you would
have your own conversion course to fly the jet
and to fly the formation bits as well.
So you can get headhunted basically as, uh, the advanced and safety
pilot affirm.
Yeah.
Very cool. Can the advanced and safety
pilot act as a backup if, say, one of the main
members are sick or unavailable to fly for some
reason?
The way I like to answer this question is that
everyone in the formation from
one to eleven is trained to do their
specific job where it would be
very difficult for any member to be taken
out and for someone else to just switch to do their
job. Whether it's flying or aspects on the
ground, everyone's trained to do their role.
I guess your routines are so intricate that it would be extremely
difficult. You would have to know every single
pilot's job throughout the show.
It probably not be very safe to exactly. To
try to do that and to just fill in.
Exactly.
Okay.
The advantage is that we also fly the
extra jets so the spare jets. So if
anything aircraft related prior to the show were to
happen, we are able to have our jets be part of
the show with the appropriate pilot for
that position.
Okay. If that happens, do they renumber them or
does eleven go in the show?
Eleven would go in the show.
Okay. Yeah.
Ten or eleven.
Yeah. Right on.
What's a day in the life of a snowbird pilot. And let's divide
that into training and
the show season because I know that those must be super different
times.
Okay. Training season. The
team is booked for two to three flights per
day. It depends on the week. Depends what the ops and maintenance
schedule looks like for that week. But I think if you were to
go, the 100%
push would be two main formation
flights per day plus one
solo or any other member of the squad that needs
an extra flight for like an IRT or something like
that.
Right.
And for the listeners, an IRT is your yearly instrument
qualification.
Exactly. Yeah.
That's crazy. Yeah, that's a lot.
So you would aim for ten formation
training flights per week for
the team. But, uh,
prairie winters, uh, do get in the way of that.
That's a rarity to get all ten or anything close to that.
Really.
I want to loop back to what you were saying about two to three flights
per day just so the audience can appreciate
how intense that is because you folks aren't
just doing straight and level
or you're going to do some transits, obviously, for
training and currency. But a lot of what you're
doing is really intense. Pulling G
concentration and high intensity. You
must be exhausted by the end of the day.
Yeah.
And you think of each flight you have
likely an hour, sometimes more of a
brief and debrief on top
of the 1 hour, 1.5 hours flight
that you did. So each flight takes up
a large chunk of your day. So if you're flying twice or three
times, you're in for a long day.
Yeah.
That's amazing. That must be just
exhausting. But I bet it's a good
exhaustion because if you're there, nobody gets on the
snowbirds without being passionate about being in the snowbirds.
So you're doing what you love all day.
Exactly. And then you sleep really well at night because you
have to.
That's training. What about the show season?
The show season. So we basically train
from November until the end
of March or until Easter weekend. And the goal
is to generally around that time of
year, go to Comox for three weeks to then
put the show together, if you will, with the same type
of training schedule. So you're looking at two flights per day,
or three, uh, if you need. And during that three
week period, we'll aim to
leave with a completed show to then
present as the home opener back in Moosha or sometimes
in Comox as well.
Okay. Who designs the show?
I believe it's the boss. Generally, I think everyone
has input on what could happen, but really it's the boss's
vision that puts the show together. Snowbird one.
Yeah.
And I imagine snowbird one is always somebody who's been on the team for a
while and has the experience.
Exactly. And once we do our
acceptance show, your
traditional year, we haven't had a normal year in
the last four, uh, years due to COVID and
everything else. But generally speaking, the
snowbirds would do a
weekend show and a Wednesday show.
So you would, on Tuesday,
transit to your Wednesday show, do your show on
Wednesday, on Thursday, transit to your
weekend show, and practice Friday, show
Saturday, show Sunday, and then Monday is your
maintenance day off. And the cycle
goes on from basically
May till October.
So from May to October, you're getting about one day off
a week.
Generally speaking, this year is a little bit different. We're not doing
midweeks, so we're getting a day or two extra
at each show site, which really helps with
public outreach. So that would have been a bit of an
intense schedule for that amount of time. Uh, and
generally we do get one weekend off in the summer as well
for, uh, kind of your leave week.
Okay.
Yeah.
It sounds intense.
Yeah.
And that goes all the way up to your season, closer
mid or end October and right
into the training for the next year. So it takes all
twelve months to keep the cycle going. So, uh,
it's never much of a break and it's never a
dull moment.
