Samuel Couillard shares his experience surviving a propeller strike as an experienced student pilot who understood the risks yet suffered a momentary lapse due to complacency and environmental factors. Hosted by Bobby Doss and Wally Mulhearn, the episode explores human factors like fatigue, routine changes, and the gap between knowledge and safe behavior in aviation. The discussion focuses on lessons for maintaining vigilance throughout every phase of flight operations and building systems to prevent errors.
In this episode of Behind the Prop, hosts Bobby Doss and Wally Mulhearn welcome Samuel Couillard, a propeller strike survivor and human factors speaker from Quebec, Canada. Samuel recounts the events of September 19, 2015, when as a student pilot working toward his commercial certificate and employed as a lineman at the airport, he mistakenly walked into a running propeller after an otherwise routine flight. He describes the ordinary conditions that day, the momentary lapse that led to the incident, and the profound physical and personal changes that followed, including extensive injuries and a lengthy recovery process. The conversation emphasizes human factors in aviation such as complacency after gaining experience, the difference between knowledge and consistent safe behavior, the dangers of fatigue and distraction, and the critical importance of maintaining vigilance even after the flight appears complete. Samuel shares insights from his safety seminars, highlighting how even knowledgeable pilots can make errors when routines change or confidence increases, and he offers practical advice on building personal systems to prevent such mistakes. The hosts discuss passenger briefings, eye contact on the ramp, and the value of creating barriers against complacency to ensure everyone returns home safely.
Connect with Samuel Couillard:
Website: https://www.samuel-c.com/
Email: info@productionboka.com
00:00
Behind the Prop Intro
Welcome to Behind the Prop, the podcast for pilots, by pilots. Here are your hosts, Bobby Doss and Wally Mulhearn.
00:23
Bobby Doss
What's up, Wally?
00:24
Wally Mulhearn
Hey, Bobby, how are you?
00:26
Bobby Doss
I am fantastic as always. It's been a while since we've had a guest on the show. Today's guest, just from the few people I've shared what we're going to talk about today, it's been a lot of shock and awe, and they can't believe it. we've, we've, we've all seen somebody do something around an airplane and thought, what in the world were they thinking? I'd never do that. And I think this gentleman probably had that same saying at some point. But what if the person who made that mistake knew the rules, what if he'd actually stopped other people from making the same mistake, but actually made the same mistake? Our guest today was a pilot working towards his commercial certificate. He understood propeller safety. And one afternoon, after otherwise ordinary flight, he walked into a running prop. He survived. But he, his life has changed forever. Today, we're not here to assign blame. We're here to talk about it.
01:20
Bobby Doss
We're here to figure out what he did and why he did it and make everybody a little bit safer and share how he helps people stay safe today. Welcome to the show, Samuel. Thanks for joining us. Hi,
01:32
Samuel Couillard
thank you to have me. So
01:34
Bobby Doss
Samuel reached out to me, to try and help the fly school create some safety, and I couldn't take, two seconds probably to respond to him and say, hey, I'm not sure it's going to work for the school right now, but how about the podcast? Let's introduce you to the world. and let me introduce you to the world. Samuel, introduce yourself and give a, give a 10,000 foot view of your story and, and how you survived. My
02:00
Samuel Couillard
name is Sam. I'm in, Quebec guy in, Canada. And I had a, baby accident in 2015. I've been hit by a, Says no proper, a proper straight in my head in the airport of Quebec. I've been hit, and I lost my hand, vision, head, chest, back, and, a lot of other part of my life that changed a lot during month and years.
02:34
Bobby Doss
So, we'll put some stuff on social media, but, Sam shared some pictures from his event. He's literally got two straight lines in the side of his head where the prop hit him. before the show we were talking, the prop did three full rotations in his body, which is just catastrophic. I've seen pictures of his pants, his shoes. he's, he's actually got a very nice prosthetic that moves very well, but he is, definitely missing the left side of his, lot of the left side of his body, and it's crazy. So we wanna talk about the day that changed everything, right? I mean, Same, this, the story's very interesting that you were working on your commercial, you had to stop other people from probably walking too close to props. It's crazy that this happened.
