A family affair in aviation

RFDS pilot Sean Cohoe has been in the aviation industry for what feels like his entire life. In fact, he was able to fly a plane solo long before he was able to drive a car on his own.

“When I turned 16 my father asked if I wanted to learn to fly,” says Sean. “What self-respecting teenager would say no to that?”

This offer may seem out of the blue to some people, but in fact, learning to fly is almost a rite of passage for those in Sean’s family.

“There is a very strong history of flying in our family,” says Sean. “On my mother’s side, my grandpa was very active in the gliding community in South Africa, and both my mother and aunty got to a solo stage of gliding.

“On my father’s side, Grandad decided in his middle years that he wanted to fly, and so he purchased a plane in which to learn. It was a 1946 era aircraft called a Champion, or ‘Champ’, and was made predominantly out of wood and fabric.”

This plane became a treasured family heirloom of sorts, with Sean’s father and his two uncles also learning to fly in the Champ in South Africa. Later, when the family moved to Australia, the plane came too.

It was in the Champ that Sean also learnt to fly when he was 16, up in Camden in NSW.

“I was hooked!” Sean proudly admits, noting that obtaining his commercial pilot’s license years later at Archerfield, he moved to the Kimberly in WA and spent six years flying a mixture of charter flights, FIFO transfers and scenic flights. It was also there in Broome that he met his wife.

Then, in 2015, Sean started working with RFDS in Dubbo, where he was both the training captain and the Senior Base pilot. This change of scenery has brought both new opportunities and new challenges, and Sean is enjoying every moment of it.

“I take pride in working for such a historically iconic company,” says Sean. “It is also very rewarding knowing that I played a part in helping someone, especially when weather, time and planning for the flight has created a challenge that I was able to overcome.”

While Sean has stories aplenty from his time in the air, one journey with RFDS sticks in his mind.

“I was on a night shift in Dubbo that started at 6pm. We needed to get from Dubbo to Bourke to pick up a patient, but there was a weather front coming through. On the way in, I can see the weather front is going to beat us to the airport, or it'll be pretty close. So I start having a chat to the flight nurse, and as the patient's not that serious and can wait a bit longer, we decide to call it quits – otherwise, we're useless for a few hours if we’re trapped at the airport in Bourke.

“We turn around and head back to Dubbo, land and taxi, and then we get a call from an ambulance saying we've got a priority one pick up out of Walgett, and they need us to take the patient to Richmond, north of Sydney. It was a premature labour.

“So we take off and head to Walgett, land and get the woman on the plane – she’s in active labour by that stage. We had to rush her into the plane, actually, because that storm front that chased us in Bourke has now caught us in Walgett! We take off again, and I can hear the nurse in the back, and he's really busy trying to stop this baby girl from coming until they can get to the hospital. But when we get to Richmond, the weather was that bad that we couldn't see the runway at the minimum, so we have to divert to Sydney.

“But when we get to Sydney, it's pelting down rain. Plus, we’re quite fuel critical on top of everything else at this stage. However, we are just able to land.

“We taxi to the airport, and we manage to get the woman off the plane and into the ambulance. I watch the ambulance drive forward a metre and then stop, and then drive forward another two metres, and then stop again. And sure enough, she gave birth right there in the ambulance in the driveway [at 2am]! The baby would have been about 32 weeks.”

Sean then adds quickly, “And this is all on my very first night shift with the Flying Doctor! I'd only been with the company for a week.”

Most recently, Sean joined the RFDS team in Victoria, and is currently on a secondment working out of our Essendon base. He tells us that he’s a lot busier now than he was in Dubbo, but thankfully, nothing quite as dramatic as that first night shift has occurred down here.

“However, it’s only been two months,” he laughs. “Give it time!”