Mr. Pitt : Star of the Skies

If you’re boarding an Air Canada flight and you see Brian Pitt as your flight attendant, know it’s going to be a flight you’ll remember for years to come.

He has a way of somehow combining professionalism with fun perfectly – you know you can laugh with him or even at him, but you also know to take him seriously as a FA.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone more passionate about flying, he loves everything about it and has become somewhat of a historian on the industry, carrying a folder in his flight bag with old handwritten tickets, TWA brochures and so much more.

He’s packed a lot into his 44 years of flying. Yes, you read that correctly, Brian will be turning 70 in January and still flies 100 hours a month.

If there’s a word to describe Brian, it’s fascinating.

TravelPulse met Brian on a chartered plane to Curacao for the Air Canada Vacations’ Mega Fam in late November and it only seemed natural to do a photoshoot and an interview with Brian at 35,000 feet. In a way, it felt like we were interviewing him in his home.

“I just love my job. I started when I was 25 years old, with Max Ward,” he tells us. “I had just come back from a trip on Quantas as a passenger, and I saw these guys doing this job and I said hey that’s what I want to do, I want to be a flight attendant.”

“I tried Air Canada but they didn’t want me because I didn’t speak French, I tried CP but I didn’t have any languages, and my mom said why don’t you try Ward Air? And I did and spent 15 years with them.”

From there he spent 10 years at Canadian Airlines before moving to Air Canada where he’s been for the past 19 years.

“I just love coming to work. I don’t know when I’m going to pull the plug. I want to keep going to work. When I go and do my training, I always bring gifts and such for my instructors and they’re always like oh good, Brian’s here.”

Growing up, Brian’s dad did a lot of travelling. He’d go with his mom on Mondays to Malton Airport to drop off his dad, and go back on Fridays to pick him up. Brian only got to spend weekends with his dad, saying his mom raised him and his two siblings in what he calls, “the good ol’ days.”

Looking through Brian’s cherished collection of old flight memorabilia, we suggest it should be in an aviation museum, something he says he’s been told often and is considering. He casually shows a picture of his grandpa meeting the Queen, saying he used to run a hotel and met many dignitaries. And then there’s one photo that really stuck out – it’s of a young Brian holding a cheque in front of the Lotto 649 backdrop. He won $400,000.

“When I won the lottery, I won with a buddy of mine and I gave half the money to my friend and $100,000 to my family. I gave my mom and dad $50,000 to pay off their mortgage and $25,000 to my brother and $25,000 to my sister. And I gave a friend here at Air Canada, $5,000. I didn’t care about me.”

When asked about the future of air travel, Brian chuckles.

“I think in the next 30-40 years we won’t see flight attendants on board, we’ll just have machines to serve and a crew on for safety only. It’ll be a whole different world. Or maybe I watch too many scientific movies.”

In addition to Air Canada, Brian has also worked with Avis for 43 years, where he was recently recognized with a Rolex for his longtime work. He is the oldest person working for the company in Canada.

Brian says he doesn’t know how long he’ll “be able to stick around”, but he wants to keep going. He chooses junior flights so he can have his seniority, and often flies 2-3 legs in a day on his “babies” the narrow-bodied aircraft which he says are his favourite.

“I love my job. It’s not about going to places, I mean that’s nice, but it’s meeting the people and that’s what I love, no matter where I’m going. That’s the bottom line.”

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