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>> Speaker B: Fuel and Ignition switches on RPM

switches set TD switches normal

Doors and hatches closed Light out Strobe lightade

on restart check to completee your left engineers

start number two starting two

quick 3001 00:10 pilot project podcast their

takeoff Runway through one left.

>> Bryan Morrison: All right, we'ready for.

>> Bryan: ##Me departure here at the Pilot Project Podcast, the best source for stories

and advice from RCAF and Mission aviation pilots brought

to you by Skies Magazine. I am your host, Brian Morrison.

With me once again today are Jason Shaw and Vince c. Benoit

of 435Transort and Rescue Squadron. Jason is

a pilot on the CC138 Hercules and Vince is a search

and Rescue technician or sartech. Guys, welcome to the show

and thanks again for being here.

>> Bryan Morrison: Problem.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Thanks for having us.

>> Bryan: Listeners can go back to our previous episode to hear about both Jason and

Vince's training experiences in their careers. For today, we're

going to talk about a rescue the two of them and their crew took part in

just over a year ago in December of 2023 when an air

Attendy flight crashed in the Northwest Territories. Jason was

a SAR aircraft commander and Vince was the Sarech team

leader. So before we start, let's get some background information

on the crash. On December 27,

2023, a Twin Otter operated by Air Tindy crashed

into a Hill about 300 km north of Yellowknife, Northwest

Territories and 16 km southeast of the

Dievk Diamond Mine. The Twin Otter was fitted with skis

and crashed while attempting to land on Lac de Gras.

Ten people were on board and survived the crash with various

levels of injury. Air Tindy President Chris

Reynolds told the local news that the flight crew was

circling over the landing area looking for snowdriifts. They hadn't committed

to landing yet. They didn't realize they had descended into basically

a whiteout. The only time they realized that they had descended was when

they saw a hill in front of them and that's basically where they impacted.

So Jason, what did this day look like for you? What standby

posture were you and your crew holding when this all took

place?

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah, so the plane crash happened during there's a two week

period where our uh, squadron is

pretty much operating on an on call basis. So on

like think of like an extended weekend posture from

home. So during that two weeks we

have uh, four different crews during

that time that are rolling through. So at any given time there's a

crew on two hour posture and a

backup crew which is on like a 12 hour available

posture. So for the most part um,

the techs are still going into the hangar every day

to do their daily checks on the aircraft, but that's

it. The AIRC crews are just going to be at home. So

everyone manages a little bit differently depending uh,

on where you live. But generally speaking you have to be

ready to after receiving the tasking,

be on your way to work within five or 10 minutes.

>> Bryan: And what's the process for a rescue asset to get tasked with a

mission?

>> Bryan Morrison: Well we get tasked by jrcc, yeah, Joint Rescue

Coordination Center, Trenton. Um,

they're going to get the info on a plane crash through a

variety of means. Uh, that particular crash

it had a 406 ELT.

>> Bryan: An ELT is an emergency locator

transmitter.

>> Bryan Morrison: Beacon which in that center in

Trenton they have an ability to track as well. I believe

they're also communicating uh, with them on the

ground some of the starives of the plane crash. So

JRCC puts that task together, they decide on the

asset that's best suited to um,

prosecute that tasking and uh, they tasked us.

>> Bryan: Okay, uh, Jason, can you describe the

initial call and the information you received? What was your immediate

reaction upon learning of the plane crash?

>> Bryan Morrison: Yes, it was about twoock in the afternoon. One or two in the afternoon.

Uh, the way it works is JRCC calls the aircraft

commander first and they start giving me

all the information they have for the tasking

and then once I accept it they call the rest of the crew, the

teh that we need to go in and tow the aircraft, fuel it

and any additional assets need to get launched.

So they had a pretty thorough,

let's say package of information at that point

thanks to the 406 and just some other information they

had. Aircraft, uh, for example aircraft

registration, type of aircraft,

its exact coordinates, uh, what time it had

crashed, the number of people on

board, which there were some changes there, some

general info on their uh, medical

conditions and even

that, an initial extraction plan for our satex and then

they had some information on some additional assets that were being pointed to

that direction as well. So getting all that like from

my perspective within the first four or five minutes on

the phone you can't really ask for much more than that because a lot

of times when we get tasked, they have some information, but they know

it's gonna be hours until we actually get on scene. So it's going to kind

of trickle in as it comes. But for that one,

pretty much all we needed.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan Morrison: And some stuff got refined a little bit later on, but

generally it was like, this is the plane crash. This is where it

is. This is what's on the ground. We want you to go there and deploy the

satex. Um, you, like I said, a loose

kind of estimation of the extraction plan.

>> Bryan: What's the feeling when you get a call like this at this point?

Is it pretty old hat? Are you pretty

used to it? Do you feel calm or do you

feel a sense of urgency when you get these calls?

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah, I think at this point I'm used to it. I just want to make

sure that I'm getting all the information they

have, that I'm asking all the right questions.

They do a good job of pushing out everything they have. But I'm just

making sure that initial few minutes I'm on the phone with, um,

I have everything I need to kind of make a

plan that's going to be suitable. There's

sometimes not so much anymore, but maybe

a little earlier on, you feel a different.

Maybe the initial phone call or different points in the mission.

You can kind of feel a little bit of that adrenaline coming up.

I've learned it's not really useful for

my job. Maybe it is for other, uh,

trades in the sak cre, but I found

I just kind of have to push that down. It doesn't help you make decisions.

It doesn't help you hear and understand all the information

you're being told, for sure. So, yeah,

if you were just to be listening to me in my kitchen on the phone, you

wouldn't even know what I was really. It would

sound like another phone call, I'm sure. And I'm kind of sitting there writing

some stuff down with my iPad. And a

couple of early decisions that have to be made from that is

whether we want to load up extra fuel. Because if we want to do that,

they got to start getting the guys that are going to fuel the aircraft

called in right away as well. Yeah.

>> Bryan: Because that'll take a while.

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah. And the sooner they can know, uh, have that

request, that can make that happen sooner as well.

>> Bryan: Now, you mentioned that they had basically all the information

you needed. Is that fairly rare when there's a plane

crash?

>> Bryan Morrison: Um, having that Much information

right in that initial tasking is probably the best I've ever

gotten.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan Morrison: I mean, usually you have more than you need to get launched and the stuff

is going to come as they get it because they know

it's like it's going to be an hour or two before we're actually taking

off when they task us. And then we have like a three and a half hour transit up

there. So it is no big deal if they're still working on some

of the information and we're just pointed in that

direction, flying there. We're going to get it.

>> Bryan: Um, because you can refine the plan as you go,

basically, as they feed you information during the transit.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Bryan Morrison: As long as we have the basics, where it is, what to expect,

what the overall intent of the

mission is.

>> Vince C. Benoit: But that plane, uh, had the 406, was on

a flight plan and I had a sat phone on board.

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So not a lot of flyers out have all of that.

>> Bryan Morrison: I'm pretty sure. I don't want to misquote them, but by

the time they tasked us, you might know this as well. I think they

were actually talking to them on the phone. That's how they had some of the casualty

conditions.

>> Vince C. Benoit: The pilot was talking to

the owner of the company, and the owner of the company, I was talking

to rcc.

>> Bryan Morrison: So to get that in that initial phone call,

that's pretty huge. What else do we really need? Right. I'm just

thinking making sure we're happy with the extraction plan

and that you're usually not going to get a detailed

extraction plan right then because

they're still working on that as well.

