The Ice Pilots (13 page)

Funny how life works.
On the one hand you have a guy like French Larry, twenty years old and with his life seemingly mapped out. For Larry, Buffalo may be a stepping stone to something else, but his short-term dream is to fly the vintage propliners that make Buffalo unique.

Then there’s Justin Simle, chief pilot at Buffalo and favourite of many women who watch
Ice Pilots.
The way Justin tells it, his arrival at Buffalo was not quite as well planned as Larry’s. Yet here he is, ten years later, having forged a career for himself as one of the world’s most accomplished young pilots of World War II aircraft.

If there is one person other than Mikey who has seen his personal stock rise as a result of the
Ice Pilots
phenomenon, it’s Justin. Standing about six feet tall and thin as a rake, Justin oozes frontier cool. His square jaw is punctuated by a deep cleft in his chin, and his big brown eyes look right through you. No matter where we went, Justin was recognized—and apparently loved. From shop clerks to the waitresses in the diners where we ate our lunches, the ladies all seemed to have a kind word for Justin, and he for them.

I first met Justin in the Pilots’ Lounge at the Buffalo hangar. Like everything else about Joe McBryan and the world he’s created, the Lounge harkens back to an earlier age. Its style is distinctly retro. Yet it doesn’t take a Debbie Travis or Martha Stewart to realize that while the Lounge is not long on tasteful furnishings, it is functional and serves a real-world purpose. Like Joe himself, there is no pretense about the place. It is what it is and does what it does. If you don’t like it, get the hell out.

Three desks and chairs line the perimeter of the room; they sit under a series of old shelves sagging under the weight of dozens of technical publications: crew resource management (CRM) manuals, GPS manuals, approved check pilot courses, training manuals, and study guides for the various planes in the Buffalo fleet: the DC-3, the DC-4, the C-46, the Electra, and the CL-215. A window looks out onto the hangar.

When they’re not flying or running around doing the hundreds of other chores that comprise their day-to-day lives, the Lounge is where you’ll find Buffalo’s pilots. Here they pass the time between flights, entering data into log books or brushing up on the technical aspects of the planes they command. If Justin is in the hangar, chances are he’s in the Lounge.

From what I can tell, Justin is about as far away from Joe as a human can possibly be—on the outside. He is warm and engaging, and rarely—if ever—loses his cool. Not that he hasn’t had the opportunity to. Justin has been flying with Buffalo since May 29, 2001, his twenty-first birthday. He has had his share of close calls and exciting experiences. Buffalo may be “only” a small airline operating out of a small town in northern Canada, but it has afforded a guy like Justin the opportunity to see and do things he may otherwise have only dreamed about, such as his inclusion on a team charged with transporting two short-range CL-215 water bombers on a 12,000-kilometre (7,500-mile) odyssey from Yellowknife to Ankara, Turkey.

Production of the Canadair CL-215 water bomber (affectionately known as “the Duck” to those who fly her) began in 1969, the first in a series of firefighting flying boats built by Bombardier, the Canadian civil and military aircraft manufacturer. Though production of the Duck stopped in 1989, the planes are still widely used today throughout northern Canada as well as a number of other countries, including Italy, Thailand, Turkey, Serbia, France, Greece, and the United States. Bombardier currently builds the CL-415, a bigger, more powerful turboprop version of the CL-215.

Contrary to what most people think, the primary responsibility of the 215 in firefighting operations is
not
to put out fires, but to reduce their intensity, thereby giving ground crews a chance to attack the fire using hand pumps, chainsaws, axes, and other hand tools. The 215 can scoop some 5,000 litres (1,320 gallons) of water off nearby water sources (rivers, lakes, oceans) at airspeeds between 140 and 150 kilometres an hour (87–93 miles per hour). The 215 needs a water source about 1.5 kilometres (1 mile) long and 2 metres (2 yards) deep; it can fill its tanks in about ten seconds and empty them in one. Typically, the planes are also equipped with foam-injection equipment that mixes the water with fire-retardant foam. Assuming a suitable water source is close by, the Duck can deliver as many as 125 loads of water and retardant in a single day.

The 215 is a marvel of engineering technology. The craft is designed to take off and land on short, remote airstrips, and operates efficiently at low speeds. Its high wings offer its crew greater visibility over water sources and drop zones, which can mean the difference between success and disaster in the insanely difficult conditions its pilots often fly. The plane is easy to manoeuvre in the heavy gusts, violent updrafts, and fierce turbulence that characterize forest fires. No wonder the Turks wanted the two planes so badly; production of the 215s stopped in 1990, and the planes are not easy to come by, a result of their utility and palatable price tag.

For Buffalo Joe,
the water bomber deal could not have come at a better time, as Buffalo was struggling financially after worldwide recession struck in 2008. The Turkish government contacted Buffalo, interested in buying the two planes, a deal that could add as much as seven million dollars in revenue to the Buffalo coffers. It’s not the kind of business transaction Buffalo usually engages in, but these were tough times and Joe needed the money to keep the company on solid financial footing.

