“We are literally flying the emergency room to street level” Air Ambulance pilot Adele Dobler

What happens when your “office” is a helicopter and your job is to bring an emergency room to the streets of London in under seven minutes? In this episode I sit down with Adele Dobler, a helicopter air ambulance pilot with London’s Air Ambulance, to unpack what it really takes to fly lifesaving missions over one of the world’s busiest cities.

We get into how Adele went from dreaming about helicopters to strapping into the left‑hand seat, what it’s like to land on tower blocks and motorways, and how the aircraft becomes a mobile resus room when someone is having the worst day of their life. We talk decision‑making under pressure, managing fear, and the reality of carrying a team and a patient’s chances on your shoulders at 1,000 feet.

Adele also shares lessons from her book “Free to Fly: Lessons in Managing Workplace Fear From an Air Ambulance Pilot” – how to lead when everyone’s looking at you, why “imposter syndrome” can become an unhelpful identity, and practical ways to show up as yourself in high‑consequence environments.

If you enjoy this conversation and want to support H‑Hour and help me keep these episodes coming, you can back the show on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/cw/hkpodcasts. Patrons get access to bonus Q&As (including the Adele icebreaker episode), early releases, and the chance to submit questions for future guests.

Follow and support Adele:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adele_the_heli_pilot/

Book – “Free to Fly: Lessons in Managing Workplace Fear From an Air Ambulance Pilot”: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Fly-Managing-Workplace-Ambulance/dp/B0B5PYSWLN/

This episode is sponsored by Sin Eaters Guild - sineatersguild.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello, welcome back to Heychouer. Uh, if you are here for Adele and not Hey Chour, it's your first time before you're like, what the hell is Hey Chau? I'm just here to listen to Adele. Be aware that there's an episode before this one called The Icebreaker, and that is about a 20-minute long episode with Adele where I Q ⁇ A'd her uh based on questions submitted by Heych Hour patrons. Um I strongly suggest you go back and listen, go back and listen to that one first before you will in fact it doesn't really matter, just listen to it. Listen to it before this one, because that's the way they were done chronologically, or you can listen to it afterwards, or you can not listen to it at all. It's totally up to you. Just be aware it's there, and um, and it it's it's there for the taking, basically. So don't miss out on that one. This is uh this is what was gonna say there. Holy shit, that's the first time I've minced my words here. No, right, when fucking catalysts never happened before in my life. No, we're not doing that again. Um right, onto the podcast. I don't know. I had a complete brain fart.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Because then if I have one, I won't feel so bad. Thank you. That's the best icebreaker there is.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Um, welcome. Welcome to Hower again.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Wonderful. Thank you so much for the same.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

How did you I say again after the icebreaker? It's like you haven't left the room. No, how did you how did you find the icebreaker? Some questions in there are a bit.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

You know what? It was great. We just delve straight into the meat and potatoes of the conversation. It was a little bit dark, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

I was unsurprised at the calibre of the questions, knowing what the kind of stuff that gets submitted for previously.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

You love it because I'm not one for small chat either. So it's good just to get into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Oh, really? And here we are on a long form podcast where we're gonna do lots of chatting about all sorts of stuff, but it's not gonna be small. Great. So um you were talking, uh you were talking uh on the icebreaker. You mentioned there was a mention of imposter syndrome. Uh, and you said, I think you said you don't believe in imposter syndrome. No, this interests me. What do you mean you don't believe in imposter syndrome?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

So I think imposter, well, also imposter syndrome isn't like a syndrome like a medically diagnosed condition, which isn't it? You can't be diagnosed as an imposter. I think that's a little bit weird. But also, I feel like it can be a bit of a blanket statement and become people's identity. And I only know that because I did it to myself, and I felt like I was I was an imposter. And it's like, I am not an imposter, I can only be who I am. I'm Adele, and I've tried to be other people, but it doesn't work for me, and I keep coming back to myself. So I feel like imposter syndrome can almost be a bit of a scapegoat for other things where yes, I have doubt, I still have doubt in my life, and sometimes I bite off more than I can chew. And it's like, oh, I step into a room and it's like, oh, okay, I could be an imposter there, but I'm not because I am me and I am in that room. I'm standing there in the moment. So if you can kind of remove that identity of being an imposter, you can get back to the real issue, which is I have doubt. I haven't done anything like this before. I have fear of A, B, or C. What's a small step that I can take to show up to be like, okay, I am not an imposter. So I think it's just that that mix of identity and owning it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Uh I think No, I that's that's what I wanted to ask about it. Because I totally agree with you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

So it's one of those It's really, it's a really slippery slope.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

It's one of those phrases that it is one of those phrases that is getting completely overused and misused. And it is sim it instead of it being imposter syndrome, someone feels like, oh, I've got imposter syndrome. It's probably, I don't know, that's anxiety, right, and or some self-doubt, right, and all these other things, these normal emotions that you're feeling in in the normal circumstance, new job or a challenging role, new team, uh, or you've you've you've surpassed your own expectations of yourself put in the position you're in now, and you're still overcoming that. That's not imposter syndrome.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

You know, it's like it's just it's almost like the overuse of the word trauma as well. It's it's kind of the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

I do feel like you can do a bit of a reframe if you want to say imposter syndrome. I've tried to sort of switch the narrative to make it almost a superpower. Where if you have to hold on to the term imposter syndrome, why don't we look at the benefits that it offers? I.e., you're going to be very diligent, you're going to be extra careful, you're going to be conscious of all of your actions because you have this self-doubt of your performance. You just have to be careful that it does the pendulum doesn't swing all the way the other way. But if it helps you perform better, show up for yourself, overdeliver, those are good things, right? So if you can at least acknowledge, okay, I have doubt about these sort of things. But if I'm able to sort of use that insecurity in a good way, if it makes you work harder and try and, you know, own the room and earn that spot for yourself, that can be good. But as long as you're not using it to hold you back, because I that's what I fell into. And it kind of just keeps doing this then. And how do you get out of that if you just believe that so deeply in yourself that you are an imposter? It's just it's quite sad. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Talking on the subject of imposter syndrome, when you were a young lady, a little girl back in Canada, did you envisage a life which brought you to your current situation, which is a helicopter pilot for London Air Ambulance?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

If you would have told me that, if you're anything that gave you, I wouldn't believe it, genuinely. It's um yeah, a true imposter. I so I, like you said, little girl growing up in Canada, grew up in a small town where there wasn't a lot of stuff on offer. Most people either ended up having kids really early or just got into drugs. So those are sort of your two options. Um, my parents were like two of the hardest working people I know, even to this day. But we didn't have a lot of money, like there wasn't a load of opportunity. I didn't have any family members in aviation, I didn't have financial support. I ended up kind of a roundabout way, falling into aviation almost. So in my late teens, early 20s, I had no idea what I wanted to do. My background is in horses, so I thought I was either going to be a veterinarian or a riding instructor or something like that. But I worked in a vet clinic and I really struggled holding the animals while we put them down. Like that literally broke me in half. And I was 12 also at the time. So talk about early trauma. Um, and then started the riding thing, but ended up Can I pause? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

So I was a 12-year-old. Yeah. I mean what you're working at what work experience or exactly.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

We because I was part of the like international baccalaureate thing, and I was like, I'm gonna be a veterinarian, so I'm gonna volunteer at a vet clinic. So if we want to go dark, we can go dark.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Oh my god. I feel like if I was a veterinarian, I said, God, I got this uh young child or young teen, not even a teenager yet, for work experience. Let's definitely show them the putting the animals down a bit.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

I would not be thinking that.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

It's funny how all these little steps piece together to like predict your future, because the very first surgery I ever saw was a cat being declawed. So I was holding the cat, they put a tourniquet around its arm and then literally like crunch and then cauterize the nails. And that's the very first surgery I ever saw. And I was 12 years old, and the burning smell, I could feel myself like getting faint. And I was like, I think I need to go sit down. And I literally took two steps and fainted, like face down in the surgery room.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

But I've never been ill watching any other thing sit. So going to all the hems jobs and seeing the worst case scenario, like got the fainting out of the way. So I know I'm okay with surgeries and blood, but I'll never forget that one.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

My goodness me. My goodness me. So um, yes, going back. So yeah, can I we've digressed slightly.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Um, anyway, so I thought I was gonna end up in the world of animals, but a few things happened where I was like, that's not for me. And then through university and a few different things, I was still a bit lost. I went to university for two years, was doing biology and physics, going into a load of debt, didn't have a plan, didn't know what the outcome would be, didn't want to be working in a lab or doing statistics for the rest of my life. So I was like, what is there? And during sort of a lost phase where I came back home and was just working three jobs to make some cash to pay for school, I ended up working at one of those like fruit caravans on the side of the road. So we sold cherries and peaches and all different things.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Where in Canada were you?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

So this was Edmonton. I had been going to school in Victoria, British Columbia. Um, so took a break from that, came home working a bunch of jobs just to try and finance it. And I thought it was a great job because I just sat there, ate a load of fruit, got suntanned, and read books and just got to chat with people. So that might be my retirement future, but we'll see how this whole aviation thing goes. Um, and I was telling everybody about the cherries because we actually use helicopters to blow dry them. And I was mind blown by it. I was like, how is this a thing? Because they get condensation on them in the morning. So they used to use these big trucks with like a blow dryer on it. They'd go up and down the fields because if the condensation stays on the fruit, it bursts open in the morning when it gets hot, and then the whole crop is essentially worthless because it just rots on the trees. Somebody had the bright idea that they could take helicopters and fly up and down the fields, and you can do like a hundred fields when before you could do 10. Oh, telling everybody about this.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

