Warren Randle: Balancing flying and family

When Coastlines reaches him on his cellphone, Warren Randle is sitting in his car outside a dance academy in Nanaimo, hunkering down and warming his hands as a snowstorm rages outside. The veteran Harbour Air pilot has just dropped off two of his three daughters, and as any dad knows, he better be there when they come out.

“Oh my goodness, definitely a parent,” he answers instantly, when asked which of his two roles—father or pilot—is the more demanding.

Warren Randle wants to make his children proud
(Jason Minter)“You go home and the work is just beginning,” he laughs.

That perspective carries a lot of weight, coming from a guy like Warren. The 54-year-old has had a remarkable career in aviation, starting as a bush jockey in the mid-seventies, and eventually taking on some of the wildest gigs available to a young man with a private pilot’s licence.

During his tenure in the late eighties with Kenn Borek Air, a company whose credo is “Anytime, Anywhere”, Warren regularly taxied science and military personnel to the north and south poles, dropping them off at desolate bases guy-wired to the ice in the most extreme and inhospitable conditions on the planet.

Warren’s trajectory changed when he met his wife in Lima, Peru, where he spent some time training students to handle the de Havilland Twin Otter. The two eventually decided it was time for Warren to settle back on his native West Coast, where, as a kid, he’d grown up on the water across from Stanley Park.

In 1994, he joined Harbour Air, in a position that Warren feels is actually much better suited to his temperament.

“I notice a lot of my colleagues love stick-time. They love working the airplanes, but I found that didn’t interest me as much. I love flying passengers around. I love taking care of people, and being responsible for people. That has been the most enjoyable part for me.”

Noting that his time with Harbour Air has been “a profession rather than a job”, Warren continues, “It’s such a progressive company. The human resources we have are unheard of at this level. In training, we’re extremely thorough. Bigger companies have simulators, but we go out and do the real thing, and we go over, and over, and over everything. The company wants to be the best.”

Given his own paternal disposition, it’s no surprise when Warren adds, “And I’ve just found they have a real heart. For family, and for people with families.”

And it’s no surprise again when Warren expresses his delight over the attention from Coastlines.

“I’m particularly pleased because I’ve never been in the magazine before,” he explains, “and I wanted to do it for my kids because they would really appreciate seeing their dad and his story in there. They always want me to pick them up from school with my uniform on. They just love it.”

For the record, Warren was not wearing his uniform on this particular day off, though we suspect he could be talked into it.