Flyin’ High
Graduates of unique aviation program are landing their dream jobs in the sky
BRESLAU — Chelsea Anne Edwards stepped out of a jet cockpit on a foggy Thursday morning.
Pilot wings pinned to her chest, stripes on her sleeve and a broad grin affixed comfortably to her fresh face, the Sunwing Airlines first officer buttoned up her uniform jacket before descending the portable stairs to the tarmac far below.
The flight in from Sudbury? Short but good, the young pilot said.
“I have the weekend off,” the 23-year-old Barrie native said. “So I’m going home to see my mom.”
But her mother Joanne, ever so supportive of the daughter who became fascinated with the notion of becoming a pilot during careers class in Grade 10, would have to wait.
First, a rock star welcome awaited Edwards and three other University of Waterloo aviation graduates — Siobhan O’Hanlon, Cameron Fuchs and Spencer Leckie — in the main terminal of Region of Waterloo International Airport.
The Fab Four first officers, the first elite batch of young cadets plucked from the University of Waterloo’s joint aviation program with the WaterlooWellington Flight Centre and intensively trained to be Sunwing commercial pilots, charmed the crowd.
There were cameras and interviews and a news conference. They had great big placards and photo waivers to sign as the big jet took off for Punta Cana without Edwards.
The photographers were relentless. Always, there was one more pose.
“This industry sure has changed,” said Chris Wood, the manager at the airport known by the code YKF. “Pilots are being asked for autographs now.”
But these aren’t just any pilots ready to fill cockpit seats for airlines, in Canada and beyond, that are enduring a shortage of qualified pilots.
These four took the fast track to the friendly skies, thanks to the year-old partnership between Sunwing, the university and the flight centre. Other Waterloo aviation grads are sure to follow as the cadet program partnership continues in 2017, officials said.
The first four did four years at Waterloo. They went into the cadet program at Sunwing last August. The training was intense, like trying to slurp water daintily from a fire hose, Waterloo Wellington Flight Centre general manager Bob Connors said.
Now, all four are flying big jets all over the Caribbean and Canada even though they are in their early 20s.
Leckie figured this sunny reality would be up to 10 years down the line for him after years of loading bags and steering smaller planes up north.
“If you would have told me a year and a half ago I would be doing this, I would have told you it’s impossible,” said Leckie, who grew up on the Lake Huron shores of Brights Grove and was always mesmerized watching the little planes flying out of Sarnia airport.
“There’s no way a 23-year-old, right out of school, can fly a 737. But we’re doing it.”
And yes, first officers do indeed get to fly the plane. They
have all the training and knowledge, they just need to add the experience. So, for example, Leckie will fly the plane down to Jamaica. The captain will fly back.
“People ask me all the time, ‘So, do you actually get to land the plane?’ Yah, I land the plane all the time. It’s what we’re trained to do.”
Ascents are just as much of a rush for O’Hanlon, a small-town girl from Prescott, Ont., who became obsessed with aviation when, back in Grade 5, she took a Sunwing flight to Orlando.
“This is really my dream,” O’Hanlon said. “Every time I push up the power on take off, I have a big smile on my face. I love it. It’s an amazing job.”
For Cameron Fuchs, whose grandfather Bill was a mechanic in the Royal Dutch Air Force, taking the controls of a jet feels natural to him. He grew up in Newmarket, flying model airplanes with his dad Eric and visiting Buttonville airport to watch planes.
Father and son took flying lessons together when Cameron was in high school. Eric got his private pilot’s licence first. Now, they can take to the air together.
“Any chance I get, I always go out and fly with him,” Fuchs said. “It’s something we get to share together.”
And Thursday’s media spotlight moment was an ego-stroking instant for Edwards, O’Hanlon, Leckie and Fuchs to pass around and share.
But that glamorous moment, as Sunwing captain and standards manager John Hudson assured, would surely fade into the horizon like a disappearing plane.
“Airline pilot are not celebrities,” said Hudson, a Waterloo grad who lives only 10 minutes from the Breslau airport. “We’re just quietly doing our job.”