I mean, half the time.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Exactly. Yeah. And um, I was telling everybody, and then this lady came, was buying the cherries, I was like, You'll never believe these helicopters. And she's like, Oh, I do that. I was like, What? What do you mean? She's like, Oh, yeah, my dad has this company in Washington, and da-da-da. Just chatted for maybe 10 minutes. And after that conversation, it was like this little switch went, and I just couldn't stop thinking about it after that. And I feel like maybe this could be like a public service thing. If if you're out there, because I didn't get her name, I don't even really remember what she looks like, but this person literally changed my life in that small conversation where I was like, oh, because it hadn't even occurred to me that it was an option because I didn't see anybody who looked like me doing it. So I thought vet doctor, you know, something practical. And after that conversation, I couldn't stop thinking about it. So the first thing I did was I got a book uh From the Ground Up, which is just a basic flight training book in North America. And I thought learning the phonetic alphabet was the most important first step.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

It's actually a training book. It is, yeah. Oh, I thought you were gonna talk about like a novel like Chicken Hawk or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

No, it's good, and it kind of outlines different airspace and whatever else. So I was like, oh, I'm just interested. Go have a look and got my medical, spoke to a few different schools. I was like, oh, I don't know. We'll think about it. But kind of just shelved it for a little while. And then had a few other epiphany moments along the way, which we can delve into more deeply later. But once I actually got flying and I went for my first introductory flight, I just knew I couldn't do anything else. Like I just couldn't picture myself in any other job after that. I was like, I don't know how this is gonna happen, but it will. So I ended up working three jobs again to save enough cash, got a loan to pay for half of it, and ended up almost running out of money at the end. Uh, had to borrow another, I think, $1,000 to pay for an endorsement. So it just felt like kind of tooth and nail the whole way through, at least to get my training done. And then I made a promise to myself that I would stay in the industry as long as it took to pay that loan back. So even if I was working ground jobs, even if I was cleaning hangar floors, whatever, I would do it until that loan was paid off. And then if it still wasn't working, then I could do something else. So thinking about that 20-something year old girl scrubbing the hangar floor in Whitecourt, Alberta, which is literally middle of nowhere, oil and gas center of Western Canada, to be thinking of her flying in London, landing on the rooftop at Roe London, it's like completely thought it was impossible. I didn't even think I'd make it 2,000 hours. Never mind the rest of it. So yeah, it is nice to sort of look back and reflect where we came from.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

So your first job, so your first jobs in the industry, it wasn't pilot, it was literally. Scrubbing.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Yeah, a lot of uh hanging uh clean cleaning of hangar floors, um, did even like passenger services, so checking in passengers for scheduled service flights. Uh, my very first sort of flying job wasn't as a pilot, it was operating a thermal imaging camera. We were scanning pipelines, so we covered pretty much every square inch of Western Canada. So Alberta, British Columbia. We even followed one line that goes from sort of western Alberta all the way down through Saskatchewan into Manitoba. If anybody has heard of these places, I know they sound fake, but they are real. Down into the States. And it was like days of flying in a straight line scanning pipeline. Really interesting though, because we got to see the most remote places on Earth. Is it like Canada is so vast? I remember we stopped at one place in northwest BC, sorry, northeast BC, and it's essentially like a swamp. So you land on the helipad and it's it's all blocked out and supported. But if you jump too hard, you can see a tree wiggle like a hundred meters away because it's just this awesome. People lose quad bikes up there all the time. They just sink and it just disappears. So, you know, you'd never see that if you weren't in a helicopter because there's literally no other way to get there. So that's one of my favorite things about this industry is you feel like the first human sometimes touching down in those places, and you're only there because it's so remote. But yeah, it's quite special.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Yeah, places that just totally inaccessible unless you got a helicopter.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

This is the only way to do it. Yeah. The only way to do it. Goodness me. So was you where was your first pilot job then?

SPEAKER_00 14:42

So my first flying job, um, I started at a very tumultuous time in the industry. I finished my training in 2009. So this was literally right after the financial crisis. Oil and gas is like non-existent. So I would say maybe now is probably a better time to start. I'm not sure, but it it wasn't great. So I ended up getting laid off from that job with the oil and gas staff because it just the contracts were dwindling. And I had applied four times at this company out of Vancouver that I had dreamed to work for. So I had, again, a couple different jobs. I was driving kabuki cabs, working in a restaurant, and just doing a bunch of random things. They finally called me back. My first job with them, again, wasn't flying, it was doing sales for tours and passenger services, which was great. And then my first flying job was actually doing those tours. So that was the ultimate dream where I was paid to bring people in a jet ranger from Vancouver Harbor, fly over the Coast Mountains, bring them back. We did a bit of charter stuff in between, and I was like elated, jumping for joy. Cause it was stunning. Everybody was really happy to see you, and I just got to show them the most beautiful places on earth. So yeah, that was uh very excited to die.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Polar opposite of what you do now.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Yeah, kind of.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Almost the polar opposite, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 15:53

It is a bit, yeah, yeah. Oh, the people are generally pretty happy to see us when we pick them up. Just a slightly different way. They just might not remember it. That's true.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

A previous guest who just walked out before you walked in, he he was in a an RTA on the motorway. He stopped to help another vehicle. Oh no. So it crashed at the central reservation midnight on the M3. Oh. Um and got people out safely onto the hard shoulder. Another car came down, hit the other car, crashed. The engine block came out of the car, flew across, and took his leg off on the road. Long story short, he was telling a story of uh the air ambulance landing, London Air Ambulance.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Landing. This is 2009.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Oh, world worlds collide.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah, yeah. Uh yeah, exactly. So I said, So you never guess who's gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Um, but he had that he had a blood transfusion on the motorway. They flew blood in for him because he Yeah, we always have blood on the back. Wow, I was amazed at that. It was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Honestly, the skill of the doctors and paramedics, we are literally flying the emergency room to the street level. So the echmo thoracotomy is like all of these really advanced care treatments that normally you can only do in the emergency room. We do it at street level. It's it's really quite a I just hope the people of London can appreciate how amazing that actually is, especially from doing hems and air ambulance in different places in the world. The fact you guys have four trauma centers, this level of skill that can be delivered within essentially seven minutes from anywhere in the Royal London is like unheard of.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

Yeah, it is incredible. If you're on your worst day, do you know? Funny enough, coincidentally, uh you may remember you, you may not. I think it's about a week or a couple of weeks after we'd first met. And it was at the hot remember you took me up onto the pattern, and uh I was in a traffic jam.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

And I was filting through on the bike, and I got the front, and it was like, ah, big RTA. And then the London, and I'd never seen London Air Ambulance land anywhere in my life. Oh, interesting. And just after meeting you, the air ambulance came and I think I text you. I text you earlier and said, it wasn't you, was it? Um landed on the going back. Let's go back. So, talk about your first pilot job. How did you end up working alongside the British Army training establishment in Kenya? What how how did you get to that point from the 20-something year old?

SPEAKER_00 18:22

What's the time? That's probably is it more than 10 years between those two? I'd have to do the math on the ears, but it's quite a bit. So I was flying the Long Ranger doing tours. Super cool. Great introduction into the industry as well, because I was getting a lot of pilot and command time, which people who are in the industry, they're it's really valuable hours. Because if you start as a co-pilot, that time, it's a little bit weird to explain, but it's not like worth half. But it's not that you're the captain of the aircraft, you're not in command of it. So it is really valuable to get that time. So the company I was at also operated Sikorsky 76s.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Valuable in terms of documented experience.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Exactly. Because in aviation, it's all about your hour building, but it kind of depends what type of hours you have. So at the company I was at, some people missed out on that opportunity to fly the tours and whatever else, and they went straight into the co-pilot seat. But then when you want to do things later in your career, it's a little bit harder to catch up on that time, which we can kind of go into details, but it's a bit boring. Essentially, I was really fortunate that I had that opportunity because then when I finished my instrument rating, I was able to start as the co-pilot on the Sikorsky 76, and we use them to fly passengers from Vancouver to Victoria. So Vancouver is sort of the business capital, but Victoria is the provincial capital of British Columbia, but it is on an island, and the only other way to get there is like a six-hour ferry. So we would helicopter people back and forth, and it was just over half an hour. So that was a great experience. I was able to start as a co-pilot, and then once I had the time to upgrade to captain, I upgraded to captain on the 76. And then we also did the air ambulance operations. So once you upgraded to captain, then you could start as a first officer on ambulance and kind of go back and forth. So it was an amazing company to cut your teeth. They had all these different opportunities. It was quite diverse. We also flew the Sikorsky 76 single pilot in northern British Columbia, flying sort of VIP clients out to these fishing lodges, which is also very cool. And the West Coast of British Columbia, everything is to the threshold, whether it's weather, weight, maintenance on the aircraft. So it was really good to learn how to say no to things, how to build your confidence, show up for yourself in different scenarios when you're like, okay, I'm I remember doing a repositioning flight with the Long Ranger from Vancouver to Prince Rupert, which I think is probably 1,500 kilometers up the West Coast, and there's no other towns or cities. And it's just like chilling by myself, open ocean. It's like don't screw this up at all. And it was amazing because that was one of my first big trips that I was able to do on my own. Got to the top a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Literally on your own in the heli.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yeah, me. I had brought a tent and like survival gear in case I got stuck on a beach somewhere. Um, and a couple fuel stops on the way. Uh yeah, so it was just really wonderful to have those sort of opportunities because a lot of people don't get that unless you're doing more utility stuff.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

