Millardair and Me: A Young Man's Journey from Turbulence to Triumph

By Dennis J Chadala

 

The recent double murder conviction of Dellen Millard that suddenly and shockingly gripped the Canadian media, took the author back in time where he reflects on some of the events that transpired during those years at Millardair and his association with Carl Millard, the patriarch of the Millardair dynasty, and perhaps now, eve

• Language: English
• Publisher: 1193498 Ontario Limited
• Release date: Apr 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781773706184

Book preview

About the Author

Dennis Chadala grew up in a small town not far from Toronto’s International Airport and his biggest dream in life was to fly for the nation’s airline, Air Canada.

The author takes you through a harrowing five-year journey with the infamous Carl Millard and Millardair as he unearths an epic voyage of strength of mind, determination and fortitude in the face of all obstacles. Spellbound by the Millards and not willing to give up on his quest to fly for the nation’s airline, he perseveres as Carl’s golden boy in an environment that was sometimes too frightening to talk about.

Dennis narrates this tell all story about Millardair and himself. The story might also leave the reader somewhat relieved in the knowledge that this era of aviation no longer exists, at least not to this extent.

Those events, coupled with the events of recent years, in particular the double murder conviction of his grandson Dellen Millard and the death of his father Wayne Millard, might help one understand the milieu under which that next generations of Millards were raised.

Table of Contents

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1

I’LL NEVER FORGET TOLEDO

CHAPTER 2

THE END WAS NEAR

AND I WANTED OUT

CHAPTER 3

I DREAMT OF THE BEGINNING

CHAPTER 4

THE RETURN VISIT

CHAPTER 5

GETTING MY FEET WET

CHAPTER 6

TRAINING

CHAPTER 7

THE NEXT YEAR IN THE LIFE OF DENNIS

CHAPTER 8

RULES, REGULATIONS AND THE MILLARDS

CHAPTER 9

THE MIDDLE YEARS

CHAPTER 10

THE GOLD RUN

CHAPTER 11

ONE CRAZY FLIGHT AFTER ANOTHER

CHAPTER 12

IT WASN’T THE BEST OF TIMES FOR

PILOTS, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES

CHAPTER 13

WAKING UP TO A NEW DAY

CHAPTER 14

LANDING THE OIL SURVEY

CONTRACT AND WHAT THE HECK WAS GPS?

CHAPTER 15

DC-4 TRAINING,

NOT THE FINEST HOUR

CHAPTER 16

A BAD DAY FOR GUSTOFF

CHAPTER 17

ST. JOHN’S NEWFOUNDLAND, HERE WE COME

CHAPTER 18

OFF WE GO INTO THE

WILD BLUE YONDER

CHAPTER 19

CARL MILLARD AND ME,

SEARCHING FOR THE WORDS

TO SAY GOODBYE

CHAPTER 20

A SERIES OF

LIFE CHANGING EVENTS

CHAPTER 21

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES

THE AFTERWORD

Copyrights

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my mother and father. Their love and support throughout my life and particularly during those difficult five years helped me survive and become a stronger individual. They led me in the right direction and helped me comprehend what was really important in life. My parents are quiet, kind, generous and humble, but are deserving of the highest praise for their guidance, assistance, encouragement and the example they set for me. What I accomplished in my life during these five years and during the years that followed was only possible as a result of the most fortunate of environments in which I grew up. Thank you mom and dad, I love you and I’m eternally grateful.

PREFACE

The name Dellen Millard, suddenly and shockingly gripped the Canadian media, particularly throughout Southern Ontario following the kidnapping and murder of Tim Bosma and the disappearance and murder of his one time girlfriend, Laura Babcock. This is my story about Carl Millard, his airline Millardair, and me. Carl was the patriarch of the Millardair dynasty, and perhaps now, even more notoriously known as the grandfather of Dellen Millard, the recently convicted murderer of both Tim Bosma and Laura Babcock.

My story starts many years ago, at a time when my aspirations to be a pilot consumed those earliest memories. Growing up in the 1970s in a small town directly on the flight path to Pearson International Airport provided all the inspiration I needed to pursue my dream of flying.

