JUST WATCH ME

it was October 20th, 1970, at the height of Canada`s Quiet Revolution. A group of disgruntled Palestinian trained separatists, Front de Libération du Québec, (FLQ), Quebec Liberation Front, attempted to secede Quebec from the Canadian federation by adopting typical terrorist strategies; bombings, bank robberies, kidnappings and murder. The Prime Minister invoked the War Measures Act. What few soldiers we had in the Canadian military were on the streets.

We came in from Winnipeg for a Montreal layover to do a turn-around flight from Montreal to Bagotville Quebec on the 20th. Being well outside the twelve hour bottle to throttle envelope, best seat in the house

October Crisis

we went down to boisterous St. Catherine Street, a rowdy night club mecca, to partake of a few adult beverages and gawk at the bizarre goings on. That evening however, it was as dead as Pierre Laporte himself, the kidnapped and accidentally murdered Quebec cabinet minister whose funeral was on the morrow. Even the hookers stayed indoors.

The morning of the funeral dawned a clear, bright, autumn day. Our flight took us northeast direct to La Toque radio beacon to avoid a military restricted area, and then a 40-degree right turn east to RCAF Station Bagotville. Cruising at 15,000 feet, halfway to La Toque, i was startled by a message from Air Traffic Control to change to our com- pany frequency for an important message. The 'click' from every airplane in the area, including Bagotville Radar, changing to our company frequency to eavesdrop could easily be imagined. The company had received a thirdparty phone message stating that some potential diabolical FLQ plot was to occur on our return flight from Bagotville . The dispatcher assured us not to take the threat seriously …but i wondered. Meanwhile, like me, the RCAF at Bagotville also wondered.

Bob, the first officer and i, so engrossed in our ongoing three-way radio chatter failed to notice we had strayed two or three or… could it possibly have been even as much as maybe… ten miles northeast of the La Toque beacon before turning towards the airport? Bagotville Terminal Approach Radar guessed we were purposely deviating to alert them that something onboard was amiss. What followed were a series of questions seemingly coded into radar vectors and Air Traffic Control jargon, strangely out of context from established procedures. Nevertheless, we ended up doing a straight in visual approach to runway 08. i noticed when we were two miles out, a Piasecki helicopter unique for its banana like shape was hovering about a hundred yards to the left of the runway approach end…not unusual, we’d seen this pesky copter hovering around the airport on previous trips. Touchdown was normal and early in the landing roll something caught my peripheral vision off to the left. i turned my head and was staring down the gaping maw of a .50 calibre machine gun pointed right at the cockpit, mounted across the open side hatch of the helicopter formateing on us about ten feet off the left wing tip.

We switched to ground control frequency and …were not requested to…not directed to …but tersely ordered to follow the instructions of the military marshall on the ramp in front of the small civilian terminal building. All the while the chopper hovered overhead. He parked us directly in front of the control tower and signalled shut down. As the Viscount engines slowly whistled and whined their way down to a dead stop i noticed that the roof of the tower was actually a sand bagged heavy machine-gun nest including snipers and again their muzzles were all clearly pointed at the cockpit. it appeared that, unlike our company, the RCAF had taken the threat seriously.

They told us that a passenger ramp would be attached to the main cabin door at the rear of the aircraft and that no one would be allowed to deplane unless the Captain showed himself at the door standing well out from anyone behind him. i made a PA announcement explaining to our passengers the control tower’s weird demand and appealed for calm…by now the passengers noticed the helicopter and its menacing guns plus the sand bagged tower topped machine-gun nest… and were getting a little restless… i tried to wend my way to the rear main door. imagine the crowded cabin with all the agitated passengers milling about and muttering in both official languages in the narrow aisle pushing and shoving and trying to retrieve bags from the overhead bins. i finally made it to the door, stepped out and gave a regal wave to the control tower thus terminating this Gilbert and Sullivan episode in a dull anti-climax.

Security staff assigned a gun-toting sergeant from the Quebec Provin- cial Police (QPP) a.k.a, La Sûreté du Québec (SQ), acting, as what later became known as a Sky Marshall for our return flight to Montreal. Given the scale of global terrorism’s audacious acts in subsequent years our little nonevent pales in significance. For Bob and i, just two naive hay-seed hicks from Winnipeg that somehow became swept up in the hysteria of the moment, it was quite memorable. Seeing armed, Trudeau neutered, Canadian soldiers on the streets for other than mopping up after ice storms, big city snow clearing and filling sand bags in spring floods, was an eye popper. Like most Canadians living outside Quebec we tended to blow off the Quiet Revolution. Unfortunately, as it turned out for the seven dead victims, their families, the twenty seven people collaterally injured…some seriously, the financial losses to businesses and the associated mass provincial exodus of Anglos caused by one hundred and sixty terrorist acts by a group of miscreant, misguided, bungling losers…it was not quite so quiet! best seat in the house best seat in the house

Bristling with 50 calibre machine guns we were escorted by an RCAF Piasecki helicopter. A sandbagged control tower told me to get out first to ensure that we were all okay.

