Dr. Jonathan Knaul, PhD, CD, is a retired Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot with over 30 years of service, including 23 years in flight testing on helicopters, UAVs, and specialized aerospace systems. He now serves as a Rotary-Wing Flight Test Pilot Instructor and Safety Manager at the National Test Pilot School in Mojave, California, where he trains the next generation of test pilots and engineers.
An Associate Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and licensed Professional Engineer, Dr. Knaul has contributed to both aviation and space research while holding leadership roles in the military and industry. He is also the author of Final Approach: A Test Pilot’s Story of Caring for Loved Ones, blending his experiences in aviation with powerful lessons in resilience and caregiving.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:39] Dr. Jonathan Knaul recounts his father’s survival through Auschwitz and Dachau during the Holocaust
- [7:48] Dr. Knaul describes the challenges of providing care for his father
- [10:25] What was it like growing up with a father battling PTSD?
- [13:01] Why Jonathan chose to serve Canada as a way to give back
- [16:19] Commanding Canada’s first Chinook helicopter deployment in Afghanistan
- [19:52] What it’s like to be a test pilot and how new aircraft systems are assessed for safety
- [28:43] Caring for his mother during COVID-19 and the onset of dementia
- [34:26] The importance of recognizing and addressing caregiver burnout
- [37:56] Challenges of mental health stigma in aviation
- [40:05] Why Dr. Knaul wrote Final Approach and how it became a tribute to his parents and caregivers
In this episode…
Balancing a demanding career with the responsibility of caring for aging parents can feel overwhelming and isolating. Many face the emotional strain of supporting loved ones through illnesses like cancer or dementia while still trying to maintain their stability. How do you endure such challenges without burning out?
Dr. Jonathan Knaul, a highly accomplished aerospace engineer, shares how he navigated these challenges by drawing on lessons from aviation and military service. He emphasizes the importance of discipline, preparation, and compartmentalization — skills he relied on both in the cockpit and at home. Dr. Knaul also emphasizes the value of recognizing vulnerability, particularly when burnout begins, and taking action by seeking medical advice or professional caregiving support, much like putting on your oxygen mask before assisting others.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Dr. Jonathan Knaul, test pilot instructor at the National Test Pilot School, about his book, Final Approach. Dr. Knaul discusses the complexities of balancing service and family and opens up about emotional vulnerability, caregiving strategies, and mental health in the aviation profession.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Dr. Jonathan Knaul: LinkedIn | Website
- National Test Pilot School
- Final Approach: A Test Pilot’s Story of Caring for Loved Ones by Jonathan Knaul
Special Mention(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “I realized I was the same age as my father when he was deported. That hit hard.”
- “You put on your oxygen mask first; if you’re not healthy, you can’t help anyone else.”
- “Test pilots don’t fly with emotion, but in caregiving, vulnerability is strength.”
- “Caregiving isn’t just hard; it’s personal, and you have to know the person to do it well.”
- “Flight testing is inherently risky, but it’s the preparation that keeps us safe.”
Action Steps:
- Recognize signs of caregiver burnout: Burnout often mirrors PTSD and can be debilitating. Acknowledging early symptoms helps prevent long-term damage and ensures both the caregiver and loved one remain safe.
- Document family stories before it’s too late: Preserving firsthand accounts, as Dr. Jonathan Knaul did with his father’s Holocaust memoir, is vital to honoring legacy and understanding generational trauma.
- Apply structure to chaos: Utilize tools from your professional life, such as checklists or debriefs, to manage the unpredictability of caregiving. This mindset shift can offer clarity and reduce overwhelm.
- Seek help when caregiving alone is no longer sustainable: Understanding that stepping back can be an act of love is key. Transitioning to professional care doesn’t mean failure — it means responsibility.
- Promote mental health openness in high-stakes fields: Aviation, military, and leadership roles often stigmatize vulnerability. Encouraging transparency and support systems helps leaders thrive both professionally and personally.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
Okay. Today we’re talking about the story of a test pilot who had to balance a career with caregiving for an elderly parent. He’s wrapped it all up in a book. It’s called Final Approach. His name is Dr. Jonathan Knaul, and I’ll tell you more about him in a second. So stay tuned.