My desire to fly was assisted by an entrepreneurial spirit that drove me to work hard in a quest to make a good living at something that I loved, and for me, that dream was to be an airline pilot. I was a young man drawn in by the allure and magnetism of aviation. Like most dream chasers, flying appeared to me to be exciting and glamorous. Air Canada could offer a career that would also be accompanied by a paycheck worthy of a higher standard of living. From an early age I recognized the need for money only as a means to an end, not merely for materialistic thirsts, since to this day I want very little. I describe myself as a minimalist and things have never provided me with any lasting gratification.

Many before me, and many yet to come, will chase money and the things that it can purchase in a quest for happiness only to discover that after many years of trying, it served no real purpose and certainly didn’t buy them happiness. Convinced that flying would bestow upon me that lifelong happiness I craved, I was willing to pursue that career at all costs.

On a grander scale, many have also chased the aura, romance and glamour of starting an airline, as was the case with Carl. Aviation was an industry where only a very few had succeeded, but many many more had failed. Enormous capital costs coupled with equally high labour costs, economic and geopolitical risks combined with the difficulty in obtaining licensing, provided significant barriers to the industry. The aviation and airline industry may have also given rise to the expression; If you want to make a small fortune, start with a large one.

All I wanted to do was fly, and money was not my motivation. Spending my life doing something I loved certainly was. I always viewed success as having the monetary means to occupy one’s time with total freedom, being charitable and doing anything you viewed as important. My own measure of success and my desire to be part of the aviation community did not come without risk.

The story I’m telling is based on the truth as I recall it. The story takes place over a period of five years in the early 80s, the length of time I spent employed by Carl, at the Millardair Hangars on Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have predicted the direction in which my working relationship with Carl would take me. As fate would have it, I assumed many roles and wore many hats at Millardair, which became, following my departure, a slowly dying and crumbling operation at the north end of the airport on Derry Road.

I’m not aware of anyone that preceded me or anyone that followed me, that possessed the same degree of knowledge about what transpired there. Stepping inside the inner circle with Carl and his son Wayne Millard provided me with an insight that no one else had.

The recent first-degree murder convictions of Dellen Millard, and his rapid rise to notoriety, would dredge up some haunting memories of a time that not only went by very quickly, but is also cemented in my brain as those memories lay suppressed and blurred in my subconscious.

These recent events took me back in time and inspired me to reflect on some of the events that transpired during those years at Millardair. I recollect Carl’s contempt for authority, the brazen way in which so many aviation rules and regulations were violated and broken. I recalled the culture of the time and the cult-like environment that possessed us as pilots for Carl.

At a time in aviation history when there were very few jobs for pilots in Canada, our choices were simple. Toe the line with Carl, or quit. In all likelihood, quitting would have most certainly forced a change in careers. I wasn’t prepared to give up on my dream, and thus, I succumbed to the spell of Millardair.

My intention to write about these events was verbalized many times during those early years, not only by me, but also by my fellow crewmembers, despite never really thinking any of us would. The constant churning of these thoughts in my brain leaves me wondering if Carl’s unabashed and audacious ways, and what appeared to be an attitude that suggested he was above the law, helped shape his own future generations as they appeared to idolize Carl. Not unlike any political figure, Carl had a base group of fans, and an equally large group of individuals that despised him. In addition, Carl had a golden boy, who toed the line and fought for change before slowly becoming disenchanted. I wasn’t necessarily proud of that status. I was quite simply spellbound and trapped.

I’m sharing my story with you and taking you on a journey as seen through my eyes. I don’t profess that every little detail is accurate, but the proceedings and details significant to the story are based on factual events. The premise of the story is the way in which I remember what happened many years ago. I have changed the names of my former crewmembers in order to protect their own integrity.

References

Phone conversation with Walter Keller, 2016

Corrigan, Douglas. That’s My Story. New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1938

Fraser, Chelsea Curtis. Famous American Flyers. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1941

Transportation Safety Board of Canada-Aviation Reports. Ottawa:www.tsb.gc.ca

President Ronald Regan’s Address to the Nation following the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, 1986

Rickman, Sara Byrn. WASP of The Ferry Command, Woman Pilots, Uncommon Deeds. Texas: University of North Texas Press, 2016

The Ottawa Journal, Ottawa: Tuesday April 24, 1973

CHAPTER 1

I’LL NEVER FORGET TOLEDO

It was a sticky hot morning in the summer of 1985. Late July I believe it was, since the corn fields in Ohio stood tall with ears of corn ready to be harvested. It wasn’t unlike many mornings I had experienced during the past four years of my life. But it was different. I was different. Fatigue had been slowly setting in and the non- stop, sleep deprived work was consuming me. Physically and mentally I was slowing down and I knew it. I was fighting it.

