Staff Profile: Russell Graham
STAFF PROFILE
RUSSELL GRAHAM
Dispatch / Flight Instructor It's no secret that the Victoria Flying Club has some of the best staff in the aviation business. Here's the first (of hopefully many) profiles that celebrate them and share their stories with you.Let's start with Dispatch's own Russell Graham! How long have you been flying for? What's an early or vivid memory of flying that jumps out at you? I started flying in April 2017. My initial instructor and I get along like a house on fire, and he used a lot of humour to make lessons memorable. One instance really stands out. We were practicing forced approaches, he was demonstrating. Everything is going according to plan, and upon reaching the passenger briefing he turns to me and says “Okay, a clown just hit the
10 MAY & JUNE 2022
propeller. It was pretty funny, but now our engine is dead”. I’m probably the only person who finds that funny. Regardless, it stuck with me and I’ll never forget to brief my passengers on the day my engine decides to die. What made you want to become a pilot? I fell in love with airplanes when I was a kid. Some kind of gatefold or poster in a magazine, National Geographic I think, of the cockpit of either a 747 or 777, I can’t remember
which. It was my favourite toy for what feels like months (it may have been a day, hard to know for sure), I loved all the buttons and knobs and levers. Movies, airshows, and TV shows. All these things made airplanes seem even cooler. Near the end of high school I looked into a career as a pilot, balked at the cost, and didn’t pursue it. That wasn’t a mistake. I wouldn’t have wanted 18 year me to attempt to become a pilot.
VFC | Aviation Excellence Since 1946
