On June 7, 1986, the Odyssey 86 took off out of Vancouver for a trip around the world. Forty years later, on June 9, four of the flight crew members gathered in Kelowna for the premier of Odyssey 86 – 90 Years of the DC-3 to see their adventure on film for the first time ever.
Hosted at the KF Centre for Excellence, over 200 people came out to watch the new documentary with never-before-seen footage taken during the adventure.
The then 50-year-old aircraft made history in 1986, as an all-Canadian flight crew travelled to 55 cities across 28 countries in just two months ahead of Expo ‘86 in Vancouver.
KF Aerospace (formerly Kelowna Flightcraft) founder Barry Lapointe owned the Odyssey at the time and was a pilot on that crew. After finding out the plane had been sitting idle and damaged, but also for sale, Lapointe decided it was time to bring the aircraft home.
“It was by chance. I was talking to a guy in the [United States] and he said he had a DC-3… He said, ‘This one went around the world,’” said Lapointe, adding the plane was in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
In 2021, Lapointe repurchased the Odyssey and brought it home to Kelowna. The aircraft has since been restored to look just as it did when the trip around the world began and is now on display.
“I’m pretty proud of her right now. She looks the best she’s ever looked,” Lapointe said. “I would have never though 40 years ago I’d be sitting here looking at her as pretty as she is right now.”
To open up the Odyssey exhibit at the Centre for Excellence, KF Aerospace worked with Edge Digital Media to tell the story of the Odyssey’s adventure around the world.
Black Press has a chance to sit down with crew members Bob Blanchard, Bill Gillies, and Doreen Olson ahead of the premier.
Olson, flight coordinator, said it was her husband, Captain Ken Olson, who had an itch to fly around the world.
“That was his dream, to fly around the world in an airplane,” Olson said. “It just happened that Expo 86 was coming up and the DC-3 was being featured as a 50-year-old airplane.”
Olson knew the industry, working as a flight attendant with Air Canada at the time, and made sure the entry into each country was smooth, reaching out to politicians and Canadian embassies ahead of the trip.
Blanchard joined the crew on navigation, and explained technology was as advanced and at times couldn’t connect to satellites.
“That was a bit worrisome, because we didn’t know how long we would be out of reception,” Blanchard said there were times he had to hope his guesswork was accurate.
Gillies was one of the pilots, calling himself the rookie of the crew. The flight from Hawaii to Samoa, Gillies recalled was the most difficult leg.
“We had, maybe, an extra hour of fuel if we didn’t hit the island,” the pilot said the stretch took about 17 hours with only ocean below.
Upon returning to Canada on July 30, 1986, the flight crew made stops at major cities from coast to coast, including Kelowna, before making its final flight of the adventure back to Vancouver.
Learn more about the Odyssey 86 by visiting the KF Centre for Excellence on Lapointe Drive in Kelowna or online at kfcentre.ca.