The past four and a half years had been a series of events, and not just ordinary ones. The type of events that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up and stimulated dreams that would follow in due course. They were the kind of dreams that woke you suddenly. The ones that startled you and made you sigh with relief that it was only a dream.

It was a loss of sleep you could ill afford to miss, since there wasn’t a lot of it. I was living in a different world. A world shared by only a handful of guys. We stuck together like piglets suckling their mother, and we were, for all intents and purposes, ensnared.

We were hostages of our own goals and desires. We were free to leave, but like victims of a cult we just couldn’t break free. We had come too far. I had come too far, and was determined not to waste the almost five years I had just endured. There were only a few of us that were stuck in this cycle, and had held out this long. But change was in the air for me and the series of events over the past four years had taken its toll and I was cracking under the pressure.

How much longer could I do this? The answer was becoming clearer, like a secret message slowly appearing in the looking glass of a Harry Potter movie. The events of this day and the coming months that followed would prove to be the ones that broke the camel’s back, and change my life forever.

As I made the short twenty-minute drive to the airport, it was an unusually sane hour, approximately 10 a.m. It was quite normal for me to make this drive at any time of day or night. Rushing out to the airport at midnight was something I had done more times than I cared to remember, so 10 a.m. was a treat, spoiled only by the fact that I had just returned from Kansas City and didn’t get to bed till 5 a.m.

Kansas City and St. Louis were two very popular destinations for us, since it was the home to a number of GM and Ford plants. It was a destination I particularly hated at this time of the year. Zigzagging your way through thunderstorm and tornado alley was not a trip to Disney World, especially when you’re flying equipment that was lacking in what would be considered in today’s airline environment, a basic and essential piece of equipment, weather radar.

Working a routine of this nature with no more than four or five hours sleep was often adequate for me. It had to be. To this very day I rarely get more sleep than that on any given night.

As I arrived at the Millardair hangar that was situated at the north end of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, my co-pilot was already there and the aircraft was being loaded. I was wearing different hats at Millardair, and although I had become Carl’s right hand man and golden boy, I was a pilot first and that was really all I ever wanted to be. I was a line captain with over 6,000 hours of flight time and most of it in the Beech-18, the Douglas DC-3, Douglas Super DC-3(C-117) and the Douglas DC-4.

Although Millardair had a host of smaller twin engine aircraft like the Piper Twin Comanche, Piper Aztec and Piper Navajo, all of which I was checked out on, those were reserved for the less experienced guys in the first year with the company. Those were the first year rookies, of which I was one, not all that long ago.

They did double duty and served as co-pilot on the Beech-18s, DC-3s and DC-4s. My co-pilot had already flight planned and prepared the aircraft. It was going to be an easy one I thought. Good weather, and a short flight from Toronto to Toledo Ohio, which was just a stone’s throw across Lake Erie.

The Super DC-3 was loaded to its maximum allowable cargo capacity of 10,000 pounds and fuel sufficient for the return trip. The cargo was a load of steel automotive bumpers, all nicely layered and clamped in rows, on six-foot high by six-foot square pallets. These were destined for the American Motors Jeep Assembly plant and would be bolted to the front and back of Jeeps the minute they arrived.

North America was nicely emerging from the deep recession of the early 1980s and the automakers had made a significant change in the way they assembled vehicles. They termed it just in time inventory systems. No longer did the automakers want a huge supply of assembly parts on hand. Inventory reduction would save space and money.

These inventory reductions resulted in an on-hand inventory so skinny that in many cases, and especially with larger items such as engines and transmissions, there were only a couple of day’s worth of parts present in the assembly plant at any given time.

Charter carriers like Millardair with their fleet of freighters standing at the ready were licking their chops at the endless phone calls from panicked expeditors. All it took was a rail car or a semi transport truck load of assembly parts to miss a delivery, whether due to breakdown or weather, or the supplier having a production problem of their own, and suddenly the inventory was critically low.

