Kamloops’ own Flyin’ Phil wrote the book on trouble with family members on airplanes

EDITOR’S NOTE — Canadian politicians have been much in the news lately for the spending of taxpayers’ money on travel for family members. Alison Redford, Jenny Kwan, Linda Reid and others have felt the political consequences. Getting in trouble over family travel isn’t new in B.C. politics. In 1968, ‘Flying’ Phil Gaglardi was at the top of his game as MLA for Kamloops and minister of highways in the W.A.C. Bennett government. But an incident involving a flight by a family member was to cost him his job as highways minister. Over the next few days, I’ll publish some excerpts from a chapter called The Plane, The Plane in Friend O’ Mine, my biography of Phil Gaglardi published in 1988.

By MEL ROTHENBURGER

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as angels.

— Isaiah 40:31

“When I bow out, it’ll be flying. I’ll get into some scrape with a plane, and that’ll be it.”

— Phil Gaglardi

On Tuesday morning, March 19, 1968, Dave Barrett received a phone call from a Victoria air-traffic controller who thought he might like to know that the B.C. government jet had taken off for Dallas, Texas, the previous night with several people on board.

Barrett knew that Phil Gaglardi had relatives in Texas. The NDP member stopped by a table at the parliamentary restaurant where several Liberal MLAs were eating lunch, and told Ray Perrault about the phone call. During a post-lunch stroll around the capital’s Inner Harbour, Pat McGeer, Perrault and fellow Liberal MLA Barrie Clark decided they’d better check out Barrett’s story.

Clark happened to know a radio reporter in Dallas. Back in their offices, Clark gave him a call. The reporter friend said he’d look into it at the airport. That evening he teletyped back a reply. The provincial government Lear had landed at the Dallas airport at midnight Monday for refueling. At a private terminal, the people on board were met by two couples — one elderly — and two children. The Lear then took off, without the passengers, on a flight plan to Wichita, Kansas.

Was Phil Gaglardi now using his jet to fly relatives to far-flung corners of the continent to vacation?

Wednesday morning, Perrault took the information to a closed meeting of the public accounts committee. He was the only opposition member in attendance, since the NDP members were boycotting the committee after staging a walkout over calling witnesses on the Silver Sage issue. Perrault asked the Socreds to call Gaglardi and (pilot Bert) Toye before the committee to explain the flight. The Socred members, who had just completed a committee report exonerating Gaglardi in the Silver Sage affair, refused.

“Gentlemen,” said Perrault, “you have left me no choice.”

He and Barrett called a quick meeting with reporters in the press gallery and told them the story of the mystery flight of the Lear.

“We want a complete accounting of this last trip,” said Perrault. “If the minister is not going to five the information, he should resign forthwith. If he doesn’t his colleagues should ask him to resign.”

The reporters found Gaglardi in the Hotel Vancouver, where he’d just had an operation to fix an impacted tooth and cyst in his jaw, and was feeling none too well. Gaglardi readily confirmed that the jet had made the trip to the Lear factory in Wichita.

Had it dropped off his son or daughter in Dallas on the way?

Dallas? This was news to him. No, his son or daughter wasn’t on the plane, as far as he knew. In fact, he wasn’t sure who was on the plane. It probably just stopped in Dallas “to get gassed up.” Better ask Bert Toye, the pilot.

Toye was contacted in Wichita. He refused comment. Ask Gaglardi.

By now, Gaglardi had checked the jet’s exact itinerary. It had flown from Kamloops to Vancouver to Victoria to Seattle, then Denver, Dallas and Wichita. It wasn’t supposed to go to Dallas, but weather forced a diversion.

When Toye landed in Denver, he said, the aviation weather office told him the cloud base was less than one thousand feet over Wichita, with winds gusting up to 45 miles per hour and visibility three miles in rain. Toye, being unfamiliar with the area or its airports, decided to divert to Dallas, an extra 20 minutes’ flying time, rather than leave his passengers stranded in Denver until the Wichita front blew over.

And, asked reporters, was Gaglardi’s daughter-in-law a passenger?

Yes, she was, said Gaglardi. Karen Gaglardi had hitched a ride on the Lear with the idea of catching a commercial flight at Seattle if one was available, but apparently there hadn’t been. “She was to get off at Seattle.”

But when reporters checked on commercial schedules, they found flights from Seattle to Dallas almost duplicating the Lear’s flight plan, and arriving ahead of the Lear.

Yes, said Gaglardi, but Karen didn’t have time to catch a Seattle flight because the Lear didn’t arrive there on time for her to make the switch.

It was pointed out to him that U.S. weather officers at Denver reported that at no time after 5 p.m. Sunday had there been a ceiling below 4,000 feet or was visibility less than 10 miles. There had been no reports of a weather front between Denver and Wichita. Winds were 16 miles per hour, gusting to 27.

“The ceilings were really good,” a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman was quoted as saying. “There was no weather to interfere with a Lear jet.”

That didn’t mean anything, said Gaglardi. “I’ve checked the weather office many times and got a different report to the one my pilots have been given. Bert Toye is the best pilot I’ve got. He would not lie for all the tea in China.”

NEXT: The political storm grows as details of the trip become more clear. These excerpts are from Friend O’ Mine, The Story of Flyin’ Phil Gaglardi, by Mel Rothenburger, published in 1988 by Orca Book Publishers.