03:24
Bobby Doss
Tell us about the day, tell us about the flight, tell us about what built, built up to what's been something that's changed your life forever.
03:33
Samuel Couillard
That was a special normal day, that you open your eyes in the morning and you say, that's beautiful out, that's beautiful outside, great temperature, no wind, and you know there's no rain or nothing. You take your car and go in the airport and you forgot stuff like your license and you go back home and you take your car and do it again to the, airport. So you have something that you have in your head right now because you forgot something.
04:08
Samuel Couillard
And you You are still good with your take, your, your time, and you take your airplane, take off and go somewhere, and you just need to have a hour time of flight because you need to use it to up to 200 hours of flight up to commercial. So you use your airplane to fly like this. And you give the airport for, the airplane for someone else. And the, that's weird, but you fly slowly without doing nothing. You just sit in your airplane and just see the day that, that was awesome. Sun, no winds, super comfortable.
04:58
Samuel Couillard
You just need your, you use your airplane to go somewhere and go in the airport of, Quebec, touch the ground. And you forgot that the airplane turned. So you are, you, you have three airport, I don't know why I said that every time. Three airplane, at the same parking place. So I use my airplane, somewhere else, and the third one. And the second one, that was the airplane from a friend, he stopped the engine, and I thought it was mine. So I just, I said, okay. So my engine just stopped, opened the door. I touched my jeans to be sure that I'm gonna be able to walk normally, and go straight in the prop, because I was sure the engine was off.
05:54
Samuel Couillard
And that changed my life forever. And so I can't even imagine, and maybe you don't even remember, but the, the shock and awe of that, everybody there, multiple planes that were just running, one was running, someone was in the cockpit still with you, like, they had to be in shock and awe. What happens at that point? They locked pretty much the school, two or three days. So, that, that wasn't just two people that we had, three airplane at the side, and we had, I think, nine people, yeah, two, 172, full of people, so there's eight, and we had, a friend in my airplane, and just me with my, just me.
06:45
Samuel Couillard
So, they was just looking at me, so they just see me go down, and they hear it, so. That was the sound and color and everything, so, yeah.
06:58
Bobby Doss
We talked about a little bit before we started the show, but you said that when the prop struck you that
07:02
Samuel Couillard
it actually stopped the engine. That's a lot of force. That's pretty much the, I'm, I think that's the only thing that I love. And I'm pretty happy that had, the baby engine. Because the 172, I think it's, that won't stop. It was just 180 horsepower. So I think, at lower RPM, that's no, still torque, but, yeah. So this was September 19th, 2015, if my research is accurate. And you were working to become a professional pilot. Like, where were you in your training? And maybe tell us some of the accomplishments to put in perspective that you weren't on a discovery flight. Like, you knew aviation. You knew prop safety. This wasn't, this wasn't supposed to happen. No, I was working there.
07:57
Samuel Couillard
I'm in the, the school. I was the only one that was, that was able to work there because of safety, and I was good. That's a big problem. I don't know why that I did that, but, I, I took my worst day of my life to do something that I did not think about it. So I just saw someone and I go straight to help someone else without thinking about myself, and, that's what I'm, that's the only thing that I did at the, at the school. Working as a, I, I don't, I don't even know the name of it. when, I don't, do you know what's the name of it?
08:47
Samuel Couillard
When people go from school to, Give airplane for people, I don't remember the name. Like, like you were ferrying planes, or you were... Yeah, exactly. I was, parking airplane and engine fuel and everything. We call them rampers at my flight school, so they, they work on the runway. They, they wise planes, linemen, linemen would be another word for it, yeah. Yeah. So you, you need to, to do stuff to be sure that everything's gonna be safe, so, yeah. So,
09:18
Bobby Doss
I mean, do you remember anything? What do you actually remember of that day other than getting out of the plane? The
09:26
Samuel Couillard
sun. The sun when I was, flying. The light of it that was super strong, and when I touched the ground, I just, I have some image in my head, but, that, that's, that's more red than orange, but yeah, there's a weird, weird color and image, and I'm pretty sure in my head that was just Go from ahead to be sure that I won't never see that again, because I would like to remember this, to, to be sure that I'm going to be able to relearn this, but, yeah, I lost that. I don't remember. I, I think, I lost maybe five minutes from my accident to my flight, so I touched the ground, and I have some image of where I've been when I touched and up to when I was on the ground, so.
