Passengers on board a recent flight from Vancouver to Taipei had no idea they were part of history in the making as Jennie Olafson and James Sullivan became the first-ever father-and-daughter duo to pilot an Air Canada flight overseas.
"It was really neat to fly with my dad," Jennie told CTV News at the Vancouver International Airport.
For Jennie, the dream of working with her father began when she would sit in the cockpit as a little girl and watch James at work.
"In the days when we had an open cockpit, I took Jennie once or twice with me to work," said James, a former military pilot who has been working for Air Canada for 31 years.
"I got to sit in the observer seat, so I got to see everything that was going on in the flight deck," Jennie said. "That's when I really knew I really wanted to do it…My ultimate goal was to get to Air Canada."
After four years of flight school and four more as a bush pilot, the airline finally hired her in 2011.
Jennie has since been working for the same airline as her dad, but they flew different types of aircraft until this year, when she was certified to pilot a Boeing 787.
James and Jennie asked if they could fly together, and on March 21, they became Air Canada's first-ever father-and-daughter to fly overseas together.
"On a professional level, we got to see each other in our element and what we do for a living," said Jennie, who now flies the airline's trans-Pacific Dreamliner aircraft based in Vancouver.
But the opportunity was also a deeply meaningful one for the pair.
"You still have to pinch me today," James said. "Yes, I was proud. I was happy to be there and looking back on it, it's even more to me today."
Now, they're hoping to repeat the experience in the near-future.
"We're definitely going to try to do it again, maybe every other month or so," Jennie said.
And with her young sons already crazy about airplanes, the first mother-son flight could be on the horizon.
"The sky's the limit," Jennie said.
This story has been corrected to say that Jennie Olafson and her father, James Sullivan, were the first father-daughter duo to co-pilot an overseas Air Canada flight on the Dreamliner. David and Heather Baxter became the first father-and-daughter team to fly an Air Canada plane in 2007 using a smaller, A320 aircraft.