It was quite the 100th birthday tribute for Jack Logan, recognizing his remarkable aviation career.
The Tsawwassen resident, who reached the century milestone on June 9, was honoured a few days earlier by the Canadian Museum of Flight at the Langley Airport with a special fly-past featuring a vintage SE-5A bi-plane, recognizing his service with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAFC). He also joined select company as a member of the Retired Airline Pilots of Canada’s “Century Club.”
The birthday airport salute appropriately took place on the 77th anniversary of D-Day, the allied invasion of Europe when Logan was then a 22-year-old skipper of a large Sunderland flying-boat in the RCAFC 422 Squadron, located at a base in Northern Ireland.
Its main duty was anti-submarine patrol in the North Atlantic. On D-Day, Logan flew 17 hours over the ocean at relatively low elevations to protect convoys.
It was growing up in Ottawa, where he was inspired for his future career by aviation events. Among them was in July 1927 when a Dominion Day crowd of 60,000 gathered to see a large collection of aircraft arrive in celebration of the first solo trans-Atlantic flight by Charles Lindberg in May of that year.
At the outbreak of The Second World War, Logan applied to the RCAF and was among the first to begin training in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan when it was launched in June 1940. He was trained as an instructor at the RCAF Central Flying School in Trenton, ON then posted back to Saskatoon. Sask. He then headed to Summerside, PEI in preparation for his work overseas.
He returned home to continue as a RCAF pilot instructor at Patricia Bay, B.C. before being discharged in 1945.
Logan then immediately entered training with Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA) to be a commercial pilot. It was a career that spanned more than 36 years between TCA and Air Canada, flying everything from 10 passenger piston engine airliners to Boeing 747s.
His career with TCA included being based out of Moncton NB where he would meet his future wife Betty, a stewardess with the company. The couple got married in 1949 and will be celebrating their 72nd wedding anniversary in November.
Logan flew out of Montreal for 26 more years where he was selected to captain Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip’s Air Canada charter flight from London to Ottawa in 1973 to attend a Commonwealth Conference.
He transferred to Vancouver in 1978 to become Air Canada’s flight operations director and spent much of his time flying 747s from YVR to London, England.
The Logans settled in Tsawwassen where Jack became an avid member of the Tunnel Town Curling Club. The couple have three children (Dave, Bob and Anne) five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