>> Bryan: So when you get that call, how do you divide up the tasks in order to

take off as soon as possible?

>> Bryan Morrison: The great thing about that is I don't have to do that.

Uh, everyone on the crew is

qualified professional in their job. So it's

not a matter of me tasking each

crew member what to do.

>> Bryan: Like, you're not like, hey, you got toa do this, you got toa do that.

>> Bryan Morrison: So I'll walk through a little bit what the crew does. So we have

theot, two pilots, the aircraft come in and the first

officer. Then we also have the navigator who is an

axo, the FO and the nav. Uh, they're doing a lot of the flight

planning, weather, noams. So I'm just gonna tell them the intent of what I want for

the flight plan and maybe a little guidance

there and they're going to get working on filing it

and even in that case, like our FO came up with some good ideas that

I didn't even thought of because I just kind of

gave a general intent. Right?

>> Jason Shaw: Mhm.

>> Bryan Morrison: Um, the flight engineer, Loadmaster, they're at

the plane, they're pre flighting it, getting it ready to go. The teh are, they're

fueling it, towing it. Um, if they come

up, if they have any problems, those guys, they might call me and I

can maybe from my end help help resolve

them. And the Sartex. Like,

I'm definitely not telling Vince what to bring, what to

do. He's taken care of all that in this case. He

even went out and got a third SAR tech based

on the information he had got about the

situation on the ground. So yeah, I'm

not tasking people telling them what to do. It's more just kind of

making sure everything's flowing in the right direction and solving problems as they

come. And I'm reaching back to JRCC a couple times during

that process and check and make sure there's any updated

information.

>> Bryan: Okay. So it's more of a collaborative process.

>> Bryan Morrison: Everyone's doing their job.

>> Bryan: Vince, what was the first you heard of this mission and how does the SAECK

team get the call?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Uh, I was actually in whenipeg

running some errands with the family.

Uh, and then we got the call. So

uh, my partner at the time, she dropped me off with

uh, right in front of the anger door.

Kiss my kids, say, uh,

don't know when I'mnna come back.

Uh, love you, bye. That's normally how happens you don't know

when you're going to come back. Because at that point we knew

it was a confirmed crash and we knew we were authorized

to jump, which is not always the case. Sometimes you're waiting

for more information along the way. And as

the uh, mission develops, you're asked for

permission to deploy asset. This case, it

was pre approved. 10 people. That's

why we called in an extra SAECH. Um,

normally we are operating team of two and that's it. Team

of two for 10 patients you get

overwhelmed pretty fast. So I

elected to bring a third one.

Eindight. I would love to have a fort,

uh, for 10 people. I think next time I'll bring

more, uh, if schedule permits. That's

always uh, a concern.

Um, so did the startech

get call? Well, uh,

RCC is calling uh, the aircraft commander and then

RCC is going to call wing ups and wing up is going to go

down recall list. Uh, and

then flight engineer team Lead team

member and all that. If we want extra

emppower, uh, which is

call us directly or other sa tehs that are available in

the area at that time.

>> Bryan: Okay, so how does your team prepare for a call like

this? And how do you decide what to bring?

>> Vince C. Benoit: It's always look the same. We rush

to uh, the anger and start pre flighting.

So we confirm making sure all our equip is in order. We uh,

have operational. That's just an example. We have operational

parachute there in the aircraft that

we don't use on a normal training day. We only use for

option. I'm on the ground, I'm at

the anger, I make sure those two

are 100% correct.

>> Jason Shaw: Mhm.

>> Vince C. Benoit: That's a big thing because if I show up three and a half hour in the Arctic and I

tell you well my purachute's not working, that's a big

deal. So that's just one example. So we go through all our

gear same. A firefighter

would do that uh, before a shift. So we do the

exact same thing every morning on a call out is no

different. And then when it comes

to mission planning, when I receive a call

I always ask myself

I need to bring extra equipment while I'm still here. Do I

need to bring extra manpower or womenower?

Because we'got uh, wicked female sartehs

so let's not forget them. Um, do I

need extrar people and

can I execute that mission on my own with my own

asset? Should I request RCC to

task other units for that? And

I also look at the weather. Although not my job,

I'd like to be prepared to know what I'm getting into.

Uh, we'll talk about the weather for that one. But when I pulled

the weather it was the first thing that

popped to my eyes was a low level jet at

60kn, um coming from the north. So I

was already thinking about that on my

way into the hangar door.

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah.

>> Bryan: And just for listeners, that's basically a low level jett

stream, uh, is exactly what it sounds like. It's like

a low level uh, high band of

wind moving through the area. And 60 knots is probably close

to 100 km or so an hour. So

that's very fast. So we just started talking about

that. Uh, Jason, did you have any concerns when you looked at all the variables

for this mission?

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah, two things popped out right away. The weather and night

and well, I guess three with night in the Arctic.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan Morrison: So talked a little bit about the weather. Maybe

I'll paint a little bit of a Broader picture. So that crash

area was northeast of Yellowknife. Uh, just north

of that area there was a low pressure system that was slowly moving through since

that afternoon. And kind of

all that nasty weather. The wraps around a low pressure system that

jet jet included. So really on the

forecast on the gfa, um, there was

forecasted severe low level turbulence. That was probably my

biggest concern. And then really

anything below a thousand feet,

um, it's goingn be low visibility, blowing snow,

then just multiple layers of cloud wrapping around that low.

>> Bryan: So really nasty stuff.

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So everywhere.

>> Bryan Morrison: And you do pilot training, they bring up uh, a

GFA and you never go anywhere where all the colors are.

>> Jason Shaw: Right.

>> Bryan Morrison: We pointed exactly at that.

>> Bryan: So as sa often does.

>> Bryan Morrison: Yep.

>> Bryan: Did you have a plan fully formed when you took off or

do you take off as soon as possible and then finish the plan on route?

We've kind of mentioned that, but yeah.

>> Bryan Morrison: And it's kind of been saluted to it as well. I think him and I maybe

at not even like a five minute conversation on the ground

because he's had his job to do, I got my job to do.

Just make sure we're both kind of on the same page Y yet we're

probably going there to do a jump. That's kind of like the

agreement. How exactly? Well, we'll figure that out in the way

and on the way. We didn't spend

hours and hours drawing up these detailed plans. It's like

we had kind of, I would say like three templates.

First option, we want to get there jump the start

tex as soon as we can to the plane crash. That's why we're going.

But we need a certain amount of weather to do that. Certain

ceilings. Um, so if we didn't have that when we got

there, we talked about dropping some equipment

first and then maybe the ceilings would

improve, um, a little less

favorable because now there's no one on the ground to receive that equipment. And

there was high winds as well. And third option, as part of

the mission planning, when we took off from Winnipeg, we uploaded

just about the maximum amount of fuel that hurt can take,

which would have, depending on where our bingo plan

was, would have given us like four hours on

scene. So kind of least favorable of

all the options to go up there and just wait. ###ill the weather

improved because that low was moving through on the

scale of hours. So it's really like

those three plans maybe Vincecent and I talk about

some of the details of how the sequences are going to go and we're

just Going to see what the weather is. Because

at night it's almost like

a playbook of things. We have maneuvers and sequences we can

do to accomplish our job. And it's just

adapting to what we actually see on the ground, what the weather's

doing.

>> Jason Shaw: Okay.

>> Vince C. Benoit: We talked a lot about bingo plan as well. That's a big

part of the. Because once

you get dropped off in the middle of nowhere, you want

to know where your asset is going.

And big picture, what's the best

outcome for that asset and what'quickest recovery we can

get from it.

