Kenn Borek Air rescue at South Pole earns Smithsonian award
Calgary-based Kenn Borek Air was recognized for its South Pole rescue mission at an event in Washington, D.C., Wednesday.
The crew members that completed the risky rescue of two sick workers in June 2016 have been awarded the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum 2017 trophy.
Chief pilot Wally Dobchuk, first officer Sebastian Trudel, aircraft maintenance engineer Michael McCrae, Capt. James Haffey, first officer Lindsay Owen, aircraft maintenance engineer Gerald Cirtwill and medics Thai Verzone and John Loomis were honoured for completing the mission during the Antarctic winter.
“The Kenn Borek Air team’s successful rescue mission recalls an earlier era of bold accomplishments, before aviation connected nearly every point on the globe,” Gen. J.R. (Jack) Dailey, the John and Adrienne Mars director of the museum, said in a news release.
Crew faced concerns including aircraft icing, temperatures that dipped as low as -60 C and unpredictable snowy conditions when they undertook the rescue the sick workers from the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
The company was approached on June 9 last year about the mission, and left Calgary on June 14 in a pair of Twin Otter planes.
Dobchuk, Trudel and McCrae flew into the South Pole to retrieve the two patients, while a second plane remained at the Rothera research base on the Antarctic Peninsula to receive the evacuees.
“All we had was the moonlight reflecting in the snow,” Trudel said in July, 2016. “It’s similar to when we get there in October temperaturewise. It’s the darkness that makes all the work harder for sure.”
The award, established in 1985, recognizes outstanding achievements in the fields of aerospace science and technology.
A 2017 trophy was also presented to NASA’s Peter Theisinger for lifetime achievement.