George Bayliss Lothian

George Bayliss Lothian was born on November 20, 1909, in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he attended school. He commenced  flying at the Aero Club of British Columbia in 1929, then joined the staff at the newly-opened Vancouver airport for a year. Until 1936 he flew locally as a commercial pilot and instructor, and with Canadian Airways Limited as a flying-boat pilot and crew member on scheduled flights between Vancouver and Seattle, Washington.

When Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA) was formed in 1937, Lothian was hired as one of their first pilots and became a member of a small group who flew the Rocky Mountain route between Lethbridge, Alberta, and Vancouver. In 1941 he was seconded from TCA to North Atlantic Ferry Command, delivering bombers from Montreal, Quebec, to the United Kingdom. A year later he transferred to the Trans-Atlantic Return Ferry Service, carrying priority passengers and cargo between Scotland and Canada aboard operational aircraft. He became the first pilot to complete one hundred air crossings of the North Atlantic.

Lothian's wide experiences in the piloting of Liberator bombers, which he flew on the North Atlantic route, led to his transfer to No. 10 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) at Gander, Newfoundland, to train coastal command pilots on these operational aircraft for service during the Battle of the Atlantic. When this difficult task was completed, he joined the Canadian government Trans-Atlantic Mail Service operated by TCA, carrying troop mail and high priority passengers overseas. He then became Check Pilot and finally Chief Pilot of this unit.

Because of his extensive air management experience, TCA assigned him to the position of Superintendent of Flying, system wide, in 1952, a position which was later named Director of Flight Standards. As a pilot on the North Atlantic route to Europe, he set the trans-Atlantic speed record on three different occasions between 1943 and 1968.

During the period from 1952 to 1968, Lothian made the first deliveries into Canada of five of TCA's largest aircraft, the Lockheed Super Constellation, Vickers Viscount and Vanguard, Douglas DC-8 and DC-9. (In 1965 TCA was renamed Air Canada.) Lothian was responsible for pilot introduction, training, and flight deck procedures on these aircraft as well as on the Bristol Freighter. He was active in the development of the use of flight simulators for the advancement of airline flight technique, training and checking.

A superior knowledge of sustained high-altitude flight resulted in his leadership of the Air Canada team during rapid decompression experiments at the School of Aviation Medicine at Downsview, Ontario. These tests had considerable influence on the setting of international standards for all air lines. He was named a member of the international flight-deck committees for the British and French-developed Concorde, Boeing 747 and the experimental Boeing swept-wing supersonic aircraft. He was named deputy chairman of the International Air Transport Committee for pilot standards and flight training.

A life-long ambition was satisfied in 1968 when George Lothian chose an early retirement from Air Canada to accept the post of Chief of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) mission to Katmandu, Nepal, and flight operations advisor to that government. He returned to Canada in 1973 with a record of 21,000 flying hours as pilot-in-command of numerous types of aircraft. He then served as a consultant for the Canadian Government in Indonesia and Nepal.

George Bayliss Lothian died at White Rock, B.C. on February 13, 2000.

George Bayliss Lothian was inducted as a Member of Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame in l974 at a ceremony held in Edmonton, Alberta.