History

in 1954 TCA started to phase out the North Star and introduced the Lockheed Super Constellation. By 1961 all of the North Stars were gone and many of the world's cities were being served by this graceful airliner. Also on the minds of the airline's management, the government of Canada, was the need to change the airline's name to reflect the international scope of its service. Trans Canada Air Lines didn't quite do the trick painted on the side of aircraft now servicing the United States, the United Kingdom, France, italy, Germany and of all places Moscow as TCA became the first North American airline to offer flights to Russia.

Airline president Gordon McGregor had long advocated the name change to Air Canada and Jean Chrétien the then prime minister now agreed with him and the Air Canada moniker soon graced the fuselage of the entire fleet. As they must often say in the House of Commons— the rest is history.

We had just arrived in Calgary, 3550 ASL, after a short flight from Edmonton, 2370 ASL. The weather in Edmonton was -28C, clear and crisp while Calgary was being plastered by heavy wet snow at -7C with a ceiling of 300 ft and a mile. During the turnaround, i went into our radio room to check conditions further down the line. When i came out half an hour later, the snow had intensified leaving about three inches over the entire aircraft. There were two men standing on the wing of our Viscount sweeping the snow off with wide janitorial push brooms while at the tail a boom sprayer was washing the snow off with what appeared to be heated de-icing fluid. i thought it was odd, i had never seen anyone using a broom to clear the wings before.

We were late as it was and with the passengers onboard we taxied out the short distance for takeoff on runway 34, with the full length of 12,675 feet available. Tower told us the ploughs had just swept the runway and cleared us for a rolling take-off. When we approached the button we saw the visibility had dropped to a mile in S+ and as we rolled onto the runway heading there appeared to be half an inch of wet snow on the surface.

The F/O was doing the flying and just after V1 he shouted out, “Jim she won’t fly”.

i looked over and sure enough saw Jacques pulling back on the wheel… the speed was building but the nose didn’t lift. i grabbed the pole and together we continued to pull back…it moved all right but nothing was happening. i called reject, closed the throttles, the ground fine pitch lights came on and gingerly at first, i applied the brakes as the control tower passed unseen somewhere to our left in the cloying heavy snow. in my mind i could see the little maxaret pucks of the anti-skid system whirling dervishly around in their circular casings squirting little shots of brake fluid to stop the wheels from skidding. And yes in case you are wondering we’d done a full control check during the short taxi out and the Viscount incorporated a throttle gate on the control locks so that the throttles couldn’t be opened to full power while the control locks were on.

Straight ahead into the white blank wall of snow we could only see a few of the closest embedded centreline lights disappearing under the nose…the runway edge lighting was just a blur while not surprisingly the braking action was poor but directional control was good. i kept my hands off the nosewheel steering. With no cross wind we stopped on the centre line and set in motion the inevitable litany of actions and communications with our cabin people that ATC and company required after a rejected take off. We were as unsure of our exact runway location as was the control tower because of the near zero visibility. What we did know was that we were about half way into the alternating red and white centre line lights, which left about 1500 feet to the end of the runway. Finally, i was able to use the nosewheel steering and with good steering control would take the next turn off as quickly as safety would allow. We had used about 11,000 feet of runway. interestingly, moments after we returned to the ramp a Chinook blew through raising the temperature to well above freezing.

Flight dispatch cancelled our outbound flight and protected our passengers on other flights. Leaving the Viscount in the hands of the mechanics we headed downtown for an unplanned Calgary layover. Maintenance considered it a flight control problem meaning two maintenance signatures and a flight test were required which an airport layover crew did. They found nothing wrong…the flight controls worked properly.

One other mysterious thing, the incoming captain on the flight into Edmonton had left a note for us in the logbook that the aircraft had tended to drop out at the last second on the last three landings that they had done. Odd that he would have left a note rather than a proper logbook entry. it was too early to phone him at the hotel so i let it slide.

