Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 12:39
Well, there’s a couple of things I always really badly wanted to be an astronaut. From the time I was a little kid. I didn’t know that I would be one, and I haven’t been one. But I knew that.
John Corcoran: 12:51
Time John Glenn was 83 or something when he went to space.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 12:54
I never know.
John Corcoran: 12:56
It’s true. And what’s his name, not Spock. Captain Kirk went to space, right?
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 13:01
So did William Shatner? Yeah. Shatner and a guy named Don Pettit, 70, just came back from the space station. A few, actually, I think it’s a couple of months ago now. So really a sensational astronaut himself.
But anyways, I knew that the journey and what I would pick to do the things I would need to do to try and be an astronaut would be a phenomenal adventure. And that, you know, it’s good if you can realize that you need to enjoy the journey and make the most of it because you don’t know what the destination will, will, will be. So it’s really important and I, tonight, I can honestly say I’ve had that privilege and I. I have no regrets and I’m very thankful for that. And so early on, I badly wanted to be a test pilot, be a pilot, be in the military.
And the other factor was I very much wanted to serve my country. So again, I get a little choked. You know, they took in my father as a refugee and in Canada, and he was able to live and and have a wonderful life and make two wonderful children, me one of them and, and and my mother, who came over from England later in the 50s but had survived the bombing in World War two and and she was able to make a life for herself in England, sorry, in Canada. And I wanted to give something back to a country who did. You know so much about my parents. And I’m here partly because of Canada.
John Corcoran: 14:30
So, yeah.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 14:32
I wanted to serve, and I believe in the greater good of the community of the Earth. And Canada certainly is involved in doing that. So there was no question about doing that. And I’ve just had this wonderful adventure and privilege and I’m still living it and I’m so lucky.
John Corcoran: 14:46
And you mentioned your sister, who also has been instrumental in helping to care for your parents during their decline. Talk a little bit about her.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 14:55
Yeah. You know, my sister is two years older. Doctor Feliciano and she’s a full professor here down at UCLA, just down the road from where I am now. Coincidentally, we live an hour apart now, and. But Felicia’s a phenomenal character.
She’s so intelligent and so outgoing and full of life. And so she’s a very caring person. So, I mean, she equally did a lot of things to take care of our father when he was in, you know, declining through cancer and she did quite a bit to take care of her mother too, and we worked together to do that. And so I dedicated the book to her. I dedicated it first to her and to our parents.
And, you know, and she’s been an inspiration to me and somebody I look up to. And so I’ve learned a lot from her over the years.
John Corcoran: 15:52
And so back to the so you’re drawn to becoming a test pilot and you were a test pilot. You also were deployed to Kosovo and Afghanistan. Talk a little bit about those experiences and what sorts of missions you were involved in. I understand you were commanding the first Canadian deployment of helicopters, six Chinook helicopters in Afghanistan. Yeah.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 16:19
I really had a privilege to do that in a combat start. So, I mean, I’m glad I had that experience. But, you know, we lost a lot of people on my tours. But Kosovo wasn’t so much. It was less of a threat.
We did lose a soldier during my time there. That was more of peacekeeping following the NATO bombing, and I was there for six months. 1999 2000. And at the time, I was a co-pilot and I was flying a lot of missions, a lot of missions, and really border patrols, counter drug operations, counter arms operations, and a number of things just to do our best to keep the peace. And it was really quite an amazing experience and something I’m really proud of, for sure.
And it was about ten years later that I was asked to command our Chinook team, which was embedded within a larger squadron and embedded within a larger Canadian task force in Kandahar. I was there for 2008, 2009 for about six months. I had six Chinooks that I oversaw and about 25 people, aircrew and flew 52 combat missions myself. That was a very high threat environment and we had our share of getting shot at. We lost 21 Canadian soldiers in our task force during my time there alone, which was really hard.
And we yeah, I don’t know where to begin. You know, it was a long six months that went by super fast. But yeah, really a very difficult environment to fly into, extremely dusty like talcum powder dust. So helicopters and really dusty conditions are challenging. But I worked with extremely talented, really good people.
And I think the biggest thing about my time in Afghanistan was getting our soldiers off the roads because without helicopter lift, we were having more casualties because they had to move from A to B along roads. And they suffered a lot of fatalities. A lot of casualties from IED, improvised explosive devices, bombs that were planted by the insurgents. And so it was, you know, I can’t say for sure that somebody got home and lived and didn’t get blown up because they didn’t get blown up. But I have confidence in the fact that they weren’t on the roads, that they didn’t get blown up and they got to go home.
