Former Flin Flonner and aviation legend Ross Lennox will be posthumously inducted into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame (CAHF) in June.
Lennox spent part of his 60-plus years in aviation as a bush pilot for HBM&S’s now-defunct aviation department.
He started his career in the early 1940s as an air force flight instructor during the Second World War.
According to a biography from CAHF, Lennox flew the first-ever unescorted helicopter transit of the North Atlantic, and was a test pilot for each of Canada’s Sikorsky Sea Kings and all subsequent development work on that aircraft.
He was also a Dakota pilot in Europe and flew helicopters in support of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line to detect Soviet bombers during the Cold War.
Lennox retired as chief test pilot and head of flight operations for Pratt and Whitney Canada, an aircraft engine manufacturer, with more than 23,000 hours in his logbook – the equivalent of more than two and a half years in the air.
Along the way he was recognized by many organizations for his thousands of hours of incident-free flying, his promotion of safety and his work as a search and rescue pilot, according to CAHF.
In 2008, at the age of 85, Lennox tried skydiving for the first time, jumping from 10,500 feet with an instructor in Toronto, according to the Barrie Advance newspaper.
Lennox died in November 2013 at the age of 90. According to his obituary in the Ottawa Citizen, he was survived by four children.
Lennox and three other men will be inducted into the CAHF on June 9 in Ottawa.