Having to shut down an assembly line due to a parts shortage could spell disaster for an auto plant. The financial cost to the plant and the supplier was measured in dollars per minute and in many cases the supplier shouldered some, if not all of the responsibility and the cost. We were used to this routine of racing to the airport and making good on Millardair’s promise to its customers. I would often hear Carl bragging that Millardair could be airborne within an hour of the expeditor’s phone call.

As pilots we loved the Super DC-3, also coined a C-117 or R4D8, which were its military designations. I say loved only in comparison to the standard and original DC-3, which was a 1930s design and thousands upon thousands were built. Estimates are that a couple thousand DC-3s are still in commercial service around the world. The solid airframe and the toughness to which these aircraft were built combined with the fact that aircraft from that era were not pressurized, contributed to their longevity.

Prior to the advent of more modern high altitude airliners, these unpressurized aircraft weren’t subject to the strain on the hulls, the aluminum, and the rivets, that modern aircraft experience from constant pressure loads exuded on the airframe. These older aircraft had fabric-covered control surfaces to reduce weight and make it easier for the pilot to operate them.

When I first crossed the threshold at Millardair almost five years ago, I had never heard of a Super DC-3 and didn’t even know they existed. The regular old DC-3 chugged along at 175 miles per hour and that made for exasperatingly long flights into the wind.

The DC-3 was reliable and I had flown the DC-3 from coast to coast, but during the last couple years, the Super DC-3 had more or less taken over as the customer’s aircraft of choice at Millardair. The four Super DC-3s that graced our fleet were introduced to us near the end of 1983.

Following the Second World War and just prior to the Korean War the Super DC-3 was Douglas Aircraft Corporation’s newest addition to the airline market. They had taken the DC-3 fuselage of which they had many, and stretched it with a fuselage plug that brought the nose and cockpit six feet forward of those big Hamilton Standard propellers which used to spin just outside the pilot’s side windows.

I remember staring at those propellers in flight from time to time and thinking about the consequences of a propeller failure or a blade breaking off in flight. The thought was so hair raising you quickly turned away and commanded your mind to think of something else.

The Super DC-3 was quieter since the power plants and blades were a little further behind you. The significant changes that were introduced however were directed at performance in terms of range, speed and payload.

The Super DC-3 received a new laminar flow wing and fully retractable landing gear, all in the interest of reducing drag and increasing speed. The fully enclosed gear doors on the Super DC-3 also contributed to drag reduction. The empennage, or tail section in layman’s terms, was much larger and squarer than the DC-3 and it incorporated a fully retractable tail wheel, in contrast to the DC-3 tail wheel, which was fixed in the down position. More powerful Wright radial engines were installed and suddenly you had an aircraft that could fly four or five tons of freight at 225 miles per hour and cover distances of approximately 2,500 miles. It was also the aircraft that almost bankrupted Douglas Aircraft in the early 1950s after staking their very existence on the success of this new Super DC-3.

For Douglas Aircraft, the sales of the Super DC-3 were a disaster with only one order on the books. An order for three aircraft from a now defunct Capital Airways based in the United States. Their timing was terrible in the wake of competition from other aircraft manufacturers.

Competitors were building passenger aircraft with a nose wheel instead of a tail wheel that could handle upwards of fifty passengers, not thirty. What airline wanted to make their passengers walk up hill to get to their seat when they could purchase the competition’s new entries and designs?

Douglas had spent a lot of money designing this new aircraft but made a big mistake by incorporating the original DC-3 fuselage and stretching it. They thought they were being smart by building a newer Super DC-3 that resembled the original DC-3, an aircraft that had a great reputation for reliability and was well accepted by the public, not to mention the fact that they had a lot of DC-3 fuselages available to them.

The world was changing and the airlines were no longer willing to purchase an aircraft with a tail wheel design and so there you had it, one order for three aircraft, and already another 100 in production.

It didn’t take long for Douglas to plead for financial assistance from the United States government. That assistance came, but not in the form of a bail out. The assistance also meant the end of the Super DC-3 production. The US government agreed to purchase the one hundred and three aircraft that were in production and specified them to be built for the military.

I say one hundred and three because Capital eventually cancelled their order for the three Super DC-3s. The majority of the production quota was configured to carry freight and troops, and a small handful were to be fitted with passenger interiors more suited for transporting Military Officers. It had now received the military designation as a C-117.