It's great.
So, speaking of that yearly cycle, is it a new
tryout every single year, or do members who
are already on the team, do they have to try out again to
be on the team the next year, or how does that work?
No, once you're on the team, the tryout is
aimed at finding new members
for, uh, the formation, for the team. And,
uh, if you only find one pilot that's
suitable, that's who you're going to get for that year. So
everyone else would remain in the formation kind of thing. And then
you could, in theory, have up to four new pilots, uh, as well.
So kind of half of the show formation.
Okay.
What did you find was the hardest part of being on the snowbirds
when you first started?
I'm going to have to think about that because honestly, uh,
it's definitely not easy. But I think everything we
do within the snowbirds is a bit of
a challenge and I think I love that challenge. Mhm, so I think it's hard
for me to think of something that's hard because I think I just love
that.
You like the hard stuff.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Well, let me ask you this then, because my follow up is always,
how did you overcome that? So what keeps you excited to
keep doing the hard stuff?
I'll draw a parallel to
every show or practice we do.
We record it. Mhm, so during the
debrief, we're always looking at what errors were
made and, uh, the goal is to just always do
better on the next flight. So
I think your question was how to overcome or how to deal
with those challenges. I think you're always just trying
to get better. So I think that's what
you're focusing on. So every flight that
you do or every experience you have is a great
lesson to be better. The next show, the next
flight, the next interaction, the next brief, whatever it
is. So I think the overcoming part is
just the motivation part of striving for
excellence.
It reminds me of the description of tryouts, right.
That's something they instill in you from day one is
be better, be better, always improve.
Um, what would you say is your.
Most memorable flight in the snowbirds?
My most memorable flight, I
think I always say, is a flight I did with
Jen during Op Inspiration, where
we were leaving Nova Scotia
to overfly Pei.
The main formation was going to overfly Pei, then recover
in Moncton for, um, a fuel stop.
So Jen and I
took off after the formation.
We went over to Pei, kind of
overflow the bridge, then came back. I overflow
Sackville, New Brunswick, my old cadet town.
Very cool.
Was able to smoke one jet over the city,
a circle or two and then head up towards
Moncton and, uh, just that route basically
overflow the road that I grew up on. So
I was able to overfly my house and
overfly the city of Moncton Diep
and land in Moncton, where I did all of
my private pilot training at the
Moncton flight college. And it's op
inspiration. It was early in the op inspiration, but
we land and there was probably 200 people at the
fence there to watch us, uh, just
refuel, do our thing and take off again. And my parents were
there, my brother was there, and it was my mom's birthday.
So there's just a lot of elements there that it's like, I
got to overfly my house, my old cadet town.
Yeah.
That's my most memorable flight of my career.
I think that's so cool.
Yeah, it was a good memory.
How neat is it to be back at the airport where you
were just struggling to fly a single engine
prop? You know what I mean? When you're a brand new baby
pilot trying to remember your checklist and stuff, and then to
be back there, who would have thought you would be back there as a
snowbird?
Yeah.
And we had Moncton and Dip was
one of our show sites this year. So
I kind of had that moment again where we're parked at
the ramp right next to the Moncton Flight college. The Moncton Flight
College were basically our hosts there.
So it's 2023. I did my private license in
2003. So 20 years after having, uh,
started flying at MFC there, pretty cool
to be bringing the team back to
where it all started for me. And to watch kids on the other
side of the fence there, where it's like, okay, 25
years ago, that was me.
That might be another snowbird.
Yeah, exactly.
So what's the craziest situation you've had to deal with
as the advanced and safety pilot?
I feel like there's always crazy
situations. Coordination wise, I
think one crazy
situation would have been it was in
Kamloops the day before the know, jen
and I land ahead of the team. The team lands. I
coordinated everywhere we go. We need
oxygen, we need diesel. So a lot of these sort
of non standard requests for a lot of aircraft
that go in operating out of, uh,
FBOs.
And for the listeners, FBO is, uh, actually, I
don't know what FBO stands for.
Fixed base operator.
Oh, there you go. Fixed base operator. It's basically a gas
station for airplanes.
Yeah.
Uh, if you have your own aircraft, uh, that's where you
gas up your plane and park.
Yeah.
And get hanger space or whatever you need.
And I, uh, think the weird part is
that Kamloops is not the biggest airport. There
aren't that many providers of these services.