>> Jason Shaw: Yep.

>> Bryan: So, uh, Vince, did you guys have to bring any extra gear for this

mission?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Uh, yeah, we brought extra, uh, like

warm equipment, like extra tents, extra

hothermia kit. Because we

carryl a lot of equipment on the earth. Uh, it's

insane the amount of gear we carry.

But always we're not set up for

10 patient in

that type of cold environment. So we grab

chts, sleeping bags and all that stuff that we all

have that gear ready at the anger.

>> Bryan: So Vince, what are starttehs doing during the transit to a crash

site? Are you making any preparations or running any drills?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Every team lead is going to run as mission differently.

The way I approach it, the same way as I was doing back in the army,

is we always tackle group uh,

equipment first, uh, followed

by personal equipment, followed

by hydrate, eat and

rest. So we add three and a half

hours to go up there. We prepped all the

hypertothermia equipment, all the big bundles that the aircraft

can drop to us. Everything that was critical was

rigged, followed by all our personal equipment.

So we jump heavy bags in front of

us. That's um, medical gear.

That's our own survival equipment for cold weather.

Uh, that's uh, firearms for bear protection.

Name it, uh, electronics for medical,

um, food, all that stuff.

And then, uh, on board we had the

lonemaster and I asked him to cook us some warm

meal because we have three and a half hours. So we cooked all

the entire crew a warm meal. We had a warm breakfast

before going out because we knew we would be busy there in theire night.

I had breakfast, it was dinner time,

um, followed by rest.

So I put my, uh, my team

members to sleepah. I assure you I didn't

sleep at all because your brain

just keepsing and tink and planning with

Jay. Uh, but that's kind of the order

of things we dok. So when we

show up to on scene, we're fully dressed and

ready to go. And uh, if

you can get an hour of eyes Closed. It's

always good, for sure.

>> Bryan Morrison: There's a few moments of the mission that kind of stick out. Just random

little things. And hearing him come on the intercom and ask the

lomaster, get some hot meals. Like

that's not something we would do at that point in the mission. Usually

he's looking to get his guys fed because, you know,

you're on the ground now for probably at least 12 hours at that point.

So I remember thinking like, wow, that's for

real now.

>> Bryan: Yeah, it's good thinking.

So Jason, how did you find the downed aircraft in this

mission?

>> Bryan Morrison: Okay, so we took off with our

tasking. Um, we had the coordinates from

the 406 LT, so the exact lat

long. And then we have kit on the HERC as well

that can track an ELT most

pilots get to understand, like on an ehsi, simple

needle. And we set up the kit and there's,

we call it DF Needle. So

really that's it. Um, we,

I took it a little bit slower entering the search area with the

concerns of the, uh, severe level turbulence. Severe low level

turbulence. We just kind of wanted to work our way in a little slower than

we normally would, kind of check it out

1,000ft at a time. Stepping down to make sure it was everything

that we could deal with. Uh, but then once we got

there, the kit, what we saw in the kit was coinciding

with the coordinates they gave us.

So we found it electronically first.

We're in cloud and we can see we're

passing over and uh, our kit with

a station passage, the needle flipping much like passing

over an adf, um, indicates that we're in that

area.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan: And for the non pilots listening, uh, basically

there's a, he's saying when he says an adf, it's Automatic Direction

Finder. Um, it's a type of navigational aid. But the point

is the needle will point to this source, this

radio source in this case. And when you fly

directly over it, the needle is pointing straight ahead of you. And

then as you fly over top, it spins around and now it's pointing behind you because

you just flew past it. Um, so that's how you know you've.

>> Bryan Morrison: Just flown over top and you're in the area, you still might

have some work to do to actually physically find it. It

dries on it, but at least you know, you're probably within

like a mile radius around it at that

point.

>> Bryan: Okay, so you arrived on scene about

7pm local time. What were the conditions at the time?

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah, so I Talked about working our way through potential turbulence

on the way in. Didn't find it was

anything that we couldn't deal with initially.

So when we arrived, how we do it is

we descend initially to a minimum ifr safe altitude

at night. So something like a couple thousand feet up there just to make sure

we're safe. Uh, what we initially saw,

um, what we were seeing as winds probably about

50 knots at altitude about

3,000ft and up and increasing a little bit as we

descended, um,

multiple cloud layers from 2

to 5,000ft and below

1,000ft. I think the best way to describe it is

pretty much a blizzard. Right? Blizzard below

1,000ft, low vis blowing snow,

high winds.

>> Bryan: So pretty ugly.

>> Jason Shaw: Yep.

>> Bryan: How challenging is flying the Hercules in those kinds of conditions?

>> Bryan Morrison: You gotta put it in context, what we're trying to do. Um, we're trying

to provide a stable platform for the guys in the

back, so a stable platform for them to

work basically, whether it's observing up the

windows, getting dressed to jump or when

they actually jump. So trying to fly the

Herc accurately, going from like a 50 knot headwind

to a 50 knot tailwind in windshar at night and

trying to do it in a way that it's stable for everyone to actually

do their job in the back, it's pretty challenging.

Um, in that environment it's kind

of, the pilots could probably understand. It's kind of like a

hybrid cross cheeckk. It's like a lot of time

you're inside on the instruments,

um, airspeed, altitude, the

navigation instruments, but everything is also outside. So you're trying

to, like when we're doing the drops, you're flying mostly

off of instruments, but you're also outside trying to line up two

little small light dots,

um, to do the actual drops.

>> Bryan: Sounds really hard.

>> Bryan Morrison: You kind of bring all those MOA skills

in VFR flying, IFR flying, and you're night

flying and you're kind of um, mashing it all into

one thing.

>> Bryan: Can you tell us how you clear the area of obstacles in those kinds of

conditions? And how do you find the aircraft visually?

>> Bryan Morrison: So I talked a little bit about the playbook of things we use.

So we call that a training target assessment.

So essentially we show up at an altitude that's safe for

us. Uh, we're going to drop flare and then we're

going to descend around the flare and the flares just basically

il illuminating the area. And the

first step is we're trying to make sure the area out to a few

miles is safe for us to Operating in. So during that

time the other pilot's going to be flying and me and

Vince, I'm out my window, he's out the side and we're just communicating.

We're looking for terrain, obstacles,

um, low lying fog, maybe

power lines, anything that's going to make it unsafe for us to

operate within that few miles. We're happy

with that. Now we're going to keep descending and

now we're actually trying to find the target. So this occurs

all after we've located the target electronically and we

put that in basically the kit of our aircraft.

So now we're around where we know the target should

be. And we were really

fortunate on that first flare, um, we actually

saw the aircraft. So as we're talking look

outside, um, and I still

remember to see the intact aircraft

on the tunder floor. Me and

Vince are talking, I'm sure at that point he's also trying to

pick out a DZ for where they could potentially jump.

>> Bryan: And for the listeners a DZ is a drop zone.

>> Bryan Morrison: Um, I think maybe one of the Startteks saw

tent at that point. But

really big moment in the mission and really fortunate for that to happen

on that first pass like that because that can take. We could have

had to climb up and try flares like

multiple times to have that happen. Um, that was the

only time I ever saw the aircraft the entire mission.

>> Jason Shaw: Oh, wow.

>> Bryan Morrison: Yep. Uh, the rest of the time flying it

was a light or whatever, something they'd put to kind of

so I could see where the down aircraft was.

>> Jason Shaw: Wow.

>> Bryan: So that's pretty lucky.

>> Jason Shaw: Yep.