Most of these aircraft were sent to the Pacific and many served the military well during the Korean War. Their usefulness to the military was short lived however and these C-117s or Super DC-3s found their way back to the United States. Already obsolete in the presence of newer turbine powered, pressurized aircraft, they were relegated to that legendary, large parking lot, reserved for aircraft that no longer served a purpose, in the dry, non-corrosive environment of the Arizona desert near Tucson.

Carl knew they were sitting there. Carl had scavenged and picked through this bone yard on many occasions and had salvaged from this very place some of the DC-3 and DC-4 airframes he currently operated. In addition, he had purchased old airframes for parts and had his own little parking area down there.

These Super DC-3 or C-117 aircraft were off limits for many years and the government refused to release them for use by civilian carriers, and for good reason. The military had Douglas Aircraft produce all the C-117s in a long-range fuel configuration giving them the capability to fly low and slow at 200 miles per hour and cover a distance of almost 3,000 miles. A C-117 could easily fly low to the water, remain undetected by radar, and land on an unimproved airstrip in a remote location in the jungles of Columbia. There, it could embark thousands of pounds of illicit drugs and return to the United States mainland in the same manner in which it left, without so much as a fuel concern.

Sometime during the recession of the early 1980s, the United States government released what remained of the original fleet of C-117 aircraft, since many were destroyed by mishap or lost in the Pacific. Some are still corroding in distant jungles.

The remaining aircraft were made available for purchase, and Carl quickly snapped up four of them. One by one, over the course of a couple of years, they started to arrive. They quickly received a once over and a fresh Millardair paint scheme. The paint scheme consisting of a white base, complimented by black, red and gold striping. This was sprayed over top of the existing military gray scheme, in one of the old Millardair hangars in Toronto.

I really can’t attest to exactly what level of inspection or maintenance readiness was applied to these old aircraft that had been parked for many years, but if it was anything like what I had been witnessing over the past four years, the painting of these aircraft was likely more important than any mechanical aspect.

Aircraft maintenance at Millardair often came in the form of a stamp or a signature in a logbook. Even in the face of neglect, I’ll attest to the quality of the aircraft’s original design, since they proved to be somewhat reliable. There were exceptions of course, such as tail wheel retraction issues and the inherent tribulations with the Wright Radial Engines. They were temperamental and subject to constant cylinder failure. Cylinder failures were often so catastrophic it would lead to an engine failure.

Carl had no experience with the Wright Radial engine, which was comprised of nine very large cylinders that produced almost 200 hp each. It was an expensive learning curve for Millard and it cost him some serious dollars in the beginning. (Something that Carl detested most of all).

Carl was all about green. No, he wasn’t a tree-hugging environmentalist. I’m talking about green, as in money. The almighty dollar is what drove him. Some of these engine failures were experienced early in the program, before it became evident that you couldn’t even start one of these engines without pre-oiling them if they sat for a couple of days. As for the rest of the airframe, the hydraulic systems, the landing gear, the wheels and brakes, they all came to us pretty much as they were when they sat in the desert. The level of deterioration was little known to most of us.

Although Millardair still had a few of the original DC-3s to supplement these newer Super DC-3s, it seemed that we were using the Super DC-3 almost exclusively now, and it gave Carl an edge over the competition in terms of range, speed and payload.

The DC-3 was a very common aircraft in the fleets of other carriers both in Canada and in the United States. These were mostly carriers that were making a living moving auto parts for desperate expeditors at the BIG THREE, GM, Ford and Chrysler. Every expeditor, at every assembly plant, knew exactly what a Beech-18 and a DC-3 were.

As pilots, we rather liked the Super DC-3 over the old original model, since our remuneration was by the mile and the extra speed was a bonus. We liked the Super DC-3 even though we were more on edge with respect to the engines and the reputation they quickly developed.

We flew these aircraft in constant anticipation of an engine problem. Every time one of these big radial engines skipped a beat, barked, or threw a little bit of flame-out the exhaust, you would squirm just a little in your seat. You’d scan the engine gauges for signs of discontent by either one of the power plants, and more often than not, you’d glance out the window and stare at the source, looking for leaking oil or signs of exhaust tracking on the cowls. Anything that might indicate something was amiss. I