And there was one hangar,
one provider that could provide our
oxygen and diesel,
but it wasn't where we got our fuel. And it's like. If
we parked on their part of the ramp, they could bill
us for parking. We take up a lot of room. So we ended up just
parking on the main apron. And as soon as we
landed, he was like, well, you guys didn't park on my ramp.
So I was like, oh no, yeah.
No apologies, we need to park here, unfortunately. And
then that person then proceeded to
hang up the phone, not bring us our
oxygen or nitrogen or diesel.
No.
So we're basically now stuck at that airport because we need
all of those elements to take off the next day. So then
I'm trying to phone him back. He left the airfield. He
was not happy with us that we didn't park on his ramp.
So there was a misunderstanding there, obviously.
And, uh, he was not willing to help
us out. So I had to call other
airports. We had to have, um, oxygen and
nitrogen trucked in from 2 hours away in other airports.
So it was a very exciting evening of trying to
put all that together so that we could leave the next day. So that
was stressful, uh, and rewarding when it
all worked out too.
Oh my gosh, that is actually
legit crazy.
Yeah.
It's not a flying story, but I was just
so surprised of like, oh, well, we now can't leave here,
so how do I fix this?
Well, that's exactly the kind of story I was hoping for, though. I wanted
to know. I'm sure you folks deal with all kinds
of unexpected wrinkles in plans
and, uh, logistics and all kinds of
different things.
Yeah, that was one of them.
Normally we ask what your hardest day was in the RCAF, but
you and I both know the answer to that. After the
crash of Stalker 22, and with Canadians everywhere
struggling during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the Snowbirds began
a cross country tour of flypass to raise the country spirits as
part of Operation Inspiration. You mentioned a
crash on May 17, 2020 in
Kamloops, BC. The tutor in which Rich and Team Public
Affairs Officer Jen Casey were taking off hit a bird
leading to a low level Ejection. Jen did not
survive. How did that day start for you?
Well, that day started, I think, with a
walk through the park adjacent to our
hotel and we grabbed some nitro cold
brews and headed to the FBO. I think
we were planning to overfly Kamloops
and other areas, but the weather just wasn't going to cooperate with
us that day. So we just
all went to the more it wasn't
IFR, but it was, uh, more of a lower cloud day.
So we kind of just knocked our plan off
and just decided to go directly to
Comox. So, um,
we're all there at the FBO planning for
that. And then Major, uh,
Wicket, who was flying the other aircraft,
and myself and Jen, uh, and
one of our maintainers were heading out to the aircraft to
depart an hour or so before the rest of the formation,
and that's the rest is history, I guess.
Yeah. So just a normal morning.
Yeah, exactly.
Can you take us through that takeoff and your experiences
through the following events?
Yeah, so I'll go through it
ah. As well as I can. There still
are elements that haven't fully
come back, so there's, like, chunks of the flight that
are more, um, of an image than a
memory. But, yeah, it was just a normal
takeoff. I was number two. So,
uh, snober ten is leading,
so I'm not looking ahead. Your eyes are glued,
uh, to the right for me, to the lead
aircraft.
Yeah.
And just if I could just jump in for a moment. For
listeners who haven't flown formation before, there's a
lead plane, and anyone who's not the lead is
just staring at the person they need to keep station
on. Um, they're making all their adjustments based
on what the other person does with power and
control, and they aren't
looking anywhere else but at that other plane.
That's right.
So we're on the
takeoff. Roll the takeoff. We clean up the aircraft, and
it's pretty much at the gear up, flaps up
confirmation, literally at
the end of the runway, the departure end
of the runway at
around 160 knots and
100ft off the ground, which is not
that's not very fast for our aircraft.
That, uh I just kind of
felt it almost kind of felt like an explosion in a
way. Like, it was a very large bang
and rumbling sound,
and it was a very small
bird. I didn't see it, uh, from the angle that I was
looking, but Jen yelled the word bird,
and, uh, at that point,
you go through your red page,
checklist response items, and
basically what you're just looking to do at that point is
exchange kinetic energy for potential energy. So
you want to exchange whatever air speed you have for whatever
altitude you can get. So you're kind of zooming straight
ahead, slightly away from lead, because the
moment you're away from lead, you don't know where they are. So for safety, you want to
create a little bit of a buffer. And at that
point, the moment it happened,
you're just at 100ft. I just kind of
see a bunch of roofs of houses
in front of me. And even in just that, like, half
second, as the impact had just happened, I already kind
of saw, uh, a change in my
energy vector, where it was like, okay, well, immediately it
looked like I was about to plow through,
like, five, six houses kind of thing. So I
was like, okay, well, evidently, I don't want to do that.