And there’s no medal, there’s no performance evaluation, there’s nothing that can compare to looking back in a helicopter and seeing tired soldiers and that, you know, they’re going to get them home safely.
John Corcoran: 19:21
Right. Talk to me a little bit about. What drew you to being a test pilot and what is the day to day like for being a test pilot? You know, it is, you know, months of preparation. We got this new plane or helicopter that’s going to be coming down, study every, study it inside and out, and then we’re going to be testing it. Tell me a little bit about what it’s like.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 19:52
You kind of rounded it off. Yeah I mean ultimately what does a test pilot do. We test unproven platforms. So that might be something that’s added to an existing certified aircraft, an engine, a new type of weird flight service surface, like a wing that’s going in a, in a in a different shape. And so that requires a lot of careful testing because you don’t know how it’s going to react, how it’s going to perform, how it’s going to behave.
But we really look at the more global picture Is being able to take a full aircraft. That’s never been its a it’s a brand new design, never been flown before. And how do you prove that aircraft that it’s safe to fly. And more importantly, not only that it can be safe to fly, but that it can do its mission, whether it’s some sort of a military aircraft that has a mission to take soldiers off the roads or to do an attack mission, or it’s an airline aircraft that’s purpose is to safely transport passengers. And so and that’s the best example is, is a, a new design of an airliner has to be certified so it can be certified to transport the public.
You know. And that takes years of many, many hours of different flights to go through all the steps to look at everything from the engines to the flight surfaces to the systems on board, to see that they work as they’re supposed to, and they meet the standards as outlined by in this country, by the FAA. So being a test pilot, I have a very academic mind and I love flying and I wanted to combine that. So being a test pilot was that natural graduation for me. And it also married up with my intent of being an astronaut.
And I knew again, it would be something that would really inspire and propel me along the way. So for test pilots, here I am, a test pilot instructor at National Test Pilot School, which is a school I’m very proud to be a part of. And the test pilot school course. As I mentioned to you when we were talking privately, there’s only eight accredited test pilot schools in the world where one of them, the course, is a year long. So we bring students here for a year.
They’re advanced pilots. It’s something that a government or a big company has to invest in a person, you know? Plus the students are here for years, so they are. You know, they come with their families and their company has to pay for things like lodgings and moving their families. And so it’s a very big price tag and they’re under a lot of pressure.
So it’s a very academically heavy experience, a lot of flying in a variety of different aircraft. And so it’s fairly stressful on folks. And you have to learn how to manage that stress. And then being a test pilot, what we do here at the school emulates your very question or answers your question about test pilot life. You’re very busy doing a lot of on the ground engineering work to prepare for all the testing that you have to do, and then a lot of risk assessing to to assess all the different risks and hazards that might unfold and being prepared for those probably, I don’t know, for every hour of flight test I do when I’m doing real core flight testing, it’s 50 to 75 hours of work on the ground. Wow. In preparation. Something like that.
John Corcoran: 23:23
And do you trust, like the process. Like there’s a checklist that you follow that says that. Okay, we’ve gone through that 50-75 hours and now I’m comfortable getting in that cockpit. Or is there some kind of other test that you apply yourself? Is there a gut instinct?
You know, I guess what I’m asking is how do you get to the point where you’re like, okay, this is an unproven aircraft, or it has a new flight surface or something like that. And how do I know I’m comfortable getting in this aircraft? Does that make sense? Like, you know, there have been times when you’re like, well, I’ve gone through everything. We’ve done 75 hours of study, but something’s not telling me. Telling me that I’m not ready yet.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 24:10
Yeah. I have a lot of confidence in our process. You know, again, I work with very talented, gifted people I have throughout my career. And that 50 to 75 hours is because the devil’s in the details, and we’re very exhaustive in all the planning that we do, and that planning for every flight test involves a lot of people. And a lot of documentation to go over all the different things we’re going to do.
And then we intently and intensely analyze the risk for every little thing that we’re going to do, and figure out how that risk could play out, how we can mitigate it, and what we’re going to do if it does play out. And so flight testing is a risky business inherently, but I have extreme confidence in all the processes that we use. And they do work. And then absolutely you add in a bit of gut gut instinct. I mean, there are, you know, oftentimes the things that catch you are things you never planned for.