So it must be like driving for the driving on your own for the first time after you pass the driving test.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

But then just going to Scotland at night in the rain. That sort of thing. Yeah. Um, it felt really good. So that was very cool. And again, I was like, uh, I had that little moment of I feel a little bit worried and scared about this, but I think it's gonna be great. And as long as I remember my training and do things properly, I didn't do anything crazy. I'm I'm not a cowboy by any means. Um just like keep it steady, stay the course, and you'll get there, which we did. So it's great. Um, so I was at that company for a while and then had an amazing opportunity where I got a scholarship to learn how to fly on night vision goggles. And this was through a group called the Whirly Girls. And they have incredible The Whirly Girls.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

The Whirly Girls.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Whirly Girls. Whirly Girls, okay. So it's more American-based, but they do offer scholarships internationally. So if anybody's looking into scholarships, 100% recommend applying for everything that you can. They have loads of stuff. They do it for engineering, maintenance, um, for flying, tons of stuff. And there's so many scholarships out there from different organizations, and a lot of them go unclaimed because people either don't know they exist or think, oh, well, you know, I probably wouldn't win it anyway, so I won't even put in an application.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

But this is oriented it's women.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

This one is, but they do have um other scholarships for men. So, like even this week, they're running a longlining event for women and men, and it genuinely is just to get people into the industry. So it started as a female only organization.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Longlining.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Uh yes. So longlining is when you have like the rope that comes down from the helicopter, and you're either doing it to drop water on fires or moving external loads. If you need to pick up that quad bike out of the swamp, you can go hook that up and then move it. So all sorts of applications. Um, so they have a link. Of long line, and they also have a lads of long line. So they're trying to do both. But um yeah, so I guess my point on that is apply for everything that's there because a lot of times you just get it by default because nobody else applied. So I won this amazing scholarship to learn how to fly on night vision goggles. And then flying at night to me was quite scary after that. It was like, wow, the world is really dark and it's a lot better to see where you're going. So then I changed to another air ambulance hems company that flew on night vision goggles, and this was in northern Canada.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

So we So you developed a preference for it.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

I did, yes. Yeah, it was it was great to fly.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Um it's much more challenging that way. It is more risk there as well.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

It's essentially like looking through toilet paper tubes, but we had been doing black hole landings at night. So you're essentially doing the same thing, you just can't see where you're going. And we would rely on either ambient light, light from the aircraft. So things like wires, trees, foreign objects, people, animal, like you just can't see it as clearly at night. Night vision goggles, like you said, they do introduce other risk, but the difference is almost night and day to what you can see. So, especially for things like trying to get to patient side in a confined area at night, if it is just black and you're sort of riding the light where you follow the light profile coming down into a site, you don't know what's around that. You don't know if the light starts to disappear, okay, there's probably a hill in front and you pick up other clues. But um, yeah, flying on night vision goggles is definitely much better in that regard. So I went to a base in northern Canada, which was quite a cool opportunity because we're able to fly into the Rocky Mountains. And contrasting that with London, our closest major trauma center was 450 kilometers away in Edmonton. Um, so we would do really long legs, you know, pick somebody up in the mountains. We'd have to refuel essentially at our base, had enough, generally, depending on what the wind was doing, to get there in one trip to drop the patient off, get to our next fueling station, probably have to fuel again on the way home and then head back up. So a completely different mission profile. I was there for a few years, but because I'd been living on the West Coast, I became quite weak and winter started to kill me. And it became quite fair weather. And I remember having a long job, like I just explained, fueling the aircraft at three in the morning, minus 57 before wind chill. Everything, like any exposed skin on your face, if you close your eyes too tightly, your lids freeze shut, if you inhale too fast, your nostrils freeze shut. Any exposed skin is frostbitten, not even in minutes, but in seconds. So you have to be like fully protected. Standing there feeling the aircraft, wind blowing down my neck, and it's just like there has to be a better way. So I have so much admiration for the medics and uh, you know, the doctors, paramedics, and nurses that are doing those jobs because we would have to keep the helicopter running. Because if we left it um, if we turned it off and we left it sitting there for more than 10 minutes, the oil would be too cold and we wouldn't be able to start again. So we would keep the aircraft running, keep the heat on. They would be in the ditch, literally up to their waist in snow, trying to deliver whatever patient care they can in the ditch, drag them out, get them into the aircraft, and then once we had them stabilized, have them warm up in the helicopter in the flight to get to the hospital, in the time it took to go from the hospital to, or sorry, from the helipad to the hospital, which would be maybe two, three minutes, the lines would freeze. So it'd have to be really careful on what patients we would transport. And it's just like a whole other world. It's very difficult, very hard to operate that way. So I thought the equator sounded pretty good. Once applied for a job. Um, not quite as a joke, but I saw a job posting on one of these like helicopter job sites. And I was like, oh, is it just throw my resume, you never know? And they called me right back because I pretty much checked every box as far as the experience they were looking for, which the type of air, the type of the aircraft, night vision goggle, total time, whatever else. And then I had to call my mom and say, I think I just got a job in Africa.

SPEAKER_03 26:57

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

I'd never been. No, never.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

I was like, And this is the Kenya job.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

This was Kenya, yeah. So before I went to Kenya, talk about uh introducing external fears into your life. I had bought some new walking boots, some like hiking boots for there because I just thought, oh, I need something that's a little bit lighter weight than my thinsillate winter ones that I've been using in Grand Prairie. And uh went for coffees with some people literally the day before I flew out. And they said to me, Oh, you know, you're gonna get your feet cut off because of those new boots, and somebody's literally gonna like machete your legs off to steal your shoes. So I was like, Oh, well, my flight's tomorrow. So, and like loads of other terrible stories about being attacked by people and whatever else. I was like, hmm, well, hope I haven't made a massive mistake. So flew out. I don't think I wasn't terrified, but I definitely was like full of anxiety, full of doubt, imposter syndrome, you know, all of these types of feelings getting on the plane of like, what am I doing?

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Where had you been outside of Canada before that?

SPEAKER_00 27:58

I had done quite a bit of traveling. So I'd been to Southeast Asia and um Indonesia, Australia. It wasn't the first time leaving Canada, at least, but I'd never been to Africa or India or places that I would say are more challenging, culturally, you know, that much of a cultural diversion.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

But you also weren't like the classic uh North American stereotype that's uh not been anywhere outside of North America.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

No, fortunately had traveled, been to Central America and stuff before. So yeah, I was very fortunate in that regard. And I do love traveling. So I was like, well, we'll call it an adventure, and if it goes terribly, I'll come home, was kind of my solution.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

And how long was the contract for initially?

SPEAKER_00 28:33

It was unending. Like I was gonna be a full-time employee touring back and forth from Kenya to Canada. So I hopped on the plane, and the second I stepped, you know, you get that feeling when the when the doors of the airport open and you just smell the country. Do you ever have that? It's like everywhere smells different, everywhere you just get like a different feel. And the second I stepped out of that airport, I was like, this is gonna be great. And I was so excited. And I just like the people are super friendly, and genuinely, it was a really good job. COVID kind of screwed things up because just travel and stuff got a little bit, yeah, messy for everybody. And I was stuck there for four months. But before that, it was it was a very exciting job. We were doing some really cool profiles, getting to see all the animals, help out the military. Like it was, yeah, I was very glad that I didn't chicken out because I very easily could have just been like, oh, you know what? That's too far out of the box. I'm too scared. I'm not gonna go.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

So, what was the job? Explain the job if you can.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Yeah, so the job is uh essentially providing Hams and Air Ambulance support for the British Army. They send troops down for exercises every year, uh, thousands of troops at a time, and we would provide the med cover for them. So if they shot themselves in the foot, were impaled by an elephant, fell off a cliff, got heat stroke, poked a scorpion, those are some of the more common jobs. We would pick them up from the training site and then fly them to Nairobi to give them essentially UK level care at the hospital in the center of Nairobi. If they needed to then be medifaced back to the UK, then they would potentially do that as well. But then at least we were covering, covering that support so that the military knew their troops would have that medical cover if some the worst were to happen to them.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

So you you're on standby most of the time then. Yeah. Just that you wait for a wait for a call.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Yeah. A lot of waiting. Yeah. It was um, it was sort of boom and bust there. Like when the exercises were on, it was busy and they tended to do most of the training at night. So we did a lot of night flying, a lot of MVG, very low millilux, which is the amount of light sort of available to you and available to the night vision goggles. So if you're above 500 feet, you essentially can't see anything. Like it's just hazy. And the night vision goggles do this thing called scintillating, which it literally looks like static on a TV, like sparkle. So you kind of just got used to that happening all the time. And then we would be landing in dusty conditions because it's the middle of the desert. So we would set up a NATO tee where we'd put um two types of glow sticks essentially. So we would have one infrared and one regular one in a water bottle stacked neatly so that they wouldn't blow away when we landed, to make ourselves a bit of a runway. And then that's all you could see. Because you, the visibility when the dust starts to form literally disappears. So, unless you're set up on that profile to land and have that marker essentially as far as that water bottle, but like it genuinely has to be that close. And you put the toe of the aircraft right on it, that's what we were doing every night to pick these guys up. So uh it was a really interesting job profile. The density altitude also was really high. So the base we departed from, the elevation is like 6,300 feet because it's right on the slopes of Mount Kenya, add you know, 25 to 30 degrees temperature, our density altitude. The helicopter believed it was at like 9,000 feet. So then we're also doing that, picking up the pages. So there's quite a few factors to consider when we're doing the code.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

But do you army not have their own airframes out there?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

They used to. So it used to be, I think they had the links and they had, I don't know what was before that. Um, it had been a military contract, and then they ended up contracting it out to a civilian company. So we had BK 117s. So we started with a C1 and then ended up upgrading to the C2, which is closer to the H145 appearance. It's a bit of a Frankenstein helicopter, which I really like because it has the cockpit of a 135, the body of a 145, but then the tail rotor of a BK117. So that probably doesn't mean anything to anybody, but I I like it because it's kind of all this like piecemeal put together.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

It'll mean something to the helicopter geeks.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Some people will know. Some people will get it. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. The three people.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Yeah, exactly. So that must have been quite a challenging time out there, though, in in a similar way to um what your current your current role is, you know, dealing with people's worst, worst days. I can't imagine there's anything routine about what you were doing, was there?