So I know that there's more of a field to the
left. There's not a neighborhood
everywhere. So I was like, okay, I'm going to try to deviate
slightly left.
And at this point, did you know, like, the engine is
gone.
I knew I wasn't getting thrust
or effective thrust. And from talking
to the lead, he basically said it literally looked like
you just started going backwards. Like it was just an
immediate just.
A loss of power.
And at that point, there's
probably three, 4 seconds that I still
don't remember at all. But I
do remember the point at which we needed to get out
of the aircraft and we were very low
level. And then when it came to the point
of getting out of the aircraft for myself, I
just remember an
entire second went by where you think, that's not a lot of time,
but it's almost like time froze for a moment
where I didn't feel the seat, I didn't feel the
parachute. I just kind of felt like I was tumbling through the
air.
And.
That'S it moment. It was like, okay, well, I'm just
falling.
So you've already pulled the handles.
Exactly.
And what did that feel like when you pulled those?
I remember from speaking with people who
had ejected previously and recently,
what they had described. So it's interesting
what goes through your mind in 0.1
2nd, uh, as you're actioning something, but
I remember the thought of, like, okay, well, I'm going to
want to watch what's going on. The
intent was to your eyes are open. You want to pay
attention so you can report back what you're
seeing, and all of that is gone. Like, I just literally remember
being out of the aircraft at that point. Like, I remember
reaching down, and I remember being out of and then you're.
Out of the aircraft.
Exactly. Wow.
I don't remember the Ejection force at
all. And after what felt like tumbling
for a bit, I do remember the feeling
of a parachute unraveling or
something going into the airstream that
was starting to slow me down. So I remember,
okay, the parachute is opening. So we
all did our training. Uh, a lot of the pilots
in the forces did their training, ejection sheet training
with, uh, Mario mhm. So I remember, okay, look
up and see if you have a canopy or what you have. And I just
remember sort of fabric kind
of moving away from me. Your fabric behind me is like,
okay, something is starting to action.
So you could see the parachute, but you didn't have a canopy
deployed.
I can't even say that I saw the parachute. I think I just saw stuff
moving backward kind of thing, or stuff behind
me. And then your
next thought is, okay, I need to look down and see what's going on below
me. And I just looked down and
didn't even take half a second. It was like, oh, that's a
roof. And just boom. Uh, I just remember looking down and
colliding with a roof.
Yeah.
So I collided in this seated position.
I still had my seat pack on that's attached.
It's like a fiberglass box that you're sitting on with a bunch of
survival equipment and a raft, uh, et cetera.
And I remember everything very clearly after
that.
So before we jump into that, at that
point, uh, you eject jen
ejects do m you guys have any idea where each
other are? Or boom, you're on your separate
trajectories.
You have no concept of where you're going. You have no concept of
whatever else is happening around you for sure.
So you've hit the roof, and what happens next?
Well, uh,
it's emotional to think about it because it was a pretty traumatic event. Uh,
but it was just excruciating pain. It was just instant.
Like, it just felt like I had broken every bone in
my body. It just felt like I had just
shattered my entire back. I definitely felt like I
had just shattered my feet. So
I just remember screaming
uncontrollably, but then a few seconds
later, you're like, okay, all right. I catch my
breath, but then it's like, okay, now I'm just going to keep screaming because
I had the essay. I was like, okay, well, if I'm making noise,
someone will know that I'm here.
Mhm.
I also remember a little bit of the parachute kind of
draping over my head. I didn't
know if I could move at that point. So
just from first aid training and having
my mom is a physiotherapist and hearing about a
bunch of trauma situations previously, I was like, okay, I'm
going to wiggle my toes, wiggle my fingers. Am I
paralyzed? No, I can wiggle everything
okay. But I was kind of, like, arms
bent. I didn't really want to move anything because
everything hurt. So I kind of just moved
my wrist to kind of try to pull the parachute away from
my face, because
I do remember hearing the other jet flying above
me. So it was like, okay, I'd like to see or like, maybe if I'm moving a
bit, he'll know that I'm okay. And then it was almost
immediately that someone was on the
roof with me in my face, asking me if I'm
okay.