Intro: 00:19
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:35
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of the show. And you know, if you’ve listened before, every week we’ve got authors, we’ve got smart CEOs, got founders, got entrepreneurs on this show. And if you look back at the archives, we’ve had Netflix and Grubhub, Grubhub and Redfin, Gusto, Kinko’s, lots of great episodes. So check those out in the archives. And before we get into this episode, it is brought to you by Rise25, our company where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? Do that by helping companies to run their podcasts. We have the easy button for any company to launch and run a podcast. If you want to learn more about us, you can go to Rise25.com. And I’m gonna dive into it because today I get to interview someone who’s got a fascinating background, especially with my background, my grandfather. I’ve talked about him on this podcast before. Super grateful to him.
John the First, he was a B-17 pilot in World War 2, did 35 missions, primarily over Nazi Germany at the time, and so super grateful to him. Or else I wouldn’t be here today. But our guest here today first comes courtesy of Julie Brode from booklaunchers.com. If you ever want to launch a book, go check them out. But Dr. Jonathan Knaul, he’s a retired test pilot instructor with the Canadian Armed Forces, flight test expert across more than 60-plus different aircraft types.
He said he’s not even sure how many different aircraft types he’s flown. That’s how much he’s done. And he’s got this book that shares his story. Not just about being a test pilot, but also about taking care of his parents. Both the passing of his father and also his mother. And so shares his story and blends both of those stories as well. And now he is a test flight instructor, actually, in Mojave, California, which is fascinating. But, Jonathan, let’s start first with your father who was actually a Holocaust survivor, and your mother also survived the bombing of London. Crazy stories right there. First, let’s start with your father. Where was he during the Holocaust? Where had he been living? Tell us that story.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 02:39
Well, first of all, thank you for that wonderful, very kind introduction. Thank you very much, John. And it’s a real pleasure to be on your show and, and and a privilege. So my father, Sigmund Knaul, we, we he was affectionately called Ziggy. Ziggy. Sorry. He was born in Poland in 1924. It might have been 23. There was some controversy about that, but we’re digging up. Not controversy, but inaccuracy. So Jewish family. Both my parents were Jewish, and so 1939 came around and he was 15. He had a large family. He had five brothers and his parents. And by January of 1940 they were all deported. And so he was quite young and he was in a number of labor camps. He ended up in Auschwitz. He spent a year in Auschwitz and miraculously, very unusual, survived. He was in the labor side of Auschwitz, and he was transferred of all places to Dachau. And he spent the rest of the war in Dachau.
And he somehow survived that, too. And he actually escaped from Dachau About the last week of the war, just as Americans were coming upon the camp, and quite miraculous how he survived because the Nazis were organizing large death marches to clear the camps, ostensibly to hide the evidence. And I get a little bit choked up about this. He ran out of a death march. Surviving a death march is one thing.
Running, running out of one and surviving is another. And. And how he did it in the terrible health state he would have been in by then. Yeah. And he survived.
He was picked up by a local farmer who took care of him. And that was also unusual. And so he spent a few years still in Germany as a refugee, as what we call it, the time of displaced persons. And then he immigrated to Toronto in 1949. And I mean, that’s the brief story of what he went through.
But and to think about, you know, it’s equal when you when you when you talk to me about your grandfather being a B-17 pilot and being so young in his early 20s and, and surviving all those missions and commanding people, you know, I think of my father being so young, and he lost his entire family. Nobody survived save a half brother, and that he knew that and survived and was able to come to Canada and make a life for himself. It’s, you know, blows my mind.
John Corcoran: 05:25
Mind boggling how people are able to move on and live a life out there. You know, after going, you know, experiencing those types of, you know, horrors. And I don’t. I don’t remember if I mentioned this to you before, but my business partner, Jeremy, his grandfather, is a Holocaust survivor, also was in concentration camps and somehow made his way over to the United States. We like to think of it as my grandfather and his grandfather were both fighting the same virtuous fight. One from the air, one from the ground up, you know, and that here we’re united.
Not that we’re doing anything anywhere close to that. But, you know, unites us for sure. Absolutely. So. And was your grandfather’s story ever captured? Did he write a book? Did he ever do interviews on it? Did he talk about it?
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 06:15
Even my father.
John Corcoran: 06:17
Sorry, sorry. Your father?