We can sit in a room with a lot of people and spend a lot of time thinking of brainstorming and thinking of everything. And then, you know, once in a while you get surprised by something that you never thought would occur. You just couldn’t imagine it. Apollo 13 and the explosion they had in space on the way to the moon, which, you know, has been the makings of a couple of movies, really. They just never imagined that that would happen.
But it’s that discipline and all that other preparation you do that allows you to deal with those things when they do happen.
John Corcoran: 25:51
I was going to mention Apollo 11, because I was talking to my kids about it recently, and I think a lot of the Apollo and Mercury astronauts were test pilots. I know Neil Armstrong was, and I don’t know if anyone remembers this, but a fascinating aspect of the original moon landing is that he had to take over in the last, I think, 30s or a minute or so. They’re just above the surface of the moon, and he takes over and takes manual control and puts it down on the ground. And it was just so, so much tension in that moment.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 26:24
Yeah, you can see the footage of that along with because of course, they had cameras on board. And so they were filming that landing and, and they had all the audio feed both internal and back to Houston. And so yeah, he landed, if I remember correctly, I may have the number slightly wrong or something. Oh, yes. He had like 1 or 2%.
He had about 15 seconds. I might be off by a few seconds. He had about 15 seconds of fuel left. But on the 32nd, when he took over, there was somewhere around a minute left in the landing process and that it might be slightly off. And there was a 32nd warning of that’s how much fuel you have left.
And he still hadn’t landed. Wow.
John Corcoran: 27:09
But it was because as you point, I think there were too many rocks in the landing field they’d selected.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 27:14
Yeah, the rocks in the landing field that the automated system was taking them to were the size of cars. Yeah. And they were not going to be able to safely land there. And he had great support from his first officer, second pilot, co-pilot, the lunar module pilot, as he as he was called, Buzz Aldrin, who, you know, gave him tremendous support to help do his role, you know, call it the things he was supposed to call and see, the things he was supposed to see and alert Neil. So I would say it was Neil certainly did an amazing job, but also a shared effort.
And it’s really amazing what was done because, you know, all that planning and so close to it really could have gone very badly. But he was very competent. He was very skilled. They had done all kinds of preparation. He was ready for it. He took over at the right time and they made it. And here we are going back to the moon again.
John Corcoran: 28:15
So exciting, so exciting. I can’t wait for that to happen. Yeah. Let’s pivot to talking about caring for your mother. So you had actually just moved to Mojave in 2020. So during Covid and you’re going to be a test flight instructor there. And your mother develops dementia and you have to go home and take care of her, take care of her, take us back to what that experience was like for you and what it brought up for you.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 28:43
Yeah, I retired from the military in 2019, in Canada after 33 years. And my mother, you know, the last ten years of her, that previous few years, part of me had been a decline for her, but mostly was in mobility, some internal issues that we were able to manage and a lot of care from my sister and I. But we were able to do it by having caregivers in place and visiting her very regularly between the two of us, all manageable. And she was at my retirement party and I felt I was in charge of all her finances and managing the caregivers. And I became the prime person because I was in Canada.
My sister was in the States already at the time and, and I thought we were okay. My mother had memory loss, but she was still very happy with it. So in 2020, she was 95, 94, 95. And she said, you got to go and do what you got to do. And I felt that my sister did too, that me being down in California, my sister in Florida, we could continue with caregivers in place in Toronto and regular visits every three weeks or so to manage this.
So off I went and I moved to California, came to National Test Pilot School. But after a few months, my mother had developed dementia. Covid was well into play. There were problems with the caregivers. I didn’t know if they were going to show up on any given day.
I didn’t know if somebody was going to get Covid. And there it was, the ship was sinking. We were trying to put plugs in the holes. Gum over here, tape over there. And it became very apparent.
And my sister has her own family. I was single at the time. And so I said, and my employer here, National Test Pilot School, was very understanding, which was hard for them because they needed me. I said, I can’t stay, I have to go home. So I sold everything and rushed home and moved in with my mom and took care of her and things got very challenging.
It wasn’t long after I got there that I mean, I had five caregivers to cover off the 2007 period, and three of them just up and left with no notice. They couldn’t take it. My mother.
