January 24, 2023 True Magic

The Liberty Gazette

January 24, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Canadian Melissa Findlay loves her job. She’s seen beauty some will never see: sunrises, sunsets, and northern lights from her office in the sky.

On a family vacation to Hawaii when she was a child, she saw into the flight deck of an airliner. She thought, oh, look at all the buttons! Now she knows they’re just circuit breakers, but it was enough to draw her in, the first pilot in her family. 

After high school, she pondered hotel management and tourism. Six months working at a lodge was enough. She joined Skyservice Airlines as a flight attendant and went to a local college to learn to fly. That was before the current pilot shortage, so her flight attendant experience was an advantage. Airline flying sounded glamorous, so she’d wait for an open seat. Then she worked on the ramp for Transwest Air until they offered her her first flying job, flying medevac in a King Air based in La Ronge, Saskatchewan. Way north.

There were times she wondered, “What am I doing here?” It’s hard work. Some days she thought, “I should have been a librarian.” Or, “Is it too late to do the hotel thing? Can I be a massage therapist?” When temperatures were -50, she thought, “Some people are warm in their buildings right now.” But then she’d get in the air and remember, “Oh ya, this is why I do it.”

She had her first emergency flying out of La Ronge, a chip detector light. They had to shut down an engine in flight, and she managed just fine. In her time off, she became immersed in the community and learned to make moccasins and mitts and took foraging classes. “People working up there are away from family, so you create your own,” she explains. “Potlucks, movie nights, Sunday dinners. It’s actually tough to leave in the end.”

Then she got a job as captain on a Navajo out of Stony Rapids. “That’s really north,” she laughs. “At the very top of Saskatchewan. Groceries are flown in. People from the U.S. pay tens of thousands of dollars to go fishing up there. Best fishing camps in the world. In Stony Rapids, the people are interesting, the landscape stunning, the hiking exhilarating, and the flying amazing.”

Now she’s flying cargo and calls it the Unicorn, “because who knew in aviation you could have it this good.” She doesn’t work holidays or weekends and she’s home every night. She no longer aspires to fly passenger airlines, as this job offers a wonderful work-life balance. Then again, if her employer ever gets a B757 base in Calgary, she might be interested. 

In Hawaii, you can go to the top of the volcano and see the sunrise. “It’s nice,” Melissa says, “but I’ve seen better. I’ve seen the full dance of northern lights. I can put music in my headsets and play to the waving ribbons. The true magic of the north. Yes, this is why I fly.”

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com