Northwest Flying Inc. | Minnesota Bound

Northwest Flying Inc. | Minnesota Bound

On this week’s episode, one bush pilot covets the most vintage of planes, his Beech 18s on floats!

The mornings are the best part here.

Yeah, we love it. It’s a it’s a good life.

Shane Pope, a bush pilot with passion. For airplanes. The kind where he crawls in up top.

We typically start flying at 6:00 in the morning. Um, it’s a 7 day a week.

The Pope family’s summer business based in Nestor Falls, a Northwoods town where rush hour looks and sounds like this.

Shane goes up in the air. While Gina holds down the fort.

We meet a lot of great people and yeah, we work our butts off. That’s what we signed up for. It’s it’s a lifestyle.

The business of flying anglers in and out of remote fish camps enough to wear you out. Just meeting new people all day. Parking lot license plates tell the story.

If someone wants to go co-pilot, that’s you. Yeah. Do you know how to read a map? They come here.

We fly them out to remote areas uh for some wonderful fishing and some outdoor experiences that they’ll never forget.

Today we’re hauling fishermen out to the day lakes and then I come back and seats go up and cargo net and then we we haul lumber and and propane and provisions for the camps.

You want to be a bush pilot when you grow up. I don’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t around airplanes.

I mean, I just this is where I grew up.

The Popes and Airplanes, a long time love affair.

My father Jack, he he started working here 71 or 72 as chief pilot and then him and mom bought the place. I think it was right around 86.

Shane grew up around the outfitting business. He eventually earned a spot in the pilot seat.

First job was pretty easy to get. Luckily, my dad hired me and uh the rest is history.

He is a pilot at heart.

It makes him happy, that’s for sure.

That’s only half the tail. The Pope’s storied airplanes, the other.

Yeah, we’re like I said, we’re we’re we’re Beech guys. We’re we’re pretty proud of them. They’re all very old airplanes.

They’re very popular. They look pretty. On floats in this configuration. I think there’s, you know, maybe maybe a dozen in the world. And most of those are right within this northwestern Ontario.

They’re well loved in the industry. And to fly in one takes your breath away. It’s pretty amazing seeing people come in who’ve never been in an airplane before.

It’s exciting for people and it’s cool to be able to see people get that like that look on their face when they’re like, “Oh, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

And I flew out a guy out this morning. He’s 87 years old and he’s just he’s like a kid in the candy store. He just loves it. So to me, that’s that’s pretty pretty important.

So yeah, introducing people to the world’s still remote spots.

The life and times of a Beech 18 bush pilot. A pretty perfect existence. Well, almost. Sometimes this is the trickiest part.

He just he loves it. Like it’s I’ve never seen somebody love something as much as he loves airplanes.

You know, I’ve always said Shane is so lucky.

He is one of the lucky ones who has found what he has always dreamt of doing and loves doing it.

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