John Corcoran: 31:02
Because of Covid or because she was difficult to care for or just.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 31:06
Difficult to care for. She was becoming combative and it was very hard. They just couldn’t deal with it. And often, what is often the case with caregivers is that you hire personal support workers, you know, they themselves live in multigenerational homes and they’re taking care of loved ones. So you can imagine the amount of stress and exhaustion on them to go and do a job like this 8 to 12 hours a day, taking care of somebody else.
And then they’ve got to go home and take care of their loved one and the pay. I mean, I paid my caregivers well, but still, in the industry, the pay is not that great. Yeah. So it was hard on them. And they got up and left.
I was left with two. I could only do part of the week. So then I was taking care of my mother, 24 and seven, for 3 to 4 days out of the week with no support, which was when you’ve got somebody who’s got dementia and it’s really challenging now I was now I’m taking care of my mother, which was something I never expected to do, taking care of, you know, very private needs. But I was able to do it with her, for her, for with dignity, sorry, dignity. And that’s very important.
And maintain my own dignity, too. And that was a real challenge. And I really had to work at my own mental fitness. I’ll say I like to use the term fitness to do that. It was hard and I thought my career and job were over, I couldn’t work, I had to take care of her.
And I just thought, I, you know, it’s it. You can easily feel depressed and I was scared, but it got to a point where I realized that I could not reliably take care of my mother anymore. It got so bad that if anything happened to me, she was whooped. If so, I did experience some caregiver burnout. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve never experienced PTSD, but it’s on the same spectrum.
I, I understood it and when I, when I experienced the symptoms, I’m like, this is not good. And my mother’s needs had grown to a point that I couldn’t address. So we were able to afford it. We found a very, very good dementia care facility for her that was nearby, and I moved her in, which, you know, is another separate story. It was very hard for me to move her out of her home unwillingly.
And I was still her primary caregiver.
John Corcoran: 33:40
And do you think that because of your background in training and your, you know, academic background and your rigors to, to following a process that it made it easier for you to to follow that process to, to to recognize in yourself that you were not, that you were experiencing caregiver burnout, that it was on the range of PTSD that you needed to make a decision about yourself. It wasn’t a subordinate saying, you out of the pilot seat. You can’t do this right now because you’re experiencing too much burnout. It was in yourself. Did that make it any easier, or was it extremely difficult to make that decision?
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 34:25
I certainly think that my training and everything I’ve experienced in the military helped me to deal with my mother’s care and compartmentalize. I think that early on, having to deal with caring for my father built a certain strength in me that like the first time I had to clean him up after an accident that happened, you know I am straight. Literally. At 15, I came to the realization that excuse my vulgarity, it’s just shit. And somehow I just happened to say, it’s just shit.
You can work with us. And that was a big moment for me. And I mean, it’s just shit in a literal sense. Having to deal with that type of situation for my father, I will help him and be dignified for him and me, and I will clean him up. And so I built a certain strength that way.
I also and maybe my parents helped me to realize that there’s times to be compartmentalized and put your face on, and there’s other times when it’s just right to recognize your emotions, embrace them, recognize them, know what they are, and be vulnerable. And I’m okay with that. And that really helped me out a lot. So when I was experiencing those symptoms, I realized that I needed to see a doctor and talk to them and say, this is what’s going on. And this was a physician, not a mental health professional.
My family physician. And she’s like you, you’ve got classic symptoms of caregiver burnout. And I’m like, so I thought, I mean, and it was really hard to deal with. So we found a mechanism to deal with them. And one of them was I had to get my mother into somebody else’s care.
So, you know, maybe my training and everything I had gone through helped me find that maturity to say, I’ve got yeah, I’m not well enough to care for this person anymore. And actually, the simple thing to say is that the analogy is when you get on an airliner and they train you, you put on your oxygen mask first, right? And then your child’s. Yeah. Because if you are not healthy, you can’t take care of your child. And so that was it right there.
John Corcoran: 37:00
Well, I don’t know if you feel comfortable answering this question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. You know, my father, a huge aviation nut, grew up as an Air Force brat, was in the Air Force himself. And my grandfather, of course, as we mentioned earlier, was also in the Air Force. So I think a lot about aviation and pilots, even though I’m not a pilot myself. And there’s talk in the industry that pilots going through, especially professional pilots going through any kind of depression, can’t deal with it properly, and that forces them to deal with it in other ways, like drinking off duty, and that that’s a real problem in the profession.