This is like a civilian yeah.
In the neighborhood. And I believe they
were, uh, an off duty first responder.
Wow.
So immediately I had all the right
people with me. And within two,
three minutes, I already had two other squadron members on the
roof with me, just because it was so
close to the airport.
It must have been good, though, to see some familiar faces at that
point.
Yeah, it was almost confusing.
It was like, what are you doing here?
So immediately you're able to have a bit of
smile on your face and kind of forget what just
happened. So that right. There
was a lifesaver for those people to be there on the roof
with me. And they were with
me. One of them was with me all the way
to that evening, uh, in the hospital. So
I remember the fire crew had come
onto the roof. They cut everything off of
your body. They cut your boots off. They tried to remove the
boots, and by untying, I was like,
no, you're not doing that.
They placed me onto neck
brace, body brace. I was on a stretcher. And
I just remember at that point, I had nothing
on, and they were about to move me,
and I just kind of had the idea. I was like,
hey, are you able to cover me up a little?
Like you were naked, literally.
Yeah.
So the crew that
was there, he kind of chuckled. He's like, okay, if you're
cracking jokes and you're worried about that, you'll be fine.
Uh, and then was brought to the hospital after
that.
Okay. It all happened.
Seemed very quickly.
That's intense.
Yeah.
And during this time,
were you wondering where Jen was?
Yeah, I've been told that I was asking about
her the entire time on the roof. And
my other squadron members up there had
the good frame of mind to just tell me, oh,
yeah, she was over there. There's people with there,
everything's going to be okay. Um, just
changing my focus.
Did they already know that she had passed?
They would have known.
Yeah. That must have
been really a hard thing for them as well, uh,
to do that.
Yeah.
And one of the members that was up there was one of our
medical personnel, and
there were already members with Jen. And as soon as he got to the site,
he knew and he
had the instinct to then go check on me because he was expecting
the same result for both. Um, so I think
when he got to me, it was just kind of a big relief.
You're like, holy crap, you're
breathing. And then that member stayed with me for the rest of the
day.
Do they know why you were able to survive your
ejection?
I think it's just a combination of the
parachute having provided enough of
a deceleration combined
with the parachute didn't open. It never reached steady
state.
I shouldn't say.
It didn't open. It didn't open to a, uh, steady state.
Like it never completed. It never finished opening.
No.
And then I think also the fact that I landed
on a roof took some of the
shock. And I think also the fact that I landed on
my seat pack just made it a fiberglass, was
able to all of those things
combined provide a
survivable situation. But
I'll use the word miracle and just that it
doesn't make any sense. Uh,
I shouldn't be here. And I feel very
fortunate that I am.
Yeah, we're all glad.
So you got to the hospital and they had a chance
to look you over, and
what injuries did you end up sustaining?
I do remember one moment of going
through being taken out of the
ambulance into the
emergency and kind of you're on a stretcher. Uh, all you can see is
straight up, and you're going through the
automatic hospital doors. And
I just remember in that moment, as I'm going through the hospital
doors, like, holy crap, your life has just
changed forever. So that
was a bit of a realization of, like, holy crap, you're
here. And
the, uh, injuries that, uh, I was
told at that, uh, time were that I
had broken three vertebrae and just
shattered a bunch of bones on my feet was basically the
result.
Wow. Yeah.
What was the recovery like from that
long? I don't think they knew.
Just due to the communication between the hospital and
perhaps the military medical side, I
think the injuries were maybe described or perceived differently.
So I think at one point, uh, they
had booked an aircraft to come pick me up
just over a week later. And the idea was
like, oh, we're not going to send him home until he can walk on a plane, or
something like that. And that was absolutely not going to happen.
I was on a stretcher that entire
time. And my mom is a
medical professional, and I think the only reason why I was actually
sent home at that time, eight days later, was because my
mom was going to be with me for a couple of months at home. I
had a full hospital set up in my room,
a hospital bed. And had that not
been the case, I would have likely stayed in the hospital
for quite a few weeks.
Yeah.
But it was eight days, and then you were able to because of
that, we're able to go home.