>> Bryan: So Vince, as part of all this you were able to confirm that the ceilings

were above the minimum to jump, but the winds were twice the training

limits you would normally work with. What are the extra risks

when parachuting into these kinds of conditions, especially with all the extra

gear you had to jump with.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So just to put it in perspective

or training limit at night would be 20

knots. Uh, the win on that

specific jump was above 50. I don't have the exact number on

the ground but it was as I

described on my first radio check. It was

sporty. Uh,

so

people often describe Starrtek as cowboy

because we parachute,

we ski, we climb mountains,

we do all that stuff. But it's

quite the opposite actually. You know,

uh, we're flying, we're getting into that uh,

that nasty weather and

I'm assessing the risk. Same same as

Jay's doing upfron. I have two brand

new team members in the back. Do you

have kids at home? I just kiss my two

kids goodbye. Uh, so it's

not something we take lightly. I would not

jump in 50, not win on a

normal training day. Yeah, but there's 10

people there that are. That are

dying from the element, really, that needs

help. So what do you do?

Right, of course, you

can't take a harsh or

drastic decision just based on the sole fact

that there's people that need help. But it weighs.

It weighs in the equation for sure. Like, we would be lying if

we'say otherwise. So you kind of

tackle those risk factor one at

a time, and you kind of dissect it.

So the way I see it is Jay and I

are kind of dancing. We show up on scene.

He's got his plateful, he's flying into that.

I got the thing I want to do, but we're

not. We don't want to step on each other's

toes, and we just dance with what

we got. So I'm in the window looking.

He's head, uh, down and up, flying. And we

kind of do our best to make it. To make it

smooth. And everybody is on comps. So if one of us

step on each other's toes, we lose the

pace. So we're kind of dancing together, and then

we're assessing the risk. And

yes, it was I risk,

but I reward, uh, it was

also I was confident we could

execute it because of the way we train

our people, because of my trust in

the procedure, because we train them all the time,

and my trust in the crew around me, I knew

we could execute it. But that's not a

decision I took on my own. And

Jade didn'force me to do it. We came up

with the best course of action. And

I remember pausing before I stepped out,

before I went on off gu

I after my brief, I was like, okay,

crew, this is a pretty spicy

one. Is there anything I forgot? Is

there anybody in their crew that's not comfortable with that right now? Now

it's the time to speak. Because, of course my two

team members are going to say, yeah, yeah, we're going. Yeah,

yeah, okay, sure. They're always going to say, yeah, we're

good.

>> Jason Shaw: Uh, yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: It's a crew decision.

>> Bryan Morrison: The AC team lead kind of

relationship. Like he alluded to it. I

can't order them to jump, nor would I want to,

but everything that leaves the aircraft

is on my authority as well. So it gives us no choice but

to actually work together. And if we're not,

it's just not going toa work.

>> Bryan: It's interesting. So what's going through

your head when you're about to parachute into a remote location in the

dark?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Again, the safety, I, uh, did

not realize it at the time. That's

eyinsight.

It took a lot from me

to take that decision and put

my members into arm's way, if that makes

sense. Uh, it's not something we took

lightly, but again,

um, we were trained for it, and it went

well. Um, yeah,

so we mentioned that you'd.

>> Bryan: Be jumping with a lot of gear. What exactly were you jumping in

with?

>> Vince C. Benoit: So, yeah, every sateh are

jumping with, uh, what's called, uh,

a sar pels. I don't know what the akron

stand for, but it's a bag that's strapped to the front of your

parachute and connect to your leg, and it's mounted in front of you.

And in addition to that, you can put an extender

bag in front, and

you can even add a snowshoe bag.

So in this machine, we had £100 Trapp

in front of us, like medical gear, survival gear,

food, water. That's crazy,

because we need to

survive for a minimum 24 hours,

no matter what condition we're in. What if all of the rest

of our equipment get lost? What if as

soon as I leave the ramp, the

aircraft got RTB for an emergency? Now

I'm stuck in the m middle of arctic in a blizzard at night. I

need that gear. Uh,

so, yeah, medical gear, electronics,

survival equipment. Um,

I jump a shotgun for bear

protection because. Or wolf

protection, because sometimes we

need protection. Ended up

not ning it. Even polar bears didn't want to go out at that

time that night.

Um, yeah, about 100

pound.

>> Bryan: That's crazy. That's a lot of stuff.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan: So, Jason, walk us through what happens during the jump from

your perspective.

>> Bryan Morrison: So again, it goes back to our playbook.

Um, there's a couple options. We have to get

sartex into a location at

night. Uh, this procedure,

essentially, we go to our drop altitude. We

opted, uh, to jump them at 2,000ft that

night, and we drop a wind drift indicator,

which is just like a giant, like, we call it a disco ball,

and it's just a green disco ball lights

up, and that kind of tells us what the winds are doing.

So then we get our timing off of that. Uh, we climb

up a few thousand feet for the flares. We're

going to drop flares up into the target so they kind of flow

back over the target. We're going need to descend down over the

target using that, um, wind drift

indicator, start actuallynna jump out

and then we're gonna climb back up as quick as we can to get a second set

of flares out. So our goal is to make this whole thing illuminate

for them. There's illumination in the sky when

they jump and there's illumination in the sky when they

land. We need two sets of flares. Justus. They don't

last. Like one set wouldn't last the entire time

###mm uh, that was the procedure we used.

We didn't really make anything up with

that. We did it the same way we would do it. We would do

it when we train multiple times a week

doing what we call flarex. It's like a night trainer. The

only difference was now there's the high

winds and now we're going through

layers of clouds as we're dropping

the flares. Which isn't ideal as well.

>> Bryan: M yeah. Like, uh, are the flares still effective when

there's a bunch of layers?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yeah. Cause the wind just pushed them.

>> Bryan Morrison: So that's the thing too. Um, when the

winds are that high, we have to drop.

The idea is that we drop the flares and kind of at the

halfway burn time through the flares, they're over the target.

So when they first go out of the plane when it

winds that high, they're like three miles upwind of the target.

Which I think when we got the second set out, they were landing

and yeah, there was a second set of flares, but they were like

miles. So it's a challenge.

>> Bryan: Um, so in those conditions, not only are they far away,

but they could that have layers of cloud between them?

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah, I tried to mitigate it as best I could. We dropped them lower than we normally

would, but at the same time it's um,

a challenge.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

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>> Bryan: So Vince, tell me about the jump from your perspective. What was it

like?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Uh, well, I let this stick. Depending on the

scenario, sometimes the team lead. Will I like to go first or

last? Uh, in that case I wanted to lead uh,

the guys in. Just to give you

an idea. When we do ey win jump because we

train here in Shadoh all the time and do night

jump normally if I have a

30 second count from the target to my exit

point. It's windy

that night and I'm talking about like

3,000ft or 3,500. That night

we jump from two and add over a minute

count.

>> Jason Shaw: Wow.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So picture I don't know.

>> Bryan: In distance you had to be a minute upwind from the

target so that the wind would blow you back towards the target.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan Morrison: And we're flying at 120 knots during all

that. So you can do the math. Figure out how far up

when they're leaving the plane to make it back to the target. And we're trying

to get flares over them at that same

point.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So we jumped over a minute

past um and we mentioned there's a

blizzard from 0 to 1,000. Right. So that target,

you could see it when you flew right over top because you can see

through snow.

>> Jason Shaw: Mhm.

>> Vince C. Benoit: But you cant see it at a distance. So I got

out. I knew because of my

procedure, I knew my flare was on my right

and I knew I was going in the right direction.