Once the deal was sealed, the Buffalo crew had one major hurdle to leap: the Atlantic Ocean. The CL-215 is a short-range, low-flying aircraft designed to scoop water out of lakes and dump it on nearby fires. Crossing vast expanses of open ocean? Not part of the plan. CL-215s are essentially flying boats, but they are not designed to withstand the high waves of the open sea, nor do they have the fuel capacity to cross it. Yet with seven million dollars on the line, Joe and his team were willing to get creative.

Joe turned the task of crossing the Atlantic to long-time mechanic Cory Dodd, a Winnipeg native who has been with Buffalo since 1993. Cory had to find a way to modify the CL-215s to get them across 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) of open ocean between St. John’s, Newfoundland, and Portugal’s Azores Islands, a ten-hour flight. The solution came in the form of two 1,890-litre (500-gallon) rubber bladders installed in the cabin of each CL-215 and connected to the plane’s main fuel system.

With the question of
how
to get the planes to Turkey seemingly solved, Joe next had to decide
who
would take the trip. It was little surprise he chose Justin, who at that point had eight years of Buffalo service under his belt. Justin was lucky enough to be sharing the controls of his plane with Arnie Schreder, a bush pilot legend, Justin’s mentor, and then the chief pilot of Buffalo Airways. Two guns for hire—Dave “Rooster” Poole and George Furey—flew the second plane.

For Arnie,
anticipating what might happen
after
the expedition to Turkey was just too much to ask given the risks inherent in the venture. The trip began with a six-hour flight to Winnipeg, a normally casual jaunt made stressful by the fact that the 215s do not have aircraft radar on board and need to be flown under what is known as Visual Flight Rules, or VFR. VFR is a set of regulations that permits pilots to operate aircraft only in weather that is clear enough for them to see where they’re going. If clouds set in or the ceiling drops, they’re out of luck. To make matters worse, the 215s have no de-icing equipment, since they are exclusively flown in the summer, and their fat wings are an easy target for ice formation, which has caused the untimely demise of more than one pilot.

The next leg of the journey saw the 215s travel from Winnipeg to Montreal, Quebec—a 14-hour, 1,800-kilometre (1,100 mile) flight—followed by 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) to St. John’s, Newfoundland, the easternmost city in North America. Arnie thought the trip over mainland Canada would represent the most difficult part of the journey to Turkey, and in some respects he was right. But he could not have anticipated what he and the rest of the crew would encounter while in St. John’s, an event that would forever change their perspective on open-ocean flying.

With the formidable journey staring them in the face, the crew knew they had to be as prepared as possible for anything the North Atlantic might throw at them.

“You’d be an idiot to not know what can happen before you take that trip,” Justin told me. “And if you didn’t know what could happen and you agreed to do that trip, you’re stupid.”

The North Atlantic is characterized by thousands of kilometres of featureless expanses of water, as well as unpredictable, violent weather. It has claimed its share of air disaster victims, beginning in May 1927 with the deaths of aviators Charles Nungesser and François Coli, who crashed while trying to cross the ocean from Paris to the United States in a Levasseur PL. 8 biplane. On February 2, 1953, a Skyways Avro York disappeared over the North Atlantic; neither the plane nor its thirty-nine passengers were ever seen again.

Those incidents were likely swirling in the back of the minds of Justin and his colleagues as they began their transatlantic preparations in St. John’s. Among other things, the crew spent some time participating in a survival-training course, just in case they had to “ditch,” or make an emergency landing on water. When a plane ditches—whether because of engine failure or weather conditions—the pilot’s main concern is bringing the plane to a level landing on the water without destroying the aircraft. Ditchings are rare among commercial craft, but they occur fairly often in other kinds of aviation. Perhaps the most famous successful ditching in recent history occurred on January 15, 2009, when US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of Canada geese after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport and then safely landed in the Hudson River. All 155 passengers and crew survived.

Staving off hypothermia is a major concern in open-ocean ditchings, and the only way to preserve body heat is by wearing a high-tech survival suit, which Justin, Arnie, George, and Dave did for the first time in St. John’s. The bright orange suits are heavy, tight, and rubbery and cover the entire body from the ankles to the neck—almost claustrophobic. They not only make it difficult to move freely, they’re hotter than hell. The crew realized that they’d have no chance in the icy waters of the North Atlantic without the suits: the orange cocoons would have to stay on for the entire ocean crossing to Santa Maria, one of the Azores Islands.

With the crew trained in the fine details of North Atlantic survival, the waiting game began. For the 215s to complete the flight successfully, three things needed to occur simultaneously: clear skies, a tail wind, and temperatures above freezing.

Just as Justin and his colleagues were feeling good about their chances of making it unscathed to Santa Maria, disaster struck: a Sikorsky S-92 helicopter carrying eighteen workers to an off-shore oil platform ditched fifty kilometres (thirty miles) east of St. John’s. Only one survivor was found.

The tragedy highlighted the sometimes precarious nature of flying over open ocean, yet Justin and the others remained focused on the job. When all three conditions were finally met, the planes took off on what may have been the most dangerous flight of Justin’s and Arnie’s careers. “When you look below you and see fifty-foot swells rolling... that’s something to see,” Justin said.