Yeah. Medevac back to Moose
Jaw, and, uh, one
year later is where I
was in a wheelchair for a long
time. Your first six weeks or
so, you're not supposed to spend much time
sitting. You're supposed to be laying down for your
back to heal. So graduated from the
wheelchair to the walker to crutches to then a
cane. I remember a year later at the
anniversary, I think it was the first day that I
dropped the cane. I was like, I can now walk
without the cane and with great
difficulty. And I think after a couple of weeks, I was like, no, I still need
the cane. So another six months later, I still
have the cane at home, uh, on the OD time that I do need it, because there's the
OD bad day where I still need it.
Oh, wow.
Because, uh, I basically don't have cartilage in my right
foot anymore. So there'll always be a bit of an issue,
but manageable, and I'm doing everything that I can
for it to be as functional as possible.
Yeah.
So if we take it back a little bit to when you were still in
hospital and the day of
or the following days, when and how did
you find out that Jen had passed?
It was that night. I feel like I knew,
ah, after a while, I was in the emergency room kind of
asking other, uh, personnel
if Jen was there or there'd be other
people coming in with their medical emergency on a
stretcher. And I was noticing that none of
them they were saying was Jen. So I was like, either she's
completely fine or not.
And, uh, I think it was probably like
08:00 at night, different people cycled through
from the unit. And then it was our snowbird
one at the time that came in and he delivered the
news and at that point I already
knew. Um, and even just overhearing them in the hallway,
I heard a bit of a whisper like, does he?
Yeah.
So once you found out that Jen had passed away,
what effect did that have on you mentally and the crash
itself?
I don't think my heart rate went below
130 beats a minute for,
uh, maybe 72 hours. At that
point, you don't even fully know
what your situation there's a lot
going through your mind. You don't know if you're
going to be able to walk again. You don't really know
what has happened. You're on a
lot of drugs. Yeah, I don't know how
to answer that.
Just what, uh, effect it had on you mentally,
that's your short term, but in the long term, how did you find that this
has affected you?
Oh, it's been the single most difficult thing in
my life.
Yeah.
And how have you healed since? Because you're back
flying with the snowbirds. Obviously there's been a
degree of healing and obviously there's a part of this that will
never go away and will never be better.
But how have you healed from it? I don't
know that you ever
really heal from it. I think you just learn how to live with
it.
And how have you done that?
With a lot of mental health.
And.
Uh, the forces has been, uh,
they set me up with someone from Kamloops that has able
to help, uh, quite a bit.
Okay.
Yeah.
So once you had some time
to physically heal and you
spent a lot of time in recovery, so you had a lot of time to think. Did
you know right away that you wanted to get back into flying?
Yeah, that was one of my first questions I asked the
doctor that night. I
just kind of wanted to know. I was like,
am I being told right now that I'm
never going to walk again? Never going to fly again? I just kind of
said, how is this looking? Just because I
felt that, uh, it was pretty bad day to
begin with. Let's just get everything out of the way. What else do I need
to be prepared for and accept? And
he right away said he's like, you know,
I've seen injuries in some cases that were worse
in a helicopter crash that they were able
to fly again. So he said, uh, I can't
speak to how you're going to recover, but I think
you could make a recovery to the point of being able to fly
again.
And how did that make you feel?
That was motivation to push for that to
happen.
What was it like for you to get back into flying after the crash?
Did you feel like the military encouraged you to get back into the
cockpit?
Very much so, yeah. The chain of command,
the whole team have been there for me
and with me throughout. I was posted to the
transition center and then back to the
snowbirds this year, but I never really left the team. This is how it has
felt anyway. And uh,
two years after the fact, I
was able to get a
passenger approval. M, the idea was just
to see before they allowed me to fly
an aircraft again, they just want to see how it is to fly
in a military aircraft again. So I flew my first
flight with Eric Temple. It's number ten, just around
Moose Jaw.
So you're right back into a tutor.
Right back into a tutor. And it
put a smile on my face. It felt like I was
at home again. So I just knew from that flight I was like,
okay, this is good, I need to keep doing this.
That's so good. So you had no
trepidations, no lingering
fears from being back in that cockpit?
No, I think there always are those
things, but I think my trauma doesn't have
to do. I haven't associated it to
flying. I've definitely associated
it, uh, to loss. So I think that
bit, uh, I'm always going to have challenges with.
But when it comes to flying, that's when I can put
everything else aside and just concentrate on flying. And that's
my happy place.
I'm so happy for you. That's the way it's worked out.
Yeah.
I feel fortunate.
Yeah, you are.
What advice would you give to young pilots in the RCAF who
may have to recover from tragedy in the line.
