Danika's Trip Report - Second section

Flying was her current vocation, but it hadn’t been her first. Following in her father’s footsteps, she had initially pursued a career as an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer. At her father’s urging, immediately after high school, she’d attended the BC Institute of Technology and attained her AME certification. She’d had a huge advantage over her fellow students because, at the time, her father was in the aviation business. He and his business partner owned a modern and spacious hanger located at the south end of the airport, close to the seaplane base. From this facility they provided contract aircraft maintenance services for the many and sundry operators in the area. They also owned four small twin-engine aircraft that they leased to those same operators. It was a good business, although her father had frequently grumbled about it and had often said, “The quickest way to make a million bucks in the aviation business is to start with five.”

Danika had been brought up on aviation. She’d lived and breathed airplanes. She’d hung around her father’s business so much that the staff there referred to her as the ‘hanger brat’. She’d first grasped the control yoke of an airplane and felt it respond to her inputs while sitting in her father’s lap at the age of four. By the time she was fourteen she could re-fuel, pre-flight, start, taxi, take off, fly and land an airplane.
Danika officially got her pilot’s licence at the age of sixteen. The first airplane she’d soloed in had been a Cessna 182. Since then she’d piloted so many different types of aircraft that it was difficult for her to remember them all.

When Danika was fifteen years old her father had given her a job at the hanger. He’d figured that she was always there anyhow so she might just as well earn her keep. Officially she was to help keep the place spic-and-span; sweep, pick up rags, clean up fluid spills and put things away, that sort of thing. But often as not, she could be found helping her father on a job as he sweated and cursed and skinned his knuckles.
“Danny, you’ve got to pay for every job with a little blood offering to the aviation gods,” he would say after nicking himself.

Even though he didn’t have to, her father still liked to get his hands dirty. Danika understood that. She loved airplanes. She loved their sleek, aerodynamic shapes and the way the hanger lights reflected off their windows and shiny paint. She loved to run her hand along their smooth metal skins. And she loved the way they smelled. When an unfamiliar airplane came in for maintenance she would climb into the cockpit and sit there muttering to herself until she had touched and identified the purpose of each and every switch, gauge, lever and knob.

‘Danny’ – that’s what her father called her. She liked the nickname. It was no secret that he’d wanted a son. He would proudly introduce Danika to the guys around the hanger as, “Danny, my tomboy”. Danika became the son he never had.

Throughout her teens, while her girlfriends were perfecting their manicuring skills, it was all Danika could do to remove the grease that seemed to be permanently embedded under her fingernails.

By the time she attended her first AME class at BCIT, Danika had already wriggled around the inside, clambered over the top, and crawled under the fuselages of many types of small airplanes. Except for some of the theory, and until they got their hands on a big jet, virtually nothing that she was exposed to during the AME program was new to her. She’d been there and done that.

Consequently, she graduated top of her class, then officially went to work for her father. Still, flying was her real passion. If there was a flight check to do on one of the aircraft in the hanger, she would wrangle her way onto it. Her log book showed a steadily increasing tally of hours. She got checked-out on many of the aircraft types that went through the hanger. She earned her multi-engine endorsement and Instrument Flight Rules ticket.

She continued working at the hanger until she’d accrued the required time to attain her AME M-class certification, which she did at the relatively young age of twenty-four.

One day, looking at her accumulated hours and endorsements, she realized that it would be an easy jump for her to become a professional pilot. She could make a living at it, being paid to fly the machines that she loved. She had many contacts in the aviation industry and was confident that she could get an entry-level flying job whenever she wanted; she’d been told as much.

Eventually she built up enough courage to broach the topic with her father. Of course, he’d been expecting it. He already knew that her first love was flying airplanes, not fixing them. And he was okay with it. He said she should pursue her goals, do whatever she wanted to do, whatever made her happy. He gave her his blessing.
“Get out there and show ‘em how it’s done Danny, I know you’ll make me proud,” he’d said.

So Danika took a job flying bush. She quickly earned the respect of the company’s chief pilot who told her that she had ‘good hands and feet’. It was a compliment he’d bestowed on few. Danika was a natural. Initially, she flew float plane charters to fishing camps, canneries and other oddball, out of the way destinations. She steadily built her hours and gained experience, and muscle, loading, unloading, and balancing cargo in airplanes. She learned to fly by the seat of her pants in marginal weather conditions, developing a keen sense of self-preservation.

She also acquired patience; this from the countless hours she’d spent sitting at dockside waiting for the weather to improve.