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 06:18
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 06:19
That’s okay.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 06:19
Grandpa, actually, I happened to have it because one of my colleagues asked for it, happened to have it here, and I’ve recaptured it in my book. So it’s just by chance. It’s a memoir. It’s called cowardice. Wow. And so that’s my father’s memoir. And the large part of it, with my mother’s permission that she gave me long before she passed, I reprinted it in, in my book. So it’s there. The middle chapter is the largest chapter and it’s literally a cut and paste with permission of most of that, which is a lot of short stories about what actually happened to him. And they’ll make you cry. And then there’s a lot of poems that are, are extremely well done, very dark. And I included the short stories and a couple of the poems. Yeah, in the book. So, yeah, there is that memoir, and I’m looking at reprinting it and getting a wider audience for it, actually.
John Corcoran: 07:16
That’s wonderful. I mean, at least it’s great to hear those stories captured. Yeah. You know, because that’s the first step towards preventing these types of horrors from happening again. So your father actually had to take care of him actually, since you mentioned he was 15 at the time, you were 15 when you had to take care of him. And so tell us a little bit about that, what that experience was like.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 07:48
That is the first time I recognized that I was the same age as he was when he was deported.
John Corcoran: 07:54
Yeah.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 07:57
So I’m sorry. Like I said, I get a little choked up.
John Corcoran: 08:01
You know, sometimes this happens when we have these conversations in these interviews where, you know, it just takes an outsider like me who comes in and hears your story for the first time and then draws a connection that the person I’m interviewing hadn’t thought about before.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 08:18
Oh, yeah. And thank you. We’re totally good. You know, and in my book, I’m very vulnerable. And I do that on purpose because, I mean, I look at the business, I do. This is not normal in my business to be vulnerable. Of course. So I’m not shedding tears in the cockpit. But in general, I really don’t mind being vulnerable. So. Yeah. My. His father got cancer when he was 59. And he lasted about six months. So this is 1983 84, in Toronto. And, you know, this is still relatively early days of, you know, what is available to treat cancer. So he was in a very good hospital in Toronto. But nurses can only provide so much support. Medical science, even in the 80s there’s only so far advanced. So as a family, my sister and my mother and I had to give him a lot of support.
And I certainly was a man, because I had to take care of a lot of personal issues for him. Unusual baptism by fire, so to speak. For me as a teenager to see and do that. But I did that and it was hard to deal with, but I felt good about doing it too, to care for my father and, you know, make things easier for him. So yeah, a lot of care was provided for him in the hospital and where the cancer came from.
It started as stomach cancer, which was probably related to his malnutrition all those years earlier in the camps, combined with stress and post-traumatic stress disorder, which he suffered from in a terrible way that was very, very probably the bigger challenge.
John Corcoran: 10:12
Tell us a little bit about that. What was that like growing up with your father, you know, did you experience night terrors? Were there certain, you know, times that you can remember when you were a kid where something would trigger him?
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 10:25
Yeah. I love my father, but he was a monster. Not by intent. It wasn’t his fault. He suffered a terrible, terrible disease.
That and back in the 80s, we certainly still did not recognize what PTSD really was and how to best treat it. We’re far more advanced now, and I say that with a certain amount of knowledge, given my background in the military. I have a number of friends with PTSD. I served in combat. I’ve had subordinates and colleagues with PTSD who have PTSD.
I haven’t suffered it myself. Luckily, it’s very individualistic, but I certainly understand it. So for me, as a kid, it was not by his intent, but it was abusive. He was a monster. And he again, I’m quite happy to be vulnerable about that. He did his best. He just didn’t know. Yeah. So yeah, he suffered terrible nightmares, night sweats. Sleep was awful for him or.
Or his night times were awful for him. Better. I don’t think he really slept. Yeah, he was triggered by certain things. Light sounds and terrible bursts of anger And, you know, but I honestly, you know, you know, I still have certainly some very challenging memories about that, to say the least. But I can look upon that in a much broader scope now and, and understand it and it doesn’t really happy to talk about it.
John Corcoran: 11:58
So it’s, it’s interesting that you want to get to how you get into the profession that you are and end up in. But I also see parallels between the two as a, as a, you know, a test pilot. You have to keep your wits about you. You have to keep cool, calm, you have to be measured. You have to, you know, make smart decisions under pressure, all things that you had to do in order to survive that childhood.
Is that perhaps something that drew you towards the profession or maybe, perhaps allowed you to succeed in this profession.