Most people look up at the winter skies and see grey.
Londoner Mike Jones sees the maple leaf.
“I thought, well a maple leaf is a fairly simple thing to draw out. It’s all just points and straight lines, so I could fly it,” he recalled.
The semi-retired pilot and flight instructor wanted to express his Canadian pride after American President Donald Trump’s tariff threats, and suggestions that he would annex Canada making it part of the United States.
“Some of the things he said about Canada kind of got me riled up a little bit. And it’s just, I thought, a polite way of going up and showing my patriotism,” Jones said.
He took an outline of a maple leaf, placed it over a map of southwestern Ontario, and a pro-Canadian flight path was born.
“I moved it over to my iPad. The iPad gave me all the coordinates in the flight plan, and I was able to upload it into the avionics in the airplane here,” he explained, while demonstrating the control panel in his airplane.
On Wednesday afternoon, pilot Mike Jones took off from London in his Grob G 115 fixed wing aircraft. Some 240 nautical miles, and two hours later he had traced a near perfect maple leaf flight path over the region.
“Well, it’s not as perfect as it looks. I was off, every turn, I’m trying to judge how tight to turn and stuff. But I made it big enough that my mistakes don’t show that badly,” Jones said, with a chuckle.
The veteran pilot didn’t tell anyone what he was up to.
Little did he know, while he was in the air flight enthusiasts around the world were watching him on the internet.
The Facebook page, flightradar24, a site dedicated to aviation, posted his maple leaf flight path. Just one day later it had 18,000 likes and 11,000 comments.
Emmanuel Malison wrote, “Go guys go.. Aussies have your backs,”
Julie Blichmann said, “Just know that this American appreciates our Canadian Neighbours.”
And Eric Stoever posted, “This American thinks that’s pretty darn cool.”
As for Jones, he’s taking it in stride, just glad he found a uniquely Canadian way to express himself.
“When you’re up flying you kind of forget about everything else, concentrating on your flying. I was happy to finish it. I thought I was just doing it for myself, but I guess there were people watching as I did it,” he said.