But I lost the target. Um, I'BE honest with you, I lost the

target and I was probably for,

you know, for 10, 15 seconds,

maybe 30. That was a long time in my head

because there's nothing

y. It's arctic, it's in the dark, there's not a

single light. But I got it.

Uh, and then that's just

experience going into play. I just burned some altitude as

fast as I could knowing

that I would le backward into target

better or parachute depending on the way you load it. It's like

a plane. You want to land to win all the time. You

want to point your nose in the win.

It goes about 25kn forward speed

depending.

>> Bryan Morrison: How you load it.

>> Vince C. Benoit: That night were kind of heavy. So we would give you a

full 25 knot

point speed. So

if I point it in a 25 knot

win, I would go straight down if that makes sense.

>> Bryan: Yeah. Because it moves you forward at 25 knots.

>> Vince C. Benoit: That's right.

>> Bryan: If in still there.

>> Vince C. Benoit: That's right. Well if it's 15kn I know I'm going to

land backward very fast

and I Brief my guys for it because

we not uh, to go into technical details with

parachuting. I can shop my

main parachute

but uh, there's a system

that connects to that main that

will deploy your reserve automatically and

I win. You want to disconnect that. As soon as you have a good

parach shute over top of you, you disconnect that. Because

if you need to chop it, you don't want your reserve

to deploy. And then now you're reserved to drag you across the

tundra at 50 knots. So

uh, that's what we did. I found the target

and we landed within

200ft of the plane,

uh, perfectly. As soon as we touched the ground we

cut that presset away. We didn't want to get dragged

because you know from the air it looks

the tundra in the winter, uh, especially that time of the

year, it looks like salt and pepper.

Salt is good to land on pepper rock and the

rocks are pretty big. So you don't want to

get dragged across the tundra on those rocks.

Um, so yeah, no, it

went, went pretty well.

>> Bryan: That sounds crazy.

So uh, what did you see when you landed at the crash site?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Well, so first thing I uh,

always get in touch with the plane. Uh,

so Jay was pretty happy to hear my

voice. And I recall saying it's pretty sporty

here. And when I said that it's because the

full reality of it kind of.

>> Bryan Morrison: Hits you and you could hear on the radio he was in a

blizzard.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan: What's that like for you to hear them once they get to

the ground?

>> Bryan Morrison: Once they're out, we lose them pretty quick at

night because we immediately start maneuvering for the flares. So they're just

gone. And really the next thing is we're just

gonna orbit overhead continuing to provide flares until we hear

from them. So that jump.

Yeah, it's just open. Worked out,

just waiting and hearing like. And I remember

like that little bit of like kind of

comedy or just upbeat in his

voice. You can read a lot from

that and that kind of set for me

the second phase of the mission. I was just like oh, thank God that worked

out. We made the right decision and um,

we went forward from there.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So we landed 100ft,

200ft behind the plane, uh, so towards

the tail. And that plane was

stuck on top of a, I call it 30 foot

cliff snow bank.

And so the flares were dispatch up wind

of that plane. And I remember

looking in the blizzard, there's that plane

on top, there's a tent that looks like

a uh, Scene from Everest. It was just pinned down by the wind

because they were on top of that cliff.

>> Jason Shaw: Oh, yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: And with the flare shadow, it looked pretty

grim and intense. That hits me. That hit

me. I was like, oh, that's, uh, something you don't

see every day. Right. So we approached

the scene, we got together, everybody was safe, we grabbed their gear and

start approaching the scene. And then we checked

in with the people in the tent. Uh, initially there were six

in the tent and then four

were stuck in the plane still. Uh, so

we just checked in with them initially.

Um, and then I left one team

member at the tent and j.

Alex. So Matt stayed at the tent and Alex

and I went, uh, to the plane.

>> Bryan: So when you say they were stuck in the plane, like they were too injured to

move type thing.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Two of them were

injured. So the

plan, the way it landed is they saw that

snowbank last second, they

flared because they were configured to land.

And m. I'm not a pilot and I don't want to

talk too much in detail about how it happened,

but the short of it is they saw it last minute. They

flared, I think, and

they kind of belied. They

hit the front key and they

belied in that snow and stopped right there.

>> Jason Shaw: Okay.

>> Vince C. Benoit: In front of it. Remember the rock, the big boulders?

There's boulders. Square boulders the size of a couch in front

of it.

>> Jason Shaw: Oh, wow.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So a feet higher, different outcome.

A feet lower, different outcome.

Although unfortunate, I think they reacted

appropriately in time,

uh, and kind of save

everybody. But picture that plane just

hitting art and bellying everybody. It

hit art pretty hard in there. Everybody had back

issue.

>> Jason Shaw: Oh, yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Um, if you compound that

to pree. Existing medical conditions

and, uh, eight hours of being

sitting in a colal plane,

that was kind of the

medical issue, I guess. I don't want to talk too much in detail about it.

>> Bryan: We have to respect, uh, their privacy.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yeah, but they were hurt and

they were stuck in there. M.

Um, sold. Two of them,

the pilot and another member

was in there to attend

and help them. Six other

were in the tent, all with minors and minor injuries.

>> Bryan: Um, was there any heat source in the plane or anything?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Or did they just have blankets and candles? Okay,

um, the thing is, that plane was on top of that

30 foot cliff.

>> Bryan: So the wind is just.

>> Vince C. Benoit: The wind is pounding it and

the tail is dangling off the edge like you would see in

a movie. So nobody wanted to go near

the tail.

>> Jason Shaw: Yah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So they are blankets. The thing is,

I know we're always being hard on, um,

pilots because you Guys don't like to dress heavy in the cockpit,

right?

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Uh, they were all addressed to go work.

The plan was for that plane to land on la de

GR and offload them into Arctic to

work. So they're all addressed with they were.

>> Bryan: Dressed for the Arctic heavy gear.

>> Vince C. Benoit: And that's what saved their life really. Uh, because they

were equipped. Because imagine if all that

equipment was in suitcase in the tail that they can't access.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Different outcome for sure.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah, for sure.

>> Bryan: What was morale like on the ground when you arrived? I imagine they

were pretty happy to see you.

>> Vince C. Benoit: They were happy, but I was the Debbie Donner very, very

fast.

>> Jason Shaw: Oh yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: It's like, uh, hey, we're here. Oh,

we're happy to see you. But I'm like, we're going to spend the

night here. There's no rescue till the morning, so

don't stop fighting right now. That

was pretty blunt with that.

Um, pretty honest right off the

hop. Sartekss are never going to promise you something. They're

never going to lightie uh to you for stuff

like that. Uh, so I told him,

uh, you'll be here till the

morning. You got to keep fighting.

And I think it hit them, but at

least they knew what to expect.

>> Bryan: So Jason, while the team's jumping in and evaluating the scene, what

are you folks up in the aircraft doing now? What kind of updates are

you receiving and what do you do with that information?

>> Bryan Morrison: Well, initially we're just trying to try

to let them do their job. He's gon toa give me updates as he has them. I

know he has to dig out the radio from his jacket. It s

not just like it's in his hand at all times. So, um,

JRCC is asking me for updates. I pass

that on and I know that they're working on that, trying to get the

updates. Uh, we ve kind of switch into like a support role

a little bit. We know that we're going to have the follow on equipment drops

that's been rigged by the Sartex and Loadmaster on the way up.