10:20
Bobby Doss
So you've probably talked to many, many pilots. I think when you look back at the fact that you knew the danger so well, what is the hardest part for other pilots to understand about your accident? Time.
10:34
Samuel Couillard
That can really, really happen. It's easy to, to forget something. If you do something in aviation, if you do the same thing every day, you know that that's going to be better. If you change something, You need to go slower to be sure that you're going to be safe, because you need to be better after and not after. So when you do something, you need to be safe, not too fast.
11:00
Bobby Doss
And Wally, we talk about this all the time, but you're a DPE and you see a lot of flights and the flight's not, you know, we probably talk, you're a pilot from chalk to chalk. The flight's never over. A DPE can be observing all the way through the flight and all the way till the plane's tied down and shut down, et cetera. What's your perspective on something like this when a pilot might give up on it? Not give up, not Samuel didn't give up. I'm just saying like when you're done, you think you're done with the flight, well, how many people do you see think they're done just because they made that last landing and then don't pay attention through the rest of the journey of the taxi back and getting out and tying it down?
11:41
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, exactly. Oh, I was going to say, you know, I have a tail dragger and when I, I started getting proficient in flying that tail dragger, one thing that, that my instructor told me was, the flight's not over until you are parked and shut down. cause, cause taxiing can be a little bit, more sporty in that kind of an airplane. And, you know, one thing I would encourage the listeners, I mean, there, there are, there are people probably trying to figure out the why. I, I would say don't focus on the why, focus on the what. This is what happened, and if, if anybody sits there and says, well, that could never happen to me, then that's a behavior, that's a risky behavior. This could very much happen to any one of us.
12:37
Wally Mulhearn
and, and so focus on that. What, what can I do? You know, I, I, I see, I, at, at flight schools, we get in an airplane and And we start the engine, and then I watch people, you know, maybe a CFI and a student walk by us, and it, it drives me crazy that, that there's no eye contact. I mean, I, I want those, those two people that are getting kind of close to us to make eye contact with me, so I, I'm pretty confident that they know that the engine's running.
13:07
Wally Mulhearn
Same with when I'm driving through the Walmart parking lot and somebody's walking across in the crosswalk, you know, make eye contact with me, kind of, you know, say, I
13:19
Samuel Couillard
see you, you see me, yeah, I'm gonna stop for the people, but, so this could happen to any one of us. It really could, and, and we're freaks at my school about safety. It's the most important thing we talk about all the time, and, I saw a, one of these linemen today at my school, he was wearing an iPod. an AirPod, sorry, in his ear, and I just lost my business, man. It's like there's, it's a non-negotiable. You can't have headphones in anywhere on my property, and, I'm sure they sneak it when I'm not there, and they try and use them, but it is the most dangerous thing in the world to have a noise-canceling device in your ear on a, on a tarmac where there are a bunch of engines running. So, the remarkable point... That happened with, that happened with my airplane.
14:11
Samuel Couillard
I was, I flied with my, this one was the, Cessna 172, and I used my airplane, and I was the, I just started, so that was, I don't know, turning the engine for one or two minutes, testing everything, but that was someone that used, a 170, 172, too, for his, brother or dad, I don't remember, but, He was just walking there, but he was going back with, just walking, going back. He was hearing the engine, it was just not looking nowhere. So that was just walking back, and if I did not stop the engine, I'm pretty sure he was pretty much down.
15:03
Samuel Couillard
So I just stopped the engine out, and he just said, oh, thanks. But, it's something that can happen for everyone, and sometime if you see something, there's so much stuff in aviation that you can forgot other place, so, yeah.
15:25
Bobby Doss
Yeah, so, okay, you knew the, you knew the danger, you knew the problem. Let's talk about the difference between knowledge and behavior. And, and the part of this, this part of the podcast is titled, Why Smart Pilots Make Dangerous Mistakes. You know, let's move beyond the accident itself and just talk through it. You've said that knowing something isn't always enough. I think every pilot needs to