Of duty that the Canadian armed forces
have the resources available and are
there for you, free to do your recovery? Uh, I don't think
I'll say anything more than that, other than the system is there for you and it
works.
Yeah, I agree completely. People who've listened to the show
will know that I've gone through my own mental health issues while in
the military and I can't say enough good things about the
care I've received. And uh,
especially you can look at it a couple of ways. My
experience has been they care about you as a person. You're also an asset, so they have
a vested interest in you getting better. So
people who are afraid that it's going to be a system that doesn't
look out for them, it's just a misconception as far as I've experienced.
Personally.
I'd like to wrap up this tough topic by remembering
jen, what do you want people to know about her.
She was a force to be reckoned with. I think, uh,
I admired her. Uh, we all did.
Just working with her and watching her
through the previous Ejection
and through other challenges with the
Squadron and Op inspiration,
it really made me feel
like anything was achievable. It was kind of
like the attitude of seeing all the barriers
and seeing how something could not happen that was
not part of her language. It was always like, well,
this is happening. We're going to find a way for this to happen and,
uh, let's do it. So I think that
has reset a
mindset in me to keep
going, even just when it comes to going back flying. Just
to never give up and just focus on the goal. And then
with Jen's mindset, uh, you'll get
there. I love that.
So we're down to our last three questions. We
ask them on every show. I think they're really great questions.
I came up with them.
Well, then they must be great.
What is the most important thing you do to keep yourself ready for your
job?
Sleep 8 hours per night.
Yeah. Just take care of yourself, eat well, go to the
gym, sleep well. And then that gives you, um,
the focus and the ability to focus on,
uh, your job. That's what works for me.
Yeah. It's a simple answer, but it's a good one.
Uh, I'd rather sleep
than study through the night for something.
Divide your time accordingly for you to study when you're going to be
effective at studying and then take care of yourself to be
rested and able to go on to your next flight or flight test or
whatever it might be.
Yeah, I fully agree. There's a time for studying, but you need your rest.
Exactly.
Yeah.
What do you think makes a good pilot?
I would say just the mindset of
always wanting to keep learning
and having new experiences.
Different airframes, different, uh, communities,
excel in. It could be low
level VFR flying or
international IFR operations
or more tactics. So I think
a good pilot should strive to learn as
many things as they can to round
their experience.
Okay.
Final question. Uh, picture in your head someone who's listening
to the show, who is maybe an air
cadet who's interested in joining, or somebody who's just applied,
or someone who is on their flight training right now in the
RCAF. What would your advice be to that new
pilot?
To never give up. It took me
two and a half years. It felt like three years to
actually join the know.
I was rejected twice, so I've applied three times
to join as a pilot. One was
from one grade on my
high school diploma that was too low or something. And
they're like, okay, cool, just try again next year.
Okay.
And then I was rejected a second
time for my eyes.
Which one?
I went to my Ophthalmologist he was like, my machine could be off by that much
any day. Like your 2015 vision, you're good to
go. So sometimes there's little bumps in the road
that if you just keep pushing through them, they
might just be tiny bumps. So if you see
any obstacles, just keep going right on.
Okay, Rich, that's going to wrap up the interview for the audience.
I think it's kind of a cool thing to note that we're sitting here
in my basement in Portage la Prairie. Rich is in his red
snowbird flight suit because he has taken time
out of a day where he's in the middle of coordinating a show here
in Portugal Prairie for the staff and family
members at three Cfffts. So he's
an extremely busy person, but he's still taking the time out to
be here today, and I'm really thankful for that. But I'm also
thankful, Rich, that you're willing to open up to us today about
a really tough topic in your life.
Absolutely.
And it really means a lot to me that you're willing to share that with
us. And I'm really excited for Canadians
to hear your story and to learn a little bit more about Jen as
well.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, thanks for being here.
Cheers.
Okay, that's going to wrap up our chat with Rich about his
time on the snowbirds, as well as his journey after the
Snowbird Eleven crash and losing Jen Casey.
Remembrance Day is fast approaching and it can be a difficult
day for many of us. For my multiengine instructor
and friend, Mike Hool, it's the hardest time of the
year. For our next episode, we'll sit down with Mike and
talk about his experiences over seven tours in
Afghanistan, as well as taking part in the
repatriation of 13 fallen Canadians.
Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard or would
you or someone you know make a great guest on the show? You can
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thepilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com
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