We're, uh, kind of starting to get set up for that. We're getting the plane

position in an orbit where we're going to

get ready to drop the uh, follow on bundles

around the same time. So we

had been told in the, um, tasking that there was going to

be a team of mine rescue guys from the Diavic

Diamond Mine coming down to snowmobiles at some point.

And I had a different radio frequency for them, had that in

one radio. And then I had the radio with the satex and the other

and around that time before we started doing

the bundles and after they jumped I just heard those guys come up on

the radio and they hey huc

overhead. Uh, we're from a diabic diamond mine.

So given the terrain they were working their way down

there but they couldn't actually see the crash. They

just due to the weather and the undulating terrain.

So we would kind of fly over where the target

was and I would tell them as we're in the turn we're over top of the target

now uh, that would d be enough for them to kind of point in that

direction a little bit. But at some point that just wasn't enough.

I um, think this part I'm a little uncle. I can't quite remember. I

think maybe one of the satehs heard what was going on

and on his own just fired up a couple flares. I think it might have been

Matt. And that was that last little link like hey

we see the flares and they just married up. Okay, so

they arrived there but

yeah, kind of big picture for the mission at that

point we just switch into an overhead.

We're in a support role, whatever they need.

>> Bryan: So Vince, once you located all the survivors, what comes next in

terms of treating them?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Uh, we I guess to

circle back to my teacher PC training.

Uh, what we learn on under TC

is it's combat care, combat treatment

and a big part of it is care under fire.

You don't do anything medically fancy

when you're getting shot at. Well now fortunately

nobody shoot at me anymore but

I still have threat. Being in

anarctic blizzard is one of them. There's

nothing medical, nothing fancy medical that's going toa

happen before we got shelter in place.

So that's when I call in for support

for equipment drop with the goal

of putting everybody into shelter uh,

so we can start doing medicine.

Then what happened at that point is

the uh, po

person rescue team from the min joined

and I was a bit of an awkward conversation because

it didn't comprehend. We just jumped from the plane

so we had to like take a minute

explain and like they told them, they told us

how cool they think that is. I was like cool

but we got a job to do. Re like okay,

you're the boss. Tell us what you want.

Perfect. So now I have four

hard working men with two snowmobile

that I can use. Circle back to

previous experience now use every single asset

or piece of gear you can to execute the mission. So

big concern of Mine was that dangling plane with

four people in it. So they got to work

intoing that, just

tying it down in the snow to one snowmobile. So now I

lost one snowmobile, But I was sure that,

uh, the plane wouldn't move. And then it was so

windy that I wanted to have another snowmobile on

standby to go recover those bundles. So I

kind instruct them that

and give them the intent. And at the same time, j was setting up

to do drop.

>> Bryan: Okay. And that really brings me to my next question, which

is that after the initial jump, uh, the crew of the herr

conducted several drops. Can you tell us about those?

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah. So we had three different bundles. Um, we had the

hypothermia gear, the tents and

toboggan. So, yeah, really at that

point, the weather kind of continued to

deteriorate.

>> Bryan: Oh, it was getting worse.

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah, the viz reduced a bit, and the wind shear in the

lower levels was getting quite a bit worse. So

we dropped, uh, a second disco ball, as we called

it. And that's going to be how I'm going to fly. That

is, we dropped the disco ball. Then I'mnn orbit

around and then kind of line up on final. So I see the disco

ball, then I see the lights from the target

and just kind of like lining those two things up. So

down to six or 700ft. In that case,

um, we can do this under flare. But we opted not to just because I had

enough at everything I needed. And it would have been faster just to

kind of do three quick, uh, drops.

And that's what we did. We dropped. I can't remember the order we dropped them, and I think we dropped

to bog and last maybe. Um, but Vince was on the ground

communicating with us. He basically added the

DZ setup and the, um,

snowmobile on standby. So we'drop it, and as soon as

it came down, he would send him to go get it. We

come back around and do the next one. The next one. And,

um, yeah, it all went pretty

efficient. I think maybe we had a little bit of trouble getting on the first

one as the wind kind of shipped at a soft target to try it again.

But we got all three in there. I think there was some

difficulty, uh, with to bogging on the ground. If

you guys had to send the guy to retrieve that. Is that the one that

got away.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Or it, uh, was one of the hpo gear.

>> Bryan Morrison: Ho gear. Ye.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan Morrison: But that's it. Then once we do that,

we kind of climb back, we close up and climb back a little bit, and we're

just kind of in a support role from there.

>> Bryan: You're doing comms, relay and that kind of stuff?

>> Bryan Morrison: Yep. It sounded like that's all the equipment he was going

to want from us. Uh so we're just overhead

and planning to stay thereill. Um, we have to get

out of there for fuel.

>> Jason Shaw: Okay.

>> Bryan: So Vince, how important was it to receive those supplies and did

the heated tents make a big difference?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yeah, that was critical.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeahah.

>> Bryan: That was like make or break.

>> Vince C. Benoit: It was make or break.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah, yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: All those people were epypotothermic.

Uh that two person

tent with six people packed in.

Uh yeah, I was not making it.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So the tent I elected

to bring uh, that we grabbed from

we fly with two normally I brought an

extra two was um, their ice fishing pants.

Oay with no floor they're easy to set.

They take 30 seconds and they're up. So once

we got them Matt M, uh was in charge of setting up

camp and we set up camp downslope of

the plane so we were sheltered by wind

from the wind. He started setting up tent and

then uh, moving those six

uh people to the tents right away as I was doing

medicine in the plane. Soeah. We set up

camp and then yeah

Alex and I were on the plane doing medicine to stabilize those

people to bring them out,

uh, um, out of the Twin

Otter. Uh, which was quite

challenging. Uh, if you ever flew on a

Twin Otter, uh the nice

convenient exit door is on the

tail so that wasn't an option. Uh, so we had

to go through the emergency exit.

That was challenging.

>> Bryan: Yeah. With two injured people.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yeah. And they were bigger, uh

dudes, uh, hardwork, working men.

Um, so that

was a challenge.

>> Bryan: Yeah, that sounds tough.

>> Vince C. Benoit: But everybody uh, having

the mine rescue team

was very beneficial for.

>> Bryan: Made a big difference.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Oh yeah, for sure.

>> Bryan: So how did the weather affect your plans for getting the

survivors out of that situation?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Again we're on top of that ill. We were just

getting blasted by a very cold wind.

Fortunately it wasn't too cold. Uh, it was minus

15 I think air temperature.

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah that was another thing. Like there's a few things that lined up like

that late December in the North Yellow

Knife. It could easily be minus you know

40 with the wind chill but luckily that I think it was

like minus 15 with the wind chills in the minus 20s.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: But still we needed to get everybody out of that

win. That's why we chose to go down

uh, downslope at a safe distance from that

plane.

>> Jason Shaw: Mhm.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Um, and once we

got Everybody there? We were quite comfortable.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan: You mentioned breaking the news to them that they wouldn't be

leaving until the following morning. What was their reaction when they found that

out?

>> Vince C. Benoit: I think they understood.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeaheah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: They stay positive, stay positive and

keep fighting. Because often you see, uh,

people start to shut down once the riskier come

in. Uh,

it's almost like their mechanism is shutting down and then they stop fighting.

Well, in that case all theyyputothermic and as

you know, if you're epothothermic, you just stop moving. It's just going to make

it worse.

Um, yeah,

no, they took it well. They understood.

They'also used to be up

north. They know how tough it

is to get uh, things going. And they

knew that weather condition was a problem too.

>> Bryan: For sure. That must have been a long night though. How was

morale through the night?