What are your thoughts on that? Is it as a profession to, you know, risque to be too risky for pilots to come clean and say, I’m feeling burnout or I’m feeling depressed because they know there could be repercussions for them that could jeopardize their career.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 37:56
Yeah, that is a tough one. You know, in both Canada and the US. You know, if you need to see a mental health professional, you need to declare it. So and it’s tough I think that the FAA in particular and I’m down here in, in, in America has matured and is making progress. There are recognized peer support groups that are coming to fruition.
Certainly in the airlines unions can help. And the FAA has recently started promoting that. Please, you know, for pilots, if you are experiencing mental health challenges, go see your physician and get help. It is possible that depending on the nature of the condition you’re facing that you can still fly depending on what type of treatment is required. So that has progressed.
And I’m not saying this right, I think it’s because I recently saw a video made by the current FAA flight surgeon, the chief flight surgeon, who literally promoted this in a very quick YouTube video. Her name escapes me for the moment. Anyway, she did a very nice short video that explained about this and I was really glad to see it. So there are mechanisms there. And truthfully, I mean, you know, if a pilot is experiencing a serious mental health problem, you know, a mental health issue, they’ve got to be able to come forward because public safety is in mind. So we have to do that.
John Corcoran: 39:40
But thank you for that. I want to ask you about the book. So you decide to write the book Final Approach. It’s been endorsed by Chris Hadfield, the acclaimed NASA astronaut, and others. What inspired you? It sounds like it was a painful experience going through this. What inspired you to write about this topic and also to kind of blend your different stories together?
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 40:05
Yeah. And thank you for mentioning that too. And Chris is a good friend and an amazing individual. So with all due respect to him, I have to say yes, NASA astronaut, but probably he’d say first Canadian astronaut. So.
John Corcoran: 40:18
Oh, sorry.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 40:19
That’s okay.
John Corcoran: 40:20
Is he both then?
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 40:21
Well well well.
John Corcoran: 40:22
Not completely familiar with his career history.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 40:24
Oh. That’s okay. No. Chris is Canadian, and he was chosen as a Canadian Space Agency astronaut. Got it. And then was at NASA as a Canadian astronaut for many years. Okay. And then he’s, I would say retired back in Canada, but he’s not really retired. He’s still very active in all the things that he does. So. yeah.
John Corcoran: 40:49
And we were talking about what inspired writing the book and combining the stories of your aviation background, test pilot background, and also the story of caring for your parents.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 40:58
Yeah. You know, I, I, I felt I had a unique and interesting story. First and foremost, I really wanted to give back to the community. When you get thrust into caregiving, it’s very hard. And I wanted to be able to provide a guide that was also interesting to people, so that they would have something that wasn’t just a boring book.
That said, these are the steps you do in caregiving. I wanted to make it interesting. And so I had a platform to use the vehicle of me as a test pilot, you know, the very interesting life career. I’m very proud of my father being a Holocaust survivor and my mother, who survived World War Two bombings I’m in London for five years, was the breadwinner of her family and even, you know, volunteered at Dunkirk in the evacuation at age 16. So and so I had those vehicles to be able to introduce caregiving and talk about it.
And, I felt compelled to do it. I wanted to tell these interesting stories, and to be honest, maybe as well. It’s a love letter to my parents. I miss them. They did so much for me and I needed to do a tribute to them.
But first and foremost it’s a caregiver guide. And caregiving is individualistic. And to really give good care you need to know the person. And so, you know, me being able to tell the stories of who my parents were and intermixing with what they had to go through towards the end of their lives, and how we, my sister and I cared for them, I think makes it compelling, interesting, and heartwarming for a reader who’s stuck caregiving or audio. I did an audio as well too, so I narrated it.
So it’s out there in all forms: e-book, audio, and paper.
John Corcoran: 42:56
The Final Approach is the name of the book. Where can people get it? Jonathan.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 43:01
Everywhere. Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Chapters. Indigo in Canada. Audible. All the big ones.
And my website too, which is very simple. finalapproachbook.com. And it’s easily gotten there, too.
John Corcoran: 43:18
Great. We’ll link to it in the show notes. Jonathan, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing your story.
Dr. Jonathan Knaul: 43:23
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege. Thank you very much, John.
Outro: 43:30
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.