Then came the day when the chief pilot took her aside and asked her if she was interested in getting certified in the Goose. “I think it would be a good fit for you,” he’d said. “The Goose is a great airplane, but it requires constant attention and a lot of respect. You have the skills and attitude.”

She’d jumped at the opportunity. Soon, she was flying the Goose on half of her trips.
Surprisingly, she was well accepted by the other Goose pilots, most of whom were crusty old curmudgeons who’d spent their entire aviation careers in the bush. The customers loved her too. She was a fresh face and she brought a happy, bright presence to the otherwise grumpy, male dominated fishing and logging camps. When the boys heard Danika calling on the radio, there was never any problem getting help to offload the airplane; they’d be waiting for her when she pulled up to the dock.

It took Danika about one hundred hours of flight time to get truly comfortable in the cockpit of the Goose. Up until that point she flew it with a low-grade, but constant, edginess. Then one day, when the weather was bad and the seas choppy, she came to a realization; the very characteristics that made the Goose a difficult airplane to fly also gave it great potential.

It was a good performer; it had two powerful and highly reliable engines which provided it with a great power to weight ratio, especially when lightly loaded. And because it was so sturdily built and powerful, it could operate in conditions and in situations that she would never take the other airplanes she flew into.

Once she was comfortable with it, she began to love the airplane. Instead of occasionally hoping for a float plane assignment, she began arranging her schedule such that she could fly the Goose exclusively. Although comfortable, she learned never to be complacent. A Goose pilot had to be ahead of the airplane at all times, it was notoriously unforgiving if neglected. It wasn’t a sit back, ‘push-button’ airliner flown by pilots wearing crisp white shirts. You had to want to fly the Goose.

Danika’s parents had split when she was thirteen years old. Her mother had taken Kate, Danika’s younger sister by two years, with her when she’d moved to her new residence in the interior of the province, a four hour drive from Vancouver. She would have taken Danika too, but by that time Danika was so attached to her father that she would have nothing of it.

Danika and Kate held on to each other and cried steadily for the week leading up to the day that they were separated. It was horrible. Later, they talked regularly on the phone, sent each other little packages in the mail and had regular visits. They spent as much time together as their parents could arrange; a couple of weeks in the summer, the Christmas and Spring breaks, and a long weekend here and there. Kate would come down to Vancouver or Danika would travel out to the interior. Getting together was good, but they truly missed each other when they were apart.

In her fifteenth year Kate rebelled. She fell in with a group of ne’er do well Goths. She died her auburn hair jet-black, got her nose, eyebrow, and tongue pierced, wore nothing but black shabby clothing and painted her finger and toenails dark purple. Kate changed from a normal happy pre-teen to a brooding, churlish introvert. It wasn’t unusual for her to disappear from home for days at a time. It was a tough phase for all of them, especially her mother who lived it day-to-day. Ultimately, exasperated that her baby girl had turned into a sullen, incommunicative she-devil, her mother sent her back to Vancouver to live with Danika and her father hoping that it would turn her around. Initially it was difficult, but Kate had always looked up to her big sister and, under the stabilizing influence of Danika, things gradually improved.

During their first winter back together, their father had taken Danika and Kate to Jamaica to escape Vancouver’s dreary overcast for some fun in the sun. He thought the time away would do Kate some good.

They’d stayed in Negril for two weeks. To their father it was like a homecoming. He’d spent many winter months in Jamaica during his foot-loose and fancy-free twenties and had recently been visiting Negril during the times that Danika was away at her mother’s. The bond was even stronger the second time around. Danika’s father had planned on spending more time on the island. He and his business partner had built a solid company and both had plans to take more time off, leaving their aviation business to be run by the competent people that they’d hired to do so.

Danika and Kate had fallen in love with Negril too. They were already acquainted with the rhythms of the island. Reggae being their father’s favourite music genre, they’d been brought up on a steady diet of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh from the time that they were new-borns.

For Kate, the visits to Negril had been an awakening. True, she loved the beaches, the sun and the sea. However, even at her young age, she’d become enthralled with the people and the Jamaican culture. One of the chamber maids at the hotel where they’d stayed had taken Kate under her wing and shown her around. She’d spoken at length about Jamaican customs and she’d taken the time to point out the local plants, insects and birds. Kate especially loved the geckos. Kate and the chamber maid had spent so much time together that the woman often got behind in her work and was scolded by her supervisor.

Since that first visit, it had become a ritual for Danika, Kate and their father to spend time in Negril during the winter. As often as not, it was Kate who would bring the topic up, insisting that they book the next trip and continue the family tradition. Danika and her father didn’t take much convincing.