Meet Jamie MacDonald, Vintage Warplane Pilot
It all started with a love affair with Lancaster Bombers.
Jamie MacDonald is a commercial pilot. She has the kind of background and experience that would make you think she was one of those kids who grew up dreaming of being a pilot. She’s flown a lot of different planes and spends every ounce of her free time around aircraft. But the reality is that it was a simple twist of fate that led her to fall in love with planes.
Jamie MacDonald with the Curtiss C-46 Commando
Discovering family history
It was during a research project for school that Jamie found her curiosity for flight. She happened upon her grandfather’s story, and couldn’t believe what was in his legacy.
Jamie’s great-grandfather was a rear air gunner during World War II, on the famous Lancaster bombers. Life expectancies for this position were bleak — historical records point to soldiers in these positions lasting only about two weeks.
But Jamie quickly discovered her great-grandfather was a legend. He survived 36 flights as a Lancaster rear air gunner, a career record virtually unheard of in one of the most dangerous positions held during the war.
Jamie was awed, but she planned to become a teacher, so at the end of high school, she started attending university.
A serendipitous first flight
It was in her first year of university that Jamie found herself with a little free time. The teachers were on strike, and with too much time on her hands, her mother suggested she use a flight voucher a family friend had given her.
“It was one of those Intro to Flight cards where you go up in like a little Cessna for about half an hour, get used to the flying, see what it's like.
So I got to do this project on my great-grandfather, and I learned so much that I never would have without his medals and logbooks at home. But after I did that intro flight, it was literally a couple of weeks after that, the Lancaster literally would fly over my house in Toronto, and I was just like, Oh, I’ve got to do this.”
Jamie’s trailblazing aviation career
Since that serendipitous first lesson and discovering her great-grandfather’s legacy, Jamie has dove headfirst into a career in aviation. She began her career flying for a sightseeing service, taking tourists on circuits around the city of Toronto, Canada.
But Jamie’s dream was to fly the plane her great-grandfather had been on: the Lancaster. She went to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, where they were running sightseeing tours aboard old Lancasters, and asked them what it would take to fly one.
She was told she would need 1500 hours on her 80 PL, plus 500 hours of tailwheel time, so she got to work. A friend suggested she try to get on with a company in northern Canada where she could get some hours flying DC3’s, so she reached out to them relentlessly with her resume until they said yes.
In 2018, Jamie started flying with Buffalo Airways in northern Canada. A few months later, she got her first PPC on a big plane, the DC3. A month later, she got checked out on the C46, and made history as the first female Canadian pilot to fly one in over 40 years.
In the bitter cold of northern Canada, for nearly four years, Jamie flew these planes, accumulating over 2200 hours on the C46, and over 100 hours on the DC3.
When work is your play
Jamie’s career went on to have her flying for other companies and other equipment, hauling cargo and vacationers alike. She loved being a part of someone’s travel story, of taking part in the joy of taking them somewhere incredible.
And when Jamie realized that her work had become her life, she tried to find hobbies but quickly realized that all of her hobbies brought her back to planes. It was all she wanted to do.
“The biggest thing was like, I need a hobby. And my hobbies pretty much still involved aviation. And I kind of got into photography towards the end. I have a part-time job at an aviation store. I’m truly in love with what I do.”
Jamie also works with advocacy groups to mentor new pilots and to improve access to careers in aviation for under-represented groups in the profession, especially women. She even lives by the airport, so that when flights come up and they need a pilot last minute, she can jump in to help.
Some might say that Jamie’s work is her life, but the truth is, Jamie’s work is her passion — it’s what excites her, what gets her out of bed in the morning and into the bitterly cold air to take on a last-minute flight.
Jamie truly loves what she does, and her incredible career is proof of the alchemy that happens when passion meets profession. Today, she has 3405 flight hours logged, including 500 hours on a TurboJet aircraft (Boeing 737).
ATR 42-500