Transcript
My name is Derrick Flynn, I'm a civil aviation safety inspector, flight operations.
My name is Geneviève Mageau, and I am a civil aviation safety inspector for flight operations at Transport Canada.
We make sure that companies are compliant and aircraft and pilots are also compliant within their own internal programing. We ensure that Canadian air regulations and the Canadian aviation standards are met by those companies.
First and foremost, we want to promote flight operations safety. We do this through several activities. With monitoring activities, through manual approvals, we receive many questions from operators, meaning we have to look for the correct answers, which leads me to work with my colleagues. This means we work in the field and our offices, where we must consolidate the information we gather and document everything.
That's the beautiful thing about this job is there’s such a varied, day to day, so different. Some days I'm focused on inspections of companies. Either post-inspection or pre-inspection. I do some travel throughout North America where I go and check pilots in the various simulators and the aircraft that I'm approved to conduct those flight tests on.
Before I started with Transport Canada, I flew for about 20 years in the Far North of Quebec in Nunavik and learned a great deal about the work pilots do, the mutual assistance
among colleagues and the challenges this can bring. Now that I’ve joined Transport Canada, I think this experience is crucial. It gives me an understanding of aviation issues.
I've been in industry for about 25 years. Chief pilot roles, Operations manager roles, Training pilot. I was the owner of my own aircraft in the past. So, I have a good understanding that I think I do bring to Transport Canada, where I have a good practical knowledge that I can really speak to our clients.
After several years in the industry, I felt like learning about another aspect of aviation, and I was curious to know what was going on at Transport Canada. Evidently, as a pilot, I had the opportunity to work with Transport Canada inspectors, and I had been interested in this work for several years.
Aside from benefits such as pension funds and insurance, Transport Canada provides an excellent work-life balance. I saw this as an opportunity to continue working in a field I’m passionate about, but with a schedule that was easier to reconcile with my children.
I've got two teenagers in the home and they're very involved with school activities and extracurriculars, so having that flexibility at home is fantastic. So we can work 100% from the office or some of those days we can work from home, which is great for family life.
It’s a flexible, diverse work environment with many opportunities for advancement and several career opportunities. There is not only the work I am currently doing, but also opportunities in management and other departments.
There's a lot of opportunity to go into areas of the industry that you maybe haven't seen before.
In my opinion, what is key for working at Transport Canada is to like to work with people and have interpersonal skills. In addition to working with our colleagues, we must often work in multidisciplinary teams.
There are experts in many different areas of aviation, including aircraft, helicopters, aerodromes and many others. There’s significant collaboration with industry as well. We want to fully understand their needs and issues and establish this collaborative relationship with our colleagues and the industry. It’s at the heart of our work.
One of the unique aspects of this job is you get to interact with so many different people and stakeholders. So that's what gets me up in the morning, and coming to work is working with interesting individuals that are there doing fantastic work within Canada. And to be part of that whole aviation group is really rewarding.