>> Vince C. Benoit: It was good. Um,

so Alex and Matt were in charge of the two

critical patients and I took

care of eight.

The rest of the eight patient, uh, plus

the uh, four minors in my two

guys. So there's a lot of

back and forth from me going to 10 to 10.

Some of them were able to sleep a bit so we stayed with

them for 14 hours. Um, so we

enter a protocol that's called prolonged field care for us

where ah, I like

to tell my guys that we move more into

a nursing practicing than paramedicine.

Uh, and that's where we're going to enter protocol.

Antibiotic, uh, for

trauma, um, make sure everybody is

fed, uh, we fed everybody

warm rations, make uh, sure everybody

drinks enough warm fluid. I was

able to uh, get some orange, uh,

juice from the plane crash, um,

which we bring to a boil. And then people were able to

drink warm juice, a lot of sugar to get their

temperature back up right, try to combat

hypothermia that way. Uh, we had sleeping bags

out, there's people that were

sharing bag ande

um, the focus was trying to get everybody

warmout the night. And

uh, there's one patient there

that uh, that I spent a lot of time chatting

with. All of them were awesome people.

>> Jason Shaw: Mhm.

>> Vince C. Benoit: And again, I know I mentioned it

earlier, you get

into situation like this on their end and

on our end it's situation we're going to remember for

the rest of your life. And you create

instant bonding with those people.

And there's one of them, uh, I'll um,

name his name, it's Chris, uh, and I still talk to

him to this day. Uh,

everybody was stabilized, everything was fine.

>> Jason Shaw: Ah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So we chatted about hunting

for three hours that night, Uh,

I, it was three hours because I would

uh, open comm window withit RCC and call

him every couple hours.

Uh, but I chatted onting with Chris and today's

day, uh, we still

talking. It was great.

The mor was good once they got

rewarmed because they weren't there for eight hours.

And uh, we all know how it

feels to be cold and lonely.

Uh, it's pretty lonely when you

crash in the arctic and there's nothing around and you don't know what's your

outcome.

>> Bryan: Like they were on the ground for eight hours before you got there. You m mean?

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah. Oh wow.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Well, by the time they

were'intent close to eight hours,

uh, enough to be cold, that's for sure.

And uh, once we got

the morale from initial contact

to the morning for

two different things.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah, I believe it.

>> Bryan: All right, so Jason, after three to four hours on scene you

were bingo fuel. Can you explain what that is to the audience

and tell us how you and the crew got home?

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah. In simple terms bingo fuel is a fuel

number that you now only have enough fuel to

leave where you currently are and go to your destination

plus whatever reserves you need. So any sary mission

we kind of have a couple bingo plans we call them.

Uh, one option we looked at was going to

Yellowknife. After there were some complications with that.

The Runway wasn'in good condition. Plus at some

point the rest of my crew minus the Sairetex but

we're going to have to do to crew rest and they weren't going to be ready for

extraction till like 10cl the next morning. So our

plane also would have been outside in those conditions as well.

>> Jason Shaw: Mhm.

>> Bryan Morrison: So what I opted to do is we around

that fourar mark we still had enough fuel and

crew day left to to go to Emonton

for a fuel stop and make it back to Winnipeg just

at the end of um, like an 18 hour crew day.

M so at some point when we're

overhead we're not really doing much

for them anymore. He's got his own comms set up, they have everything

we need. We're just kind of flying around overhead making

noise and communicate with Vince and

he's got everything he needs and we're coming up on that number

that we could still make it back to Winpe through Edmonton. So

that's what we did. We went to Edmonton, um, but a one hour turn there

for a fuel stop and ultimately got back to

Winnipeg around like 6:30am the next

morning. Oay but in doing that, remember I said we had that

backup crew. So they had been activated. The backup

crew was able to and come into the hangar shortly after

we got there, take the same plane back up to

Yellowknife and get them out

of the next morning.

>> Jason Shaw: Okay.

>> Bryan: Vince, what did it feel like when the HURC left? Is

there, like, a big shift in how that feels when you're out in the

wilderness like that?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Well, I knew they were going because Jay ran it by

me a couple times, like, okay, I'm X amount of time

from bingo. Do you need anything? No, I'm good. Uh,

okay, I'm running to bingo. You'sure you don't

need anything else? Because it would have changed its plan.

No, I think we got this Ann anal. Okay.

And then it goes quad.

You don't realize it. Jay mentioned

it. We're making noise, but that makes a difference because

I know I got support on my shoulder. If I. Even though I

can't go back in, I know they're there for me.

And then it just go quiet. And

that's a weird feeling.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Um, but I was on

comest with rcc and I knew the plan

and we were set up, so that was all good.

>> Jason Shaw: But. Yeah.

>> Bryan: Did, uh, the passengers

react at all when the Herc left?

>> Vince C. Benoit: No, I kept everybody updated. I was going tenant to tent,

and they knew the plan, um, of the

evac in the morning. They didn't really pay attention. They told me

that when they heard the hurt coming

before we jump, they were all relieved with

that because.

>> Bryan: Yeah, no kidding.

>> Vince C. Benoit: The age got a specific sound.

You can hear it?

>> Jason Shaw: Yep.

>> Bryan: Uh, Vince. The next morning, the survivors were rescued by a

helicopter. What was that process like?

>> Vince C. Benoit: It was the morning. It was like

nothing happened. The night before, it was blue skies.

There's no birds up there, but the birds would have been

chirping. No wind, perfect

weather. So everybody

were, uh, stiff and walked out of the

tent. And everybody was pretty happy. And I was in. Comes

with RCC again. And on radio comes

with D yellows when they came in. And

we mark three landing sites for them.

I think they were Eurostar.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan Morrison: Asar. Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Asars. Yeah. Smaller helicopters.

Uh, but three pilots came in. They put the birds

down.

Uh, they shut down for some reason,

probably for safety. And, uh, I don't know. I

wouldn't shut down the midl of with Arctic and to

fear that it wouldn't start again. But reloaded.

Everybody there. Um, I think they made three

trips.

>> Jason Shaw: Okay.

>> Bryan: And they all went to the Dyvik mine from There.

>> Vince C. Benoit: That's correct. That was about 16 kilometers away.

Char Tripip.

>> Bryan: And that's where you guys went as well?

>> Vince C. Benoit: That's correct, yeah, everybody went there.

>> Bryan: Uh, what were the conditions of the survivors at that time? If whatever

you can tell us.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Good.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Uh, again, stiff and

somewhat, you know,

injured, mostly back

issues. Um,

and you're after a big impact

picture a car accident. People from a whiplash

get very, very stiff because of the muscle or the

spasm. Uh, of course we have medication to help

relieve that. But you add ah,

mild hypotothermia sleeping on

in a cold tent, uh, for most of the night

it doesn't help. So everybody's kind of stiff. But as soon as

we got work walking and um,

you know, I put them to task and everybody helped loading the

helicopter and all that stuff. The people that could,

um, uh, the pilot, there was a lot of

help for me. We went uh, together in

the plane, turn off the ELT and the

couple tasks like that and uh, everybody's pretty happy uh,

to get out those tents and get in those shopper.

>> Bryan: Do you and your team pack up all the tents and supplies that are

dropped into the rescue site?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yeah, we try to as best as

we can to leave nothing behind. Uh,

sometimes it doesn't happen depending on the nature of the mission

or the extraction. In this case, we left nothing

behind. Not even a piece of garbage

really. Same with uh, the water jump when we

did this summer before the fall. Uh,

we always bring everything back.