SPEAKER_00 32:55

Um, no, but every air ambulance or hems company I've worked for, you do it's it's funny because there's so much variation and there's so many unpredictable factors in the job itself that a lot of the stuff we do outside of it, as far as our standard operating procedures, get really tight. So then you're almost supported from that repetition. So a lot of the profiles in Canada, you would start at a base and you'd essentially have to fly out to a scene. Take, you know, if we're really sort of simplifying it to the basic, basic level, you leave the airport, fly to the scene, pick up the person, and then transport them to the hospital, wait there, and then come back. So obviously there's a lot of variety in that. But if you can simplify it, I find that almost like a safety net. And every time we take off, we're doing after takeoff checks, we're doing cruise checks, we're doing pre-landing checks. So there's it's almost like a metronome where you have this pace that's set, and you're like, okay, we do this and then we do this and then we do this. We're overhead, we're gonna be making decisions about where we're landing. That one doesn't look acceptable. We're gonna look over there, you know. So there is a bit of predictability built into it. And then even London, the job profile is slightly different, but we always leave our base in the morning and we fly to the Royal London hospital, we do our after-takeoff checks, you know, our quick checks while we're airborne, our pre-landing checks, we land on the roof. From there, we're gonna be landing at a scene. Overhead can be quite tricky because the landing sites are quite limited, but we do our after-takeoff checks, you know, we talk to Heathrow, we do our pre-landing checks, we assess the scene. Okay, we had assumed maybe we could have landed there. Now there is a massive fare. So we're not gonna be landing there. What else is nearby? So um, I do kind of rely on the comfort of those predictable aspects of the job. So if you have those foundations set, it kind of opens up your brain capacity for the other variables that you need to contend with every day. Um, yeah. So I find that maybe that again is like not the healthiest response, but at least it's something that I can rely on day to day. We know these are things are gonna happen. So as long as you've sort of checked those boxes, it almost becomes like an action pattern where you don't have to think so hard about those bits. You can focus on the important parts.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Yeah, routine built around the chaos, right? It's like a framework that keeps you keep keeps you stable.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

Mentally in a lot of words, you know.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Some days it's a little bit harder to keep that pace than others, but yeah, for the most part, and just rely on that.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

Uh, what was it like? Um, what was it like working with the military types? What were they?

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Oh, it was great. Yeah. No, we had we had tons of fun. Um, we were also sort of separated because we originally weren't based in the camp. So we stayed at a little golf course nearby. So I really can't complain. Like, we were so spoiled. I'd be sitting there, like having my little cappuccino looking at Mount Kenya, waiting for a call. So that was quite cool. Um, we did end up moving into the camp, but um it's like anything. Like there are good people and there's assholes for lack of a better expression, no matter where you go in the world. So if you can sort of find the good ones, seek them out, and spend your time with them, don't worry about what the other people are gonna say. I feel like that's pretty good no matter where you are.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Yeah. Um when we were talking on the icebreaker, I've mentioned Liz Bakcoini to you. Did I mention that off air? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

We did mention it. We can mention it again because it sounds quite close.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

Yeah, no, the reason I I I you would the reason I she popped out of my head is you were talking about compartmentalization. Um were you talking about that in I'm trying to recall, were you talking about that in reference to compartmentalizing the extreme experience you've just been through?

SPEAKER_00 36:37

So we were, I think, talking about it in the context of seeing the heavy medical stuff and dealing with that sort of thing. So we were flying around Mert, which was who our client was essentially in Kenya. So, you know, the stuff that those guys saw and dealt with, I would say Kenya probably didn't even compare, where it was more like training injuries as opposed to frontline injuries. So I can't even imagine the kind of stuff that she would have experienced.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Yeah, no, no, I'm not trying to compare you two against each other. The the um two very different roles, but yeah, I think you're downplaying that slightly.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Because uh because again, probably uh maybe more of a tactic to just avoid.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Okay, okay, but maybe again, maybe not the healthiest part of the colour. A traumatic, like a a big, a big injury, a life-threatening injury, it that happens during a training event is in a way more chaotic because of the unexpectedness of it compared to if something happens on an operational tour, for example. It is expected. Right. This is gonna happen. Yeah, totally. Even if me as an individual has just been fragged. Yeah. Okay, I kind of expected that. Right. It was gonna happen. You signed up for it in the job a bit.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

Yeah, you know?

SPEAKER_02 37:50

No, obviously that's it doesn't happen if you're missing limbs and stuff, but yeah. But uh, it's not great. The shock factor must be more, I think, for the individuals involved.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yeah, definitely. It's um, I think for myself, again, able to separate slightly because the medical crew are the ones who are genuinely dealing with more of the frontline stuff, so to speak. We are exposed to it and we do get involved in certain ways, but it's more of like passing kit, holding blood, holding the patient, maybe. So we do get involved and we do get attached to the patients. But at least I know deep down what we've done is offered them the best chance they have. That does give me a bit of peace of mind because if the accident or if the training incident was going to happen anyway, at least we're there with a helicopter, and at least we can give them the best chance to get the treatment that they need. So I do get a bit of maybe consolation from that. And we just hope that the outcome is what you want.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

How do you ensure I'm assuming that the relationship and the team dynamics between you as the pilot and your co-pilot, between you guys and the medical staff? How how important is that relationship in reality? If there's a bad dynamic, how impactful is that on the level of care being provided?

SPEAKER_00 39:18

I if we're strictly speaking to the level of care, I would like to think that everybody is professional enough, and everybody that I've worked with is professional enough to sort of put their differences aside. It might be, you know, you're not gonna have the chat and the banter, and you might feel that tension between each other. But even if there are hostilities or even if there are struggles between that team dynamic, everybody that I've worked with, we will still put the job first, we will still put the patient first, and then kind of deal with it afterwards. So if there's a conflict, it's like, okay, maybe we just need to have a pause. We'll chat about this in a second. We'll get the job done. When we get back to base, we'll have a debrief. So at that stage, you can sort of air those grievances. You can say, okay, what did we learn? We focus on what is right, not who is right. You know, a lot of these crew resource management skills you have to be very cognizant of.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

And at the moment, what is right, not who is right. I've not heard of that before. Yeah, I've not heard that phrase before, like, bang on you. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

Yeah, it's um because it's really easy to just listen to the loudest voice in the room and you're like, is that the right answer? We don't know. Well, they're loud, so it must be. Which is quite, I find in like business and stuff too, it's quite easy to kind of defer to the person who's the noisiest when genuinely it seems like the person who's quiet in the corner actually has better ideas. They just don't say it because they don't feel empowered to speak up. So I yeah, I would say that patient care generally is not impacted. Um, again, I can only kind of speak from my experience, but it can be quite uncomfortable sometimes when you're in the cockpit, if you do feel that tension. Or, you know, if there is, I don't know, you always hear about these like overbearing doctors or overbearing captains and co-pilots. I think a lot of people who end up in hems and in their ambulance genuinely want to make the world a better place. They want to work as a team, they want to perform the best that they can in that team to optimize patient care. So even if there are conflicts, I found that you're usually pretty good at sort of getting to the bottom of it. Okay, what can we learn from this? How can we communicate better? How can we support each other better? So I'd say overall it's been quite positive, even if it is challenging.

