Was it "pilot error" or a defective airplane design?
For my client Linda Redmond, she had mixed feelings delving into this story. When she was just 10 years old her father Captain North Sawle lost his life in one of the first jet airliners, the De Havilland Comet Mark I. In 1953, Canadian Pacific Airlines was about to take delivery of two of the revolutionary new planes. They could fly more than twice as fast as a prop plane and hold more passengers. But was it safe?
Pilots North Sawle and Charles Pentland with several other CPA flight crew had travelled to England to fly the Comet to it's new CPA home base in Sydney, Australia. But they didn't make it. Something happened in Karachi, Pakistan that caused the plane to crash and burn at the end of the runway. To this day, questions still go unanswered about what happened in that cockpit on that hot, humid night almost 60 years ago.
 | Linda Redmond receives her video biograpy film DVDs to give to her grandchildren for Christmas gifts.
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Made in 6 short parts, The Sawle Family Story is a film that starts with the account of North Sawle's parents (Linda's grandparents) and their pioneering life in frosty Athabasca Landing in the early 1900s.
Click below to watch Part 2 of The Sawle Family Story, the high-in-the-sky tales of one daring young arctic bush pilot and the lives he saved. Before North Sawle got his pilot licence, in the mid 1920s, at the age of 14, he built an actual airplane in his own backyard ... using only a kit he bought from a magazine ad.
Click here to watch Part 2 of The Sawle Family Story. Also, hear what Linda Redmond said when she saw the first draft!
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