Next day we finished the rest of our pairing ending up back home in Winnipeg, the main company base for Viscount Overhaul. i found the incident rather bizarre. How could the flight controls not work for us yet a few hours later perform normally? i agonized over this strange conundrum. One thing was clear; had we been on a shorter runway the outcome could have been a disaster. Did ice or snow jam the flexible curtain between the elevator and stabilizer? Did the tail cone drain hole freeze up altering the Centre of Gravity? Where were our twelve passengers seated? How was the freight and baggage distributed? Was the spring mechanism that keeps the elevators from drooping on the ground somehow temporarily compromised by the queer weather? Why were there no drain holes in the elevators? it was clear from the outset that company managers were just as stymied as i was by the mysterious events yet for reasons known only to themselves they had not shared any of their findings with me. instead, the meeting took on an accusatorial tone. No one had yet had asked for my input. if a proper investigation had been done i was not made aware of the results. i expected the worst but no phone call came nor did even a note appear in my company mailbox when two days later i reported for work. The mystery remained unsolved and i was not about to go asking any more questions...at least not then.

Most vexing of all, why did the Viscount seem to drop out indicating a propensity for a premature stall on previous landings? i had even briefed Jacques that i would carry an extra ten knots for the approach and landing in Calgary which i did but i was so focused on the actual landing in the crappy weather and runway conditions that i wasn’t trying to finesse the touchdown. There was no drop out. Many questions…no answers. i turned in an incident report signed by Jacques the F/O and went home and that was that… or so i thought.

A couple of weeks later, summoned by the powers that be to discuss the incident at last, i thought… all will be revealed and the aforementioned mystery solved. if that was my expectation, i was to be sorely disappointed. As soon as i walked in the door and saw the sombre faces of the local flight operations hierarchy my heart sank. The words Kangaroo Court kept coming to mind.

Rather, they wanted to focus on why i had rejected the take-off. What would i have done, they wanted to know, if i had been taking off in Lethbridge 3100ASL, 100 nm to the south with its main runway half the length, (6000ft), of the one at Calgary? Never mind that the Lethbridge runway ended at a precipice that dropped into the Old Man River 300 ft below. i hoped the question was rhetorical. Otherwise, i would leave the meeting feeling very resentful wondering if the flight operations investigation team had gone beyond their best before date.

The reason why the little Viscount did not fly when it shoulda has never been solved.

Yikes, another escape...i wondered how many more i could expect to get away with.

*** it was during my time on the Viscounts that my older brother caught up with me when he moved from being a S/O (Second Officer) on DC-8s in Montreal to Winnipeg. He had joined the airline six years after me having survived as an F/O on Avro Yorks on the DEW line, flying fish on Cansos and instructing for years at the Winnipeg Flying Club. He had many more hours and flying experience than me. Nevertheless, the vagaries of the seniority system meant he was junior to me. We saw a chance where the system would work in our favour for some fun. He bid to fly with me for a month and as the rights of seniority mandated we looked forward to flying together. i was beginning to realize that the upper echelon of Winnipeg’s flight operations department had some serious issues... they were indeed getting well beyond their sell by date. The base manager called me in to tell me he would not allow two brothers to fly together.

For a short time Mrs Griffith's boys were the front end crew of a TCA Vickers Viscount and occasionally a DC9.. initially, the airline balked at the idea of two brothers crewing the same airplane, but once assured that the boys wouldn't fight, allowed it to happen. Jim's brother, Owen (right seat) had a lot of experience from flying on the DEW line operation as well as instructing at the Winnipeg flying club. He joined TCA six years after Jim.

After asking why and him giving silly reasons he finally finished by saying, “i’m afraid you might fight.” i burst out laughing and told him i would grieve the award with the union. in the end we did have our month of fun teasing flight attendants and hotel managers. Naturally, even though my brother did not have a left seat check out we shared the Captain’s seat and did the same later on the DC-9. i already had a record of not playing by the rules.

He may have been reflecting on his own family’s experience. Or to give him credit he might have been worried if we killed each other in some horrible accident, a double death in one family would be devastating for Mom and Dad.

Back in about 1963 the company analyzed various future products to replace the fuel thirsty aging DC-8’s, Vanguards and Viscounts. it was the first time the sales department was involved in the choice much to the consternation of Flight Operations. The choices were the British BAC111or Trident, the American Boeing 727 or Douglas DC-9 and the French Caravelle. it caused not only indigestion within the company but became political heartburn for the Liberals. Naturally, Quebec wanted the French Caravelle and kicked up a fuss. Flight Ops had enough nonsense with British products over the engines on the Lockheed 1011’s. Happily they chose the DC-9 and later the B727 as the cross-border traffic picked up after airlines in North America deregulated. Happily, they had chosen my two favourite airplanes.

The Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle was a French short/medium-range jet airliner and the political choice of Quebec but not of TCA's president Gordon McGregor. The aircraft holds the distinction of being the world's first jet-powered airliner to be developed for the short/medium-range market. Significantly, it was powered with Rolls Royce Avon jet engines–the very engine Rolls Royce couldn't develop to power the Avro Jetliner, which TCA refused to purchase because the Jetliner had the wrong engines installed in the prototype.—4 Nenes instead of 2 Avons best seat in the house