WASHINGTON — It was so dark it was like being locked in a closet. It was almost cold enough to damage crucial plane parts. The flight in a small, overloaded bush plane to the South Pole was nine hours each way and there was nothing in between.
So to the outside world the Antarctic rescue flight of two sick Americans in June from a remote South Pole station sounded daring.
To the two Canadian pilots who crisscrossed the icy continent in June said it was really no big deal, but they said they were grateful to learn that the two people they rescued are home and on the mend.
In an Associated Press interview, chief pilot Wallace Dobchuk and first officer Sebastien Trudel said they aren’t comfortable being called heroes and were just doing their jobs. Dobchuk said his wife, who also has been to Antarctica, probably had “more hardship taking care of my daughter while I was away.”
“It really is just kind of what we do,” Dobchuk said.
“It just came down to, you know, I guess planning it,” Dobchuk said. “We didn’t get caught off guard. We weren’t worried about anything. We weren’t scared.”
This wasn’t as risky as it may seem because of proper training, planning and experience, said Kelly Falkner, who heads the National Science Foundation’s polar programs office.
“They deserve a tremendous amount of credit,” Falkner said, having flown with them before. “They are brave. I won’t deny them that, but they also have been at it a long time and they know what they’re doing.”