>> Jason Shaw: Okay.

>> Vince C. Benoit: If we can.

>> Bryan: So you and the survivors were taken to the

Diavic mine and then how did you get home?

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yeah, so the helicopters brought us to the Divic

mine, uh, where they fed us a

warm meal. That was great.

>> Bryan: Must have been nice.

>> Vince C. Benoit: That was great. And then, uh, Etin did dispatch,

uh, two of their plane. Uh,

they loaded all patients in all their gear and then

uh, we flew straight

uh, to the a yellownife.

>> Bryan: Okay, and then you guys were picked up by a

Herc.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yeah, in yellow knife. We were met by uh, ambbleance

crew, uh, also by family members.

So ah, that was

emotional to say the least.

>> Bryan Morrison: Um.

>> Vince C. Benoit: But everybody, it was a great day, great

outcome. Uh, and then yes, the crew that was

dispatched from Monipe, they were there waiting for

us. Um,

so we loaded all our gear into it and then

rtb.

>> Bryan: You guys must have been just wiped by that point.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yeah, uh, we slept on the way back.

>> Bryan: Yeah, I believe it. No, you didn't do OJT on the way

back?

>> Vince C. Benoit: No.

>> Bryan: Oh man. Can you both

speak about the importance of training and teamwork when completing a

mission like this.

>> Bryan Morrison: Yeah, I'll just say it's really important. Like we take all the training we

do, essentially put it into

practice. And the whole mission from start to finish is

teamwork. It's uh, you know,

you're talking to just the two of us. But there was like

our first officer, Martin Tseum.

He was pretty new at the time. He did an excellent job. Jeremy

Simmons, he was our nav

with Corey Stewart was our lobemaster. Those two guys did all the drops

after the sa tehs were out. Uh, Dan Tromman, who

was a flight engineer. So the flight engineer during all this,

he's responsible for the airplane. So he's making sure that he's

watching me fly basically and

making sure all the engines are running properly. So

he's kind of our safety valve with

that. And then Vince's guys too, uh, everyone

did an amazing job. Like Matt and uh,

Alex.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan Morrison: So yeah, that mission was. It was the

whole SAR team,

JRCC, all the techs back at

435. They got the plane ready to go, the crew,

everybody.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yah, yeah. So on my side,

a couple things I want to mention is, uh, to go back to

my teacher, PC time and my training vision as I

try to recreate realistic training to prepare

us. But not only for

Sartex or for me personally, for the entire

crew. Uh, as we gain more experience.

I'm sure Jay's doing the same thing. He is going to pass on that

knowledge. Uh, and to give you an

example, I could, on a normal training

day, I could say I want to drop my own

bundle because that's my job. But I

don't prepare it enough to help me when I actually need

it like that mission. So I always

bring on a normal training day

a uh, piece of pie for everybody in the crew. Because

when it comes to a mission like that, everybody needs

to contribute to it.

And one thing I think

Sartehs are good at andway I hope

we're all very humble in the sense

that we're doing so much. I'm

not the best parach Shute is I'm not the best

mountaineer. I not the best diver. But

we're trying hard to be the best. And

we understand our weakness and our strength

so we can exploit

weakness and strength from other people. So when the

uh, divic mind rescue team came,

I didn't push him aside. It's like, okay, what can you

guys give me? What type of equitment do you have? What are you

good at? Okay, let's make a plan now. I want

you to do this, this, and this.

>> Bryan: Jason, what was your biggest takeaway from this experience?

>> Bryan Morrison: I think, um, just all the training we do

in, all the effort we put into it. You know, you never know when you're

gonna get the call. Um, on

December 27th, watching a

hockey game and hours later be doing a mission like

that. Just knowing that

you always have to be ready, you always have to be prepared, and you

can't make that happen just at the last minute.

It's months, years of preparation

to be in a position individually and as a crew

to be able to do a rescue like that.

>> Bryan: And uh, Vince, what was the biggest thing you learned during this mission?

>> Vince C. Benoit: I would say the biggest thing for that

year, not only that mission

is, uh, stress

is cumulative. So it might be

a simple mission one day, and then you keep that

stress level another mission

later. Just everything adds up and it doesn't

need to be. I'm not talking to Sartek in general. Im'm talking

about pilots or every crew member.

Stress will add up and at

some point you

need to take the time to

offload that stress.

Um, if you want to go back

and do what you're expected to do. Does it make sense?

>> Bryan: Yeah, for sure.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Uh, that's the thing I learned that year. Wicked year for

me. But

stress added up at the end of the year for sure.

And you remember m. I talked about it shortly

about, uh, the decision,

um, to jump into that

blizzard with my two,

uh, brand new team members. They're not brand new,

but one was a year of experience and the other one was just

off course. It, it

was a lot of stress that I was not expecting. It didn't

feel like a stress in the moment, but after that fact,

I kind of realized

that it was stressful for me in the moment

and it doesn't need to be Sarteh. It could be

in J'dac saying, okay guys,

you can do it. I'm sure that was stressful for him.

So for pilotss

air crew out there, realize that you're adding

a lot of stress. Take some time to reflect

about it and yal from it before, before you

go too far.

>> Bryan: How did you, uh, process that?

If you're comfortable in answering that, you don't have to.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Yeah, let's go right in it. I, uh, was carrying a lot of

stress and people around me,

my peers, we kind of realizing it. Know there's

things happening at home. We're not,

we're human like everybody else. Right. Uh, we

can save lives. But,

um, we're also human. And my

peers were the first one to realize it. And you know what I

did initially? I lied.

>> Jason Shaw: Oh yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: It's like, oh no, I'm fine, I'm okay.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Until that person made me feel

bad for lying to him after three times and

I finallyop opened up.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Vince C. Benoit: And I just needed to talk about it. That's all I needed

to do to make me feel better

and for someone to tell me, well, you

know, you're not alone. You, you're not

a superhero.

>> Jason Shaw: Ye.

>> Vince C. Benoit: So we're all like that whether you recognize

it or not. Just take the time to talk about

it. That's all you need for sure.

>> Bryan: Yeah, I can totally relate to that. And uh,

certainly my experience has been that opening up about mental health

stuff, stress, whatever, uh, is you will

quickly realize you're not alone. That if you're feeling it,

probably some of your peers are feeling the same thing. And it is

like the best medicine is to be able to talk about it

and take yourself away from just being alone with it.

>> Jason Shaw: Yeah.

>> Bryan: Okay. Well, Vince, Jason, I really appreciate you taking the time

to share your rescue story. It's always a privilege to hear firsthan

accounts like yours and it truly highlights the bravery and dedication of

our service members. What you both did that day speaks

volumes about the courage and teamwork that's required in these high stress

situations. So I wish you both continued success and safety

and everything you do moving forward. And uh, thanks again guys

for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

>> Vince C. Benoit: Thank youks.

>> Bryan Morrison: Enjoy it.

>> Bryan: All right, that wraps up our two part series

on the air Tindy Rescue with Jason Shaw and

Vince C. Benoit. For our next episode we'll

be sitting down with Major Brian Humza, uh, Kilroy to

talk about Lyft or lead in fighter training in Italy

and flying the T346.

Master Brian is an old comrade of mine from

phase two Harvard training and I'm really looking forward

to talking with him again. 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 pilotprojectpodcastmail

m.com or on all social

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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'like and follow us on social

media, share with your friends and follow and rate us 5

stars wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for

now. Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up.

>> Bryan: See ya.

>> Speaker B: Engineer, shut down all four. Shutting down all

four engines.