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Ice Pilots NWT : Season 6
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Air date: 29 Oct '14 - 8 episodesIce Pilots NWT is back. The hugely popular docu-series following the adventures of the renegade Arctic airline Buffalo Airways returns for a soaring sixth season. Visually stunning and emotionally gripping, Season Six takes viewers through the toughest ice storm Buffalo has ever faced. This season opens with a meltdown when the C-46 suffers an engine fire on the runway, sending the entire Buffalo crew scrambling for a back-up plane. As the coldest winter in decades grips the Northwest Territories, every rampie and rookie pilot in the company faces huge challenges, including de-icing frozen up planes. Joe’s new Electra from England isn’t faring well either, as everything from its engines to instruments fail. Aspiring DC-3 pilot Prefkar Mony from India learns about northern living the cold, cruel way and later faces the wrath of Joe when he makes a serious mistake. Greenhorn rampies Jeff Tapper and Sam Storm are put to the test with their DC-3 checkflights, as they struggle with flight plan changes, food poisoning and plain old nerves. Down in California, it’s Buffalo’s top guns vs the rookies as they challenge each other in real fighter plane dogfights. Plus, there are new adventures for the McBryan clan. It’s a crazy year, as Joe goes from celebrating his 70th birthday with a flight in an old Sterman biplane to being forced to relinquish official control of the company. Mikey sets up a big D-Day tribute jump with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry to celebrate the
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List of Episodes (8)
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Ice Pilots NWT (2009)
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1. A Ball O'Snags
29 Oct '14It’s Buffalo’s busiest winter yet, and they roll out the C-46, TXW, to fly all the freight up the Mackenzie Valley. But when one of TXW’s engines catches fire, Buffalo scrambles to find a backup plane in time for Christmas deliveries. They look to their newly purchased Electra, XFC, to fill the void, but Adam, Chuck, Brian and Mikey discover it has a cracked windshield and cannot be flown safely. Joe, Brian and Cory fly to meet Rod in Red Deer to grab a replacement windshield. When they arrive,
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Ice Pilots NWT (2009)
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2. Ice Storm
05 Nov '14Chief Pilot AJ Decoste is flying up the Mackenzie Valley with Buffalo’s newest Electra, XFC, for the first time. Mechanic Cory Dodd is along for the ride to do some training as a Flight Engineer. They try to make their deliveries before a storm rolls in but when they land in Norman Wells, they are faced with gale force winds. When their takeoff is delayed by two incoming planes, AJ is forced to shut down and wait out the storm in Norman Wells. Later, on their approach to Tulita, they face even s
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Ice Pilots NWT (2009)
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3. Old Dogs
12 Nov '14When Buffalo’s newest Electra, ZFE, lands in Yellowknife with only three functioning engines, mechanic Chuck Adams comes to the rescue to replace a brand-new $29,000 regulator on engine number three. It’s been slow for the airline and delivering a load of building supplies to the RCMP up in Ulukhaktok, NWT, might help keep Buffalo in the air. Spurred by a recent crash landing and two engine fires, an audit team from Transport Canada descends on Buffalo Airways. With their long and tumultuous his
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Ice Pilots NWT (2009)
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4. Checkflight
19 Nov '14Buffalo Joe has been a captain on the daily sked for 34 years and his 70th birthday is next week. Joe might have to stop flying if he doesn’t pass his medical and that could spell the end of Buffalo. Before Joe leaves to undergo five days of medical tests at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, he calls two rampies, Sam Storm and Jeff Tapper, into his office to greenlight their DC-3 checkflights. Both Jeff and Sam have slogged away for eight months waiting for this chance. But on flight day, Sam
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Ice Pilots NWT (2009)
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5. Second Chances
26 Nov '14Newly minted copilot Jeff Tapper is excited for his first revenue DC-3, but his inexperience shows when he botches the approach and bounces the landing three times, nearly running off the runway. Meanwhile, for new rampie Prefkar Mony to realize his dream of becoming a DC-3 pilot, he needs to first pass the written IATRA test. He’s been studying for months, but on his first attempt, he fails. With the help of pilot/mechanic Chris Staples, Prefkar retakes the test and passes, but his victory cele
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Ice Pilots NWT (2009)
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6. Big Plans, Bad Luck
03 Dec '14Mikey talks to a 15-year-old aviation buff in England via Skype, who has discovered that Buffalo’s DC3–WZS–flew on D-Day. This inspires Mikey to do something special for the 70th anniversary. He invites Cory to do a tandem parachute jump and finds out that Cory’s grandfather was a paratrooper at the invasion of Normandy. Meanwhile, Mikey takes mercy on Prefkar, working the ramp in Hay River, and offers him a chance for some pilot training on the morning DC-3 freighter. But when the time comes, P
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Ice Pilots NWT (2009)
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7. Dogfight
10 Dec '14Mikey shows a veteran Buffalo’s DC-3, WZS, Buffalo’s very own vintage plane from the Second World War. It is being fitted with a special ‘static’ line, which paratroopers will clip onto for a D-Day reenactment jump. But army inspectors tell Mikey a modern military needs a modern line with a winch system in case they need to retrieve a “hung-up jumper”. Cory and Mikey scramble to build the retrieval line before the inspector comes back to test it. But with their bumbling and fumbling, it doesn’t
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Ice Pilots NWT (2009)
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8. D-Day
17 Dec '14The Buffalo boys gather in Red Deer for Mikey’s D-Day tribute jump. Joe and Sam scout out the designated military drop zone over Abraham Lake in the Rockies only to discover the canyon is too narrow for the DC-3. So Joe cancels the whole thing—it’s too dangerous. Mikey uses Joe’s own philosophy against him: at Buffalo, there’s always a backup plan. Joe flies out to scout a new location for the drop on the lake but hits bad weather. As Joe is about to scrap the trip, twenty paratroopers from the
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