SPEAKER_02 41:23

Yeah. What how are the apart from the obvious skill skill set differences between the medical staff and you and yourself and the co-pilot? What how are the lines of responsibility defined in terms of not responsibility, but uh uh what's the word? Um the authority.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Yeah. So that kind of depends where you're working. And I've experienced different authority priorities in different places. And sometimes it depends on how the companies run. So I've worked for companies that are fully private. So financially, that becomes quite an important driver. I've worked for charities that are fully donation-led. So charity outlook and their priorities becomes sort of, and I've worked for ones that are a bit of a blend or ones that are government contracts. So I feel like you can sort of get a bit of that cultural bleed, even just how the company is sort of framed. As far as the doctors or the medical crew and the pilots, there has always been a bit of a separation. Ultimately, the safety of the flight lands on the pilot's shoulder, and ultimately the safety and the patient care lands on the shoulders of the doctor or the nurse or the paramedic, whoever is responsible for them. So unfortunately, our priorities can be shifted a little bit because their priority might be time, and our priority might be, well, the weather's crap, and we can't speed over there, or we can't get there today. So it's our responsibility to make sure that we've looked at all the parameters, we've checked the weather, the aircraft is safe, maintenance, you did it, all these different things. And we can say, yes, we can do this job to the best of our ability and keep it efficient. Obviously, we don't want to like drag our feet and you walk slowly up the stairs. Like there's a bit of haste, but not rushing, and you want to be efficient. Whereas they might get frustrated because they think we're, oh, well, the helicopter's probably fine because it's just a light. And you're like, it's a pretty important light. So there just might be a bit of communication that needs to happen there so that you can understand the priority. Ultimately, though, the patient care. So in Canada, we would defer the decision on whether to dispatch to the medical crew because if the lines were gonna freeze from the helipad to the hospital, I don't know what that does to the patient, but they do. So then we would say, okay, it's minus 30 now. We're gonna make this decision yours. We think the weather's acceptable, the helicopter's gonna be fine, we can get there, but is that going to be a detriment to the patient care? Then we kind of defer the decision to them. So that would be one of those like sort of variations in the job that you'd have to sort of attack it as it's presented to you.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

I don't know if that answers your question, but no, no, it does answer the question. Does answer the question? I I it's I'm just thinking it's one of those, it's one of those jobs where um I mean I mean not your specifically, I mean the job of being on an air ambulance. Yeah, or uh a hems. Um providing hems, uh where it's it having a bad apple. It's really problematic.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Really problematic.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

And it becomes really apparent, and you'll see other people start to peel away because of one person sometimes, where they'll either go to a different company or they'll shift around or whatever else. So um I think it's really important that people do address that, and that team is important. You can look at it in different ways, though, because some of the companies I've worked for, it's been essentially, you know, four musketeers, five musketeers, where you work with the same people regularly. So you do get a bit of a banter and you do understand each other a bit differently. You can tell, oh, they're a bit quiet today. Maybe something happened at home. Like you just get that feel for their unsaid body language clues. Where places like London, it's a bit more transient because you know they'll do a second for six to 12 months and then it's a new group of people. So you have to really quickly assess, okay, are they fine? That's where maybe debriefing more often becomes key. So you can get to know them really quickly or just check in with people a little bit more. So like even when the medical crew comes back to the aircraft after a tough job, just have that quick second to be like, are you okay? Like, how was that for you? You guys okay to continue? Do you need anything before we carry on? Because you might not be able to see those invisible clues to somebody that you have worked with more. But yeah, it um it's like anything. You sort of get a feel for it, but you're always learning, also, because I am no professional in that by any means. And I just want to be able to show up as the best pilot for my medical crew. So if that means maybe checking in with them or checking in with myself to be like, am I tired and cranky today? Am I hangry? Do I need a sandwich? Like those are all valid things. So it's um every day trying to just build that awareness in yourself and in your team so that you can show up to be the best person because you don't want to be that one guy that's like, oh, he's uh nobody likes working with them. So how do you have that self-awareness?

SPEAKER_02 46:20

Um, exactly. I need to pop the toilet. Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

So we are hopefully it's all okay so far. We're just meandering a bit, but it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 46:28

We're enjoying it, we're joining the chat. Uh right. We were talking off air there. And there was something there was you mentioned that before on the icebreaker or in between where the so the dust storm in Kenya. Right. Did talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

So uh there was one mission that we had where we were flying from our northern base in Kenya and had to bring the patient to restaurants Nairobi. So we had it was a bit of a weird profile because we had like a forward operating base in the desert, and then we had our main base that was Batok, British Army Training Unit Kenya, and then we'd fly people to Nairobi. So it was a weird profile because we would actually switch helicopters halfway through. So when the exercise was on, we had a helicopter that was based up north that would run shuttles essentially, so that way we could turf the patient with you know, lack of a better expression, hand the patient over and then um have the aircraft north again available for the troops, and so we could just like keep the aircraft online as much as possible because we only had the one station there. So then we had one trip where we were doing that. We picked up a patient at one of the other bases and dropped them in Nanyuki. And then when we were coming back north, we're getting all these messages through of like, oh, there's this massive dust storm. And I'll have to show you a picture of it, because it literally was just like to the horizon and probably a mile high of just a wall, wall of dust. It was like, oh, as a like mere Canadian. I was like, I've never seen anything like that before. It was just wacky. And we ended up having to divert and land at one of the paratrooping sites where it's just an airstrip, literally just like a sandy line in the middle of the desert that we knew was like, okay, it's a known space. Landed there. And the other pilot I was with, he was great. It could have been one of these things where if you had somebody that didn't like change of plans or was like a bit of a tricky personality, could have been completely outside their wheelhouse, had a meltdown, and it probably wouldn't have gone very well. But instead, we're just like, oh, this is crazy, this is really crazy. Like, what are we doing here? And the second we touched down, we were surrounded by Kenyans and these locals are just like hanging around where it looked like there's nobody there. And then all these herders just show up with their ghosts and just like standing and staring at us. It's like, this is super weird. But um, it was just one of those things where it could have been like quite a tricky dynamic and it and it could have been a crew resource management nightmare if one person is like, it has to be like this, we're doing this, and we're gonna fight about it. When instead we're like, wow, this is a crazy adventure, and then ended up sending a truck out to us to pick up the doctor and the paramedic that were still with us so they could get back to camp at least. We stayed for a few more hours, but they brought bedding and stuff for us, so we just slept in the back of the helicopter for a few hours and then I suppose you couldn't leave the the air for we couldn't just leave it there. No, it a hundred percent would have been just like picked apart, but yeah, whoever was there had all these like wacky dreams as I was in and out of sleep of like people coming in the back, and I was like, kick me it. It's really bizarre. And then at like two, three in the morning, it cleared up a bit. We could see the stars at least, so we're like, okay, we could at least give it a try to head back to our base, which we could. It was still quite hazy, but um, our camp, fortunately, is like a beacon of light in just a sea of blackness, so it's pretty obvious where where we had to go, but yeah, it was uh an interesting one. My stories are not very relatable.

SPEAKER_02 49:57

No, yeah. The um have you ever had uh whenever I think of helicopters? I like being in the back of helicopters. I have fond memories. Yeah, fond memories being in the back of helicopters, uh getting out and doing crazy stuff. But I would not want to I I think I I always have this fear if I was going to be in a job that I was in helicopters constantly, it's a mechanical failure. Honestly. I I don't know how you uh deal with that.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

I have been fortunate, unfortunate.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

I think if I was gonna do the job, I'd be like, right, I want to shoot.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

You want a gun.

SPEAKER_02 50:48

A shoot. No, because then you go shoot the boy. I'll chuck myself out the door. I'll chuck myself out the door. Listen, in my reality.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

Tip it sideways, jump out. There's a mechanical failure.

SPEAKER_02 50:59

The tip the helicopter somehow remains stable.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 51:02

It's not spinning or anything. Right. I can just get out of the side before I shoot. It's that easy. It's that easy. But my God, the the faith you must have in modern engineering.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

It is in engineering, it is in standard operating procedures, it is in the awareness of things like the Swiss cheese model, if you've come across that, where like all the lines of the Swiss cheese line up from 15 events that happened before the actual incident had to line up to make that accident happen.

SPEAKER_02 51:32

I've never heard this before.

SPEAKER_00 51:33

Oh, it's you can definitely go down the rabbit hole on that. Yeah. It's um if you look at something like a Boeing incident, where, okay, yes, there was a technical fault on the airplane that made it uncontrollable. That event didn't happen because of one thing. It happened because of whoever installed it, whoever planned it, the company that you know encouraged a certain culture of either cutting corners, we're not training because it might change the type rate. You know, all these things that led up to that one event, it wasn't just a one thing. So that's one pretty amazing thing about the culture of aviation. So depending on the company you're with, they kind of either believe in that or they don't. But most places want to keep their aircraft flying and they want their people to come home at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 52:20

It's helpful, right? It's helpful for business.

SPEAKER_00 52:22

It's the goal. Well, it doesn't look great. Exactly. And you can see the consequences. And I don't, I don't want it like slate Boeing because there's amazing people who work there, and it isn't it's an exceptional company, but there are some pretty well-documented incidents that have happened that have aspects of that Swiss cheese model working not in your favor because everything lined up and then something happened. So, with that awareness, you know, I can rely on my training, I can rely on my skill set, I rely on, you know, whoever the captain is or the co-pilot is that I'm flying with. I can rely on their training that we're gonna work together as a team to assess whatever emergency is happening at the time and deal with it as we need to. I can rely on, you know, the company that built and designed that aircraft to put redundancies into it. So we have two engines, we have redundant sets of hydraulic systems, the electrical system has redundancies built into it. I don't want to jinx myself, but the only thing with helicopters and the ones I fly is the tail rotor is a weakness because it is a single point of failure. And there have been incidences that have happened because of that. So you can lose control, but the likelihood is exceptionally low because we do regular maintenance checks on them. You know, there's all these things that are built into it that sort of maybe naively bring me down a path that I can trust the equipment that I'm in. I have also been sort of fortunate and unfortunate to have dealt with quite a few emergencies in my career because of different things. And, you know, I've had engine failures where I had to remember my training and fly it. I was single pilot. Fortunately, I was in an aircraft that had two engines, and I was at a weight that the second engine could hold it. We're able to fly back to base, remember my training, landed it, everything was okay. So it's like, all right, I know in that moment I can show up for myself, I can show up for my crew, and I can show up for my passengers to know that we'll deal with it properly.

