Saturday March 31, 2018
By TAMAR HARRIS
Air Canada pilot James Sullivan called flying with his daughter, Jennie Olafson, a “very special” experience. (JAMES SULLIVAN)
The pair navigated a round-trip Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Taipei, Taiwan on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner
Jennie Olafson vividly remembers descending into Los Angeles as a child, seated in the plane’s cockpit next to her pilot father.
Olafson caught her father’s love of flying and became a pilot herself, following in her father’s footsteps and working for Air Canada. But in Olafson’s seven years at the company, the father-daughter duo hadn’t had the chance to fly together professionally.
Last week, they made it happen. Olafson and her father James Sullivan navigated a round-trip Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Taipei, Taiwan on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
“To fly together on a professional level was just one of those things that we absolutely had to do before my dad retires,” Olafson told the Star.
And aside from the family ties in the pilots’ seats — which Sullivan called a “very special” experience — the overseas flight was entirely normal.
“That’s the way we like it,” Sullivan said.
Olafson is based out of Vancouver, and Sullivan out of Toronto. “We don’t get to see each other that often, so it was a great way to have a good visit,” Olafson said.
“It was just something I’d always worked towards as a little kid, to actually fly with my dad. I never thought it was going to be possible.”