by Angus MacCaull

On March 29th, 2015, I was on a plane with my partner Annie flying toward Halifax. It was late at night. We were relaxed and giddy after a week of roaming the streets of Havana. It had been a fun trip. We’d developed a taste for Cuban rum and learned a lot about the history of the island. Meanwhile, my boss Wayne was also on a plane flying toward Halifax on flight AC 624, which was due to land a couple of hours ahead of us. Wayne was on his way back to Nova Scotia from a conference in San Diego.

Visibility at the Halifax Airport was low. Yet another storm in the worst winter in recent memory had blown in. Wayne’s plane circled the airport for a while, waiting for a break in the weather. When the pilots of AC 624 got the green light from the ground crew to approach the runway, Wayne felt that passenger morale was high. Nobody wanted to be rerouted somewhere else that night. They were almost home. It seemed like everyone was silently saying “giv’er” in their heads.

Just before 1:00am, an announcement came over the loudspeaker on the plane that Annie and I were on. We were changing our destination to Montreal due to an accident at the airport in Halifax. Flight AC 624 had crashed short of the runway. With incredible luck, everyone survived.

Over the years at AA Munro, Wayne has taken hundreds of business flights and driven over a million kilometres in company vehicles. His commitment to being present face to face with people is an essential element of our company culture. He’s traveled the airways and the roads to build relationships and seek out new ideas. There have been all sorts of wonderful, wild and weird experiences along the way. He’s found that the randomness of events is part of life’s richness. He’s building wisdom. And now he has a plane crash under his belt.

 

Wayne in his new T-shirt that reads "I survived flight AC 624"
Wayne in his new T-shirt