SPEAKER_02 54:17

So, where was that? What incident you're referring to there? Talk me through this. Yeah, so it was trying to get over.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Did you want some more anxiety? Maybe it's reassuring. I'm not sure. Yeah, give you some bad dreams tonight. Um, I was flying, this was in the Sikorsky 76, and we were flying in Haidogui, which is essentially almost Alaska. Like you can see Alaska across the coastline. But what we were doing is flying the helicopter single pilot, and all of the sort of tourists would fly to the airport, and then we'd bring them out to these floating fishing lodges. So they had these tiny little helipads that we'd land on, drop them off, and they would be there for I think they did three-day trip or five-day trips, pretty much just be drunk for five days and then have a big party, come back with a load of fish. Great time for everybody. And one of the profiles we would do is we'd remove all of the seats and either fly in groceries or fly out all the frozen fish that had been caught. So I was doing one of these flights first thing in the morning, first trip in. I had a bunch of groceries in the back for the fishing lodge, dropped off the groceries, changed everything over for all of the frozen fish. So it was me and all of the salmon flying back to the base. And as I rotated, pretty much at exactly the wrong time, I was pulling maximum power, just about to rotate. So it's it's like coming off the edge of this, just to the sea, and then you're surrounded by fjords these like big mountains. Um, and the engine just powered down. So I was about to ditch the aircraft because we have pop-out floats on the helicopter. And as I lower the power, preparing to ditch, it started making power again. So like, okay, pull power, don't put it in the sea. And then as I was pulling that high power setting, the power ran down again on one of the engines, but the other one was carrying the load, but now it's like right to the top of its limit. So I ended up doing this like milking of like introducing power just until it wasn't making power anymore, power going down, and I was able to get sort of through 200 feet. Helicopters need that forward air space airspeed because when you're in the hover, that uses the highest power demand. Once I got that forward airspeed, I was able to retract the gear, sort of clean up the aircraft, make it fly essentially more smoothly. It's more aerodynamic, you're not needing as much power.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

Because they get lift from the plane of the from the the air hitting the blade. So the the the air hitting the blades gives it a bit of lift as well as the blades with the black. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:39

So if you think you're in the hover, it has to make all of its power. Where you see an airplane get a running start. Once it has that airspeed, they're essentially free flying. Um, and you need less power to do that. So helicopter is similar, it's asymmetric because the blade that's going forward is actually going faster than the one that's coming backwards. But that's another weird, like magical thing about helicopters.

SPEAKER_02 57:01

The blade that's going forward. Hang on a minute. The blade that's going forward is going faster than the blade that's coming backwards. But they're both attached to the same center point.

SPEAKER_00 57:10

Exactly. So it's called disymmetry of lift. So as the helicopter is going forward, you have an advancing blade. So if the helicopter if the blades are spinning this direction, the blade that is advancing has a certain airspeed. But since you're going forward, this blade actually has less airspeed. So that actually caps how fast helicopters can go. Because if you go too fast, the retreating blade starts to stall and you'll just flip straight over. So you can add that to your anxiety. So helicopters have a never exceed speed because of that.

SPEAKER_02 57:42

What do you mean the hang on? The blade coming back goes to stall. How can the A blade stall?

SPEAKER_00 57:50

I don't know the exact numbers, but say your blade is traveling at 200 knots, coming backwards, spinning in in we call it the disc, which essentially is like every blade spinning together creates a rotor disc. So you can think of it as a circle. The blades on the advancing side are traveling faster and faster and faster and faster, where the blades on the retreating side essentially are going slower and slower and slower the faster you go through the air. Got it. And it gets to sort of a critical point where it will no longer make any lift because it's traveling backwards at the same speed that you're going at. That's helicopter aerodynamics is like a whole mystery tour that you go down. Um, so that's why helicopters can only go so fast. But things like the Chinook, where you have counter-rotating blades, wouldn't experience the same thing. Or things like the K-Max, have you seen that where the blades like interweave with each other?

SPEAKER_02 58:41

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:42

Um, they don't experience that because that counteracts that disymmetry of lift. Anyway, that's another little digression. Yeah. This is one of the coolest things about my job is you're never done being a helicopter pilot because there's so many deep dives. Like, and that's just like a basic overview of helicopter aerodynamics. And that is probably a weakness of mine where like you can just deep dive into the physics of it. Oh, it's just so cool, so magical.

SPEAKER_02 59:11

Talking about the journey, am I right in saying you've just become a captain? Yes, congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 59:19

That's very good.

SPEAKER_02 59:20

How difficult was that? What was that process like?

SPEAKER_00 59:22

Yeah, it's different at every company. Um, so they essentially go through like a command assessment over a certain amount of time, essentially a couple months, before you get to a day that they do a line check. So the line check essentially is a normal day, but you're flying with um one of the line training captains that can sign you off. So they just want to make sure that, yeah, you can do the day-to-day job. Um, everything leading up to that, though, you know, the they just want to make sure that you're at the standard to be sort of sent out on your own and be with either a newer co-pilot or with one of the other co-pilots. So yeah, no, it was good. It was um definitely felt like a market achievement. I was like, I think I need to get a watch or something to market this.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:05

Is there no weird like aviator sort of tradition where there's some kind of gift given for that or um some initiation?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:14

At some of the flight schools, fortunately, not the one that I went to, but when people do either their first solo or they finish their commercial pilot's license, they get like doused with icy water. So that's a popular one. Um, yeah, sometimes people buy watches, it's just different wherever you are. So yeah, I didn't do one. I should um I'll have to think of something.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:31

Aviation's good for watches. There's a lot of watch, there's a lot of the all of the all the watch brands do aviation watches.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:36

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:37

Yeah, one of them does it. The A new one called the aviator. I can't remember. I can't remember anyway. Yeah. Good mystery.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:43

Yeah, there's many brands.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:45

So, how can we end up leaving the uh the Kenya job?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:48

So I had there's a few different reasons. Um, COVID made it quite difficult to travel. Plus, I met my husband who was flying Mert, um, who's English. And we we kind of just met there, but because of COVID, like couldn't really do anything. But then I ended up blowing up my life at home because I was only home for three months out of the year. So I was kind of single, um, only flying part-time and homeless. I was like, well, England sounds quite cool. And ended up coming here for a date essentially. Uh, this was sort of just as COVID restrictions were linked.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

Oh, you mean the UK? Yeah. For a date.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's like, hey, what's the worst that could happen? I wasn't really doing anything at it otherwise. Um and Had you been before? I'd never been to the UK before. No.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:35

Wow. Okay.

unknown 1:01:35

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:36

Again, hey, what's the worst that could happen? I just go back to Canada. So um, I feel like that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:40

Well, you meet the love of your life.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:41

Yeah, exactly. And that's what happened. So we're very fortunate. Um, so I ended up uh working through my license conversion, which involved 13 exams to get the UK license. And I I'm always a little bit outside of the box when it comes to paperwork. So it was a bit tricky to figure out what I actually needed to do for my conversion here. But I ended up just going to a sim and I was able to do the training in Germany, essentially to do a flight test, which I did in the aircraft that was flying in Kenya, and then was able to sort of convert my Kenyan license to a UK CAA license. Um, long. I've definitely simplified that massively because it was a really long drawn-out process.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:25

You had a Canadian license, then you had to get a Kenyan license, then you had to get a UK license.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:31

And I also have my American one. So there's like four like cricket card, any card.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:34

How different are they? I I suppose all they're all driven by FAA, CAA rules, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

Exactly. Yeah. They so the way the regulations are set out is there's essentially like a global set of rules that sort of set out basic parameters for aviation in general. Because you think there's so much crossing of borders and everything else. Like you need a general agreed legislation that every country is going to abide to. And then each country will essentially set their own level of regulations, rules, whatever they need that's appropriate for that operating area. Uh, but it can't be less constricting or less conservative than the global one. And then each company will kind of set their rules. So it just gets more and more specific the more you dive down into it. Um, when I did my Kenyan license, we did an exam, which is probably one of the hardest tests I've ever written. It was 100 questions, but it was based on old Jarops, which is the regulating body that existed kind of before the CAA was governing it. So it's like old UK like rules and numbers and questions with some Kenyan regulations mixed in. Our question bank was like 18,000 questions for a hundred question exam. And I remember this one question, I'll never forget it. It was like, how long does an instructor of a lighter-than-air aircraft have to hold their records for? And I was like, Why am I getting tested on a balloon driver? Like, what does this have to do with anything? It was so random. Um you needed 70 to pass. Uh, it there was a few people who pa who did not pass. It took like seven or eight attempts. And then finally, I think they just like, yeah, just were not given the license, but was like, okay, you really have to buckle down this time and do it. So yeah, the pass rate wasn't very high.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:19

Um, anyway, so that's how just a bank of 18,000 questions.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:23

It was just one of those things of like, well, how do you how do you even improve? You don't even know what to focus on or like what to study. So at least I had been through that when I did the UK exams. There was 13 of them, but at least they're on one subject. So I was like, okay, we're focusing on mass and balancing. 13 exams, yeah. They've actually condensed it because it used to be 14.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

And these are all written. Yeah.

unknown 1:04:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

How long are they?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:47

Uh, they're all different. So some of them. Sorry, I've kind of like blocked this out of my memory because it's also quite dramatic. Everybody who's written the ATPL exams in the UK, I'm sure, will have massive sympathy because it's like a crazy experience. It's really quite challenging. Um, but it just shows that you can jump through the hoops, you're resilient, you, you know, other people have passed these exams before. This is, these are the things that I told myself to keep doing it. Um, but they vary. I think between 25 questions and like a hundred questions on some of them. Some of them are just multiple choice. Other ones, you actually have to like fill in the number, fill in the blank, do calculations. Um, yeah, and it covers everything from navigation to air law to weather to the mass imbalance. And it's a lot to get through. But if you have some good ground school, they kind of work you through each subject. And then as you're working through the subjects, for me, the way my brain works is I was like, okay, I can learn math, I can learn the formulas, I'll just focus on the things that I can control. Because some of the questions are quite random. And you're like, if you haven't seen it, you have maybe a 50-50 of your background if you've come across that question before or if you know the answer. So that was my sort of simplistic brain. Being like, if I can focus on the math questions, at least I know I can get those because math doesn't lie. If you can do the formula and you can work the formula, you'll be fine. And then hopefully that covers maybe 60 to 70% of the test. And then the rest, you hope you've been exposed to the content. And so, because yeah, they're um, they're pretty extensive. Really interesting though. Like some of the some of the subjects, like weather, I just love it. And I can I could deep dive on that and just keep reading. I had to be careful to make sure I stayed focused on what the actual question was asking instead of being like, oh, fronts. Yeah, let's look at that for five days straight. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:33

Is there a is there somewhere in the world that's got that is renowned for having the most challenging uh license uh tests?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

I think the UK is up there. UK Yasa. Yeah, definitely. Um so you know, to answer your question right at the beginning, to think if I'd ever be flying in London, like no chance. Even when I was flying in Canada, it was known of like, oh, it's so many exams, it's impossible. To it to me, it felt like an impossibility to even. Attempt to try that. But after going through the Kenyan thing and thinking about coming here, I was like, well, again, what's the worst that can happen other than being completely unemployed because I have no other marketable skills, finding a different job, or work internationally again? Or, you know, there's there's kind of always a backup plan. So that's how I make most of my decisions. It's like you might as well try that crazy plan A because you always still kind of have plan B if you need it. But yeah, I'm definitely.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:26

What's the most uh what's regarded as the most difficult airframe to fly?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:30

Hmm, good question.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

I or helicopter to fly, I should say.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:35

I would say something, again, I can only speak from my own experience. I would say something small, like a Robinson 22, which maybe is not the most complex airframe, but they are the most susceptible to their surrounding environment. They're really twitchy. They kind of say, like, if you can fly Robinson, you can fly anything. So things, most of the training aircraft that people use, whether it's a little Schweitzer or a Bell 47 or a little Robinson, because they're so twitchy, you feel every movement. It's a more direct control to sort of the rotor blade, the tail rotor. If you screw things up, it will bite you a lot more quickly than some of the bigger airframes, where the bigger an airframe is, kind of the more stable it becomes. And a lot of the newer airframes also have things like autopilot, stabilization, and that kind of thing. That does back you up. You can definitely get yourself into trouble with some of the bigger airframes too, with things like um settling with power or sort of underestimating the performance of them. So you see a lot of like wildfire fighting incidents happen where people end up hitting into a lake or something because it has so much power. It almost you get caught in its own vortices and it almost pulls you down to the ground. So things like that you have to be really careful of. But I would say probably the smaller ones are the most tricky. So if you can do those, then you do anything.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:53

Yeah. Is there anything you is there anything you'd love to try, you'd love to have a go at flying?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:57

Yes. I sort of have a bit of a, I don't know if it's FOMO, but I would love to fly the sky crane one day. That maybe is like sky crane. Have you seen those?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:07

That's the Osprey, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:08

No, it's um, it's one, what is it? How do I explain it? So it sometimes you see it without any belly in it. Are you gonna Google it now?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:18

Um, they You go and do a bad job of explaining it.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:21

I'm gonna do a really bad job of explaining it. So massive blades, but sometimes it looks like a big bug almost because they'll empty out the belly and they're mostly used for external load, either um long lining stuff or dropping off water at fire, wildfires, and that kind of thing. Why are you keen on that one? Is it really big and cool? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:40

I would have thought you'd say like something like an osprey or a chinook or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:43

So I tried the well, the Leonardo's version of the Osprey, and it just messed with my head. I tried the simulator when I was at Leonardo and it was very cool, but I think my brain is too ingrained in helicopter flight and aerodynamics because it switches between airplane aerodynamics and helicopter aerodynamics. And doing that in the sim, I was like, uh, this is just not gonna work for me because I kind of only think one way now. I think I've been doing it for too long. Maybe if I had been flying planes more, I could switch easier, but I really struggled with that because as you do the vertical lift, power brings you up and down, essentially. But as you switch, it goes through this transition where then you're in forward flight, where then pitch brings you up and down. So the nose of the airplane ascends and descends. And that I thought it was a mix of screwed me up and I couldn't handle it. So maybe with more practice, but um, yeah, I didn't like it. It was too humbling. So I have admiration for people who can fly it because it's just too weird.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:46

They're the things I trust the least to the awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:47

Well, and if you lose an engine, I know there are procedures or whatever else, but it's just like spooky.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:52

Yeah, I mean I'm only I'm only kidding about the anxiety with flying. I say I'm only kidding. I feel like it's just yeah, it's just something I just wouldn't want to do full time. I don't know why. But then you made it you you explained it really well about the the the redundancies and all the the the um the the checks and the procedures and all the rest of it. It makes perfect sense. Yeah, it's like it kind of reminded me of uh that fact, which I don't know if it's an actual true fact, but I think it is true. Is that you you you're safer in an air you're safer in an airplane than you are in a car, you're more likely to have another most dangerous part of my job is driving to work.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:26

Genuinely, especially through like risel stuff. Yeah, I try to be careful, but yeah, it's um that is I would say statistically the highest chance of something happening is in my car.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:39

Oh, the roads are lethal.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:40

The roads are quite scary, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:43

Absolutely lethal, especially when you get in London. Goodness me. Goodness me.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:46

At least I get to pull off the motorway early and I'm not driving straight into central London all the time, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:52

Uh what have we not covered that you wanted to cover?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:54

I think I feel like that's a lot of it. I think you're on.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:00

I mean, we haven't we haven't spoken much about London Air Ambulance. Um well, I'd like to learn more about it if you are good for that. Yeah, yeah, cool. Uh you how long you've been there for now?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:14

So I've been there just over a year now, actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:17

Are you still as excited about it now as you were when you just started there? That's when I first met you, it was just after you started there. And you were very excited then.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:24

I was quite excited. It's uh it's quite a cool job profile, definitely. And there is some novelty of getting to land in like the coolest places. Like we got to park at Tower of London the other day. So I'm like, that'll never get old, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:38

You landed at the Tower of London. Yeah. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:40

Yeah, that was one of my favorites, and ended up meeting very cool Kingsgar there as well. And we just became best friends. She was ex-army, had lived in Kenya, she was in the same place there. She also celebrated her 40th birthday in my hometown in Canada, and we just started chatting. And it's like, did we just become best friends? Yeah. So try and keep in touch with her. But um, yeah, it's uh it's a really interesting job profile. It's it's pretty tiring, definitely. Like you can start to feel a bit of cumulative effect, but trying to hold on to the excitement. It's good. So it's gonna be a good summer.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:10

How so how in how intense is it? I mean, you you go on when you're on uh you do you deal with a call out every shift?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:19

It's completely random. So you could have a day where you don't go anywhere. We generally fly at least from the base we keep, the helicopter, to the Royal London and wait there, but you could go an entire shift just waiting and then fly back. Or you could do 19 sectors in a day. So it can be our average flight time is about seven minutes. Our longest flights maybe 14 minutes. Um so they're they're short, they're snappy, they're high intensity, which is fun. And I it is really exciting. Um, other times you just do feel a little bit tired. But that's that's normal, that's part of the job. And I would say pretty much every aviation company is the same thing in maybe a different way. Where, you know, if you're answering, if you're in the counties and you're doing night shifts and you're getting a call at three in the morning, that's also going to be tiring in a different way. So you just have to manage your own fatigue levels and make sure that you stay on top of things where you can kind of get into flow, where you can regenerate yourself, you can handle your debriefs and at least get like stay on top of your sleep. Because that's one of the things.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:22

The flight times are short, but you could be on the scene for a while, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:25

Sometimes, yeah, it depends. I would say average is half an hour. So it is a little bit less time than some of the other places I've worked because we used to do infant care and stuff in Canada, so that you'd end up waiting a few hours sometimes. You're kind of just hanging out. So it is a little bit faster turnover in that regard. But yeah, you could be waiting even upwards of an hour sometimes. So in that time, we just have to protect the aircraft generally from there's a lot of people in London that are very curious about the aircraft, which is great. And it is always quite random, and I think interrupts people's day is so out of context that they sort of forget that it's a helicopter and people want to touch it and whatever, which is not ideal because there are things on it that are fragile and can break. But um, yeah, so that could be a public service announcement if you do see the helicopter circling overhead, especially with a siren on. We have a loudspeaker. We're landing there for the purpose of saving a life. We wish we were there for a fun day out and we could just hang out and socialize and have a fun time with the people on scene. Unfortunately, we can't. And you know, we're trying to stay focused on our task while keeping the helicopter safe. So you can sort of have to strike a balance with being jovial, having fun with everybody, but you know what's coming back to you and you know where you're going after that. So yeah, it's um an interesting balance to strike.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:44

Did you say you have a siren on it? We have a siren. I did not hear that when it landed on the motorway, but it was quite far away.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:49

Siren and a loudspeaker. It's great. It's not quite like levels of having like a laser or a gun or something. That would be quite cool. But um, no, that and it's necessary because a lot of times we have to overshoot and keep going around because people don't. I think it's so out of context. Like you don't expect you're just sitting there getting some sun in Hyde Park, and then a helicopter's coming to land on you. Obviously, we won't land on people, but we have to make sure that people, any foreign objects, anything is clear of where we're gonna land because we don't want to then injure somebody with the downwash of the helicopter.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:19

So, but in terms of that, those landing sites, I I how does that work in terms of landing site selection and clearance if there's not, for example, a police presence to assist or any. Yeah, we generally don't have anybody. So you could just, it's all on you to just look where can we land, where safe and land?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:42

Pretty much, yeah. So there are certain regulations like the dimensions. We need double the dimension of the helicopter to land, and we are essentially allowed to land anywhere for the purpose of saving a life. Obviously, you take that with a grain of salt, and you still need to factor in safety and people and foreign objects and that kind of thing. Wires is a big one. There's less in London, but still that could definitely be a factor. But we will land on like a multi-story car park if we need to. We will land in a council state park. We will land at Trafalgar Square. Like we'll get as close as we can as long as we know the size is adequate, and we're not like whenever we land, we just have to keep in mind the downwash of the aircraft. So, like we were talking about Finsbury Park, that probably is the right size, but there's a hose. Instantly, I could just see there's a hose coming across.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:32

Square, you mean Finsbury Square, sorry, square, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:34

Um that's different. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, Finsbury Square. Um, but there's the tents and stuff there, and people having their lunch, which means loads of debris from forks and napkins and everything that's there. So you have to always anticipate um what is gonna be on the scene when you land and what's gonna get kicked up around it. If we're landing in a tight car park, a lot of times it can bounce off the walls too. So then you really get that circulation. So if there's anything sort of in the corners, whether it's a bin or tarp or something, it's gonna recirculate and come back down into the helicopter. So you have to be really careful.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:06

What does that do? Does it force you down faster, the descent faster than what you want? Is that what would happen?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:11

Um, not necessarily, but it's more of something coming through the disc. Like if you have a tarp that comes in and hits the blades, like that's really not good. Um, could either damage the aircraft or it could cause a crash. So yeah, we just have to really be careful. Drones is another one that's been coming up a lot lately. A lot of people who have just, you know, bought it off Amazon, they want to film us taking off. It's like we can't take off if there's a drone there because we don't know what their plan is. We don't know where they're gonna go. We don't know if our downwash is then going to affect it.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:40

You know, if they they probably don't understand anything about the downwash or the kind of uh uh turbulence that's generated with a blade. So they might think they can get closer unless they come, which is safety, and the next thing you got. Exactly. Yeah, goodness me.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:52

Yeah, so that's a big one. Uh drones and then also people with lasers. We don't fly as much at night, so it tends not to affect you so badly. But some of those like high-powered lasers, if it gets you in the eye, like you get temporary blindness.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:03

What kind of person are you? Right fewer pointing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:07

There are people a laser device and a helicopter.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:10

Yeah. Honestly. What kind of personality do that?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:14

We used to fly at night in Vancouver and lasers and drones, persistent. Uh it I wasn't every flight, but I would say most flights, especially for at night, people be trying to flash you.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:25

I can understand it with some naivety or ignorance of young people. But if it's anything else like that, I do not understand that.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:32

Even that, you hope the parents are like, don't shine your lights with the helicopters.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:37

It's um, it's it's really quite and you hope it there's either two pilots, because if there's one and you get temporary blindness, like that's really not great. If there's two pilots, you hope the other person wasn't looking in the same place that you were, and they could maybe take control for a second. But it's quite uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:53

But on the subject of landing, anyway, that almost anyway. That's uh that's great. I'm surprised at that level of autonomy, but it's also great, really good. I kind of I was kind of thinking regulations would not allow you just do whatever your own thing. Yeah, but you have to be able to do that because of the job you're doing, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:08

Exactly. Yeah, and we our goal is to get the medical crew as close to the patient as humanly and as safely as possible. What we do do now is we'll coordinate with police. We have um on our iPads, we have just like a mapping software that we use that is shared with the police. So before we're dispatched, we can actually mark a little square on, say it's Finsbury Park this time, not square, um, that we know is big enough. It's quite an obvious site that if we can't find something right next to where the scene of the accident might be, the police will meet us there. So they can be dispatched as we leave to hopefully meet us when we land, if we aren't able to land somewhere closer, because we always try and get essentially within walking distance, you know, 100 meters or something is ideal. If it's farther than that, and they're gonna be running the whole way. Maybe they should have driven in the first place. So if we can have the police there waiting for us, we'll line up. Okay, they're at that gate. The second we touch down, you know, doors are open, one pilot hops out, they're making sure nobody's approaching the helicopter, medical crew can get out, drop off their help, their helmets, and then meet up with police, and then they get driven to scene. So it actually works quite slick when when the timings are right. Obviously, the police are very busy doing other things. So sometimes they can't come to meet us right away. So it's again sort of gauging that, okay, if we land in this smaller site, we're probably accepting more risk. Does that outweigh maybe a more obvious choice if we can get them into a police car and they're on their way soon? So, yeah, again, that's that's one of the variations of the job that we've followed, sort of, our standard operating procedures leading up to that point. So then we try to keep our capacity open to pick the most suitable site. Yeah. Thinking about a few things while you're going.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:50

I got one more question for you before we finish off. Um, what is your proudest hemom? Be that with London Air Ambulance recently or something further in your past. What is your proudest moment sticking in your mind?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:06

Proudest moment. Oh, that's a difficult question. I can feel like all these different things.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:12

This is your time to not be modest.

unknown 1:22:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:14

I'm authorizing you to not be modest at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:16

Oh, that's good. Yeah, I can just feel all these like different flashes of different accidents I've been to along the way. So, one that comes to mind right now, this was when I was flying at the base in northern Canada. We were dispatched to a call that was literally the middle of nowhere in is called Wilmore Wilderness Park, which probably the most Canadians listening have not heard of it. It's north of Jasper, which if you haven't heard of that, is north of Banff. So it's in the Rocky Mountains. And there was a call that somebody had uh been, well, it came in sort of as a moose attack, but it wasn't that at all. What had happened is there were people who had been with a horse and a cart and they were hunting and they got a moose. So they had been out there essentially walking down this track for for two days, I think. So it's this big hunting trip. It was a dad, a daughter, and her boyfriend. And there ended up being an accident with this moose where I think the horse had bolted. The moose, this is a very Canadian story, as I'm telling you. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:20

I love it. I love Canadian stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:22

Yeah, it's quite Canadian.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:23

Um there's always a moose involved.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:24

There was there was a moose involved, yeah. And he ended up coming off and broke his collarbone. But because they're so remote, okay, maybe the injury wasn't the worst thing. But in that scenario, it can obviously escalate and get really bad. So to drive in wasn't possible. There were literally no roads and it was two mountain ranges in to try and get them back out. They had to walk for two more days. So we ended up getting the call to go pick them up. So where we found them, fortunately, they were they were quite well briefed in, you know, remote access and whatever else. They made it as obvious as they could. They found a little cabin that was nearby. We were given the coordinates to try and find them, and they were able to sort of signal us as we came and flew overhead. So we're looking and we're like, there's literally nowhere to land. There was this really, really high scrub where if we landed in the scrub, it would probably either impede the skiz, we might get stuck, might get in the tail rotor. Like there's certain things where there's just no flat spaces available. So we ended up doing a hover exit to get the medical crew out. So we're able to tow in to a site near this cabin. The medical crew were able to hop out, and then we repositioned to a site that was on the track and were able to land on the path where it had been very well marked, and at least you had some ruts from like quad bikes that had been through there. So we were able to end up getting them out, get them to the hospital. Luckily, that was a happy ending because it was kind of not a minor break. Obviously, it was very uncomfortable, but it wasn't something that was as life-threatening as some of the other stuff we go to. But being able to use our training, because we would practice these hover exits all the time, but not necessarily have the opportunity to use them. It was just really slick, worked really well. They were really happy, we're able to get them out of a scenario that could have turned really bad quite soon because it's November. So if they're stuck out there overnight, you know, it's gonna be minus 20 overnight. So even if the injuries aren't so bad, now you're introducing things like frostbite, how do you stay warm overnight, all of these other things. So um, I would say that was quite a proud moment where we're able to use some of our more advanced training to get to the people that were very difficult to access. And that's something that kind of only a helicopter can do. So yeah, that was a good one. Oh, cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:37

Well, it's been a it's been a real pleasure chatting. Thanks so much for having me. No, it's all right. Um, before we finish though, uh, where can people buy your book? Where can people follow you? And uh and also point to the London Air Ambulance site as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:51

Yeah, great. So I am sort of active on Instagram. It's Adele the Heli Pilot. You're very checking on the consistency is lacking, but I do my best. Um, and yeah, the book, there's just a link in the bio, so you can check it out there if you want. And um, London's Air Ambulance, they are always open to donations. So if you are looking to donate, uh, they're always a good one. You can just Google London's Air Ambulance Charity and it will come up. And um, they're London's Air Ambulance on Instagram as well, I believe. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:22

Cool. Uh and the book, as a reminder, it's called Free to Fly.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:25

Free to Fly. Yes, thank you. So you're much better.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:29

Is there another one in the uh in the wind?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:31

There is. I don't know how long it's like well, yeah. I don't know how long it'll take to put it out there. But um the the first book I think is lovely, but I do feel like I was a bit insecure in telling my whole story. So I think the next book I just need to delve a bit deeper into some of the things we talked about, um, some of the lessons that I've learned in the meantime, and yeah, just tell a bit deeper story that I think will be helpful to people. So yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:59

Yeah, good. Well, good luck with it. Good luck with anything else. Yeah, no, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:02

Just flattering that people want to hear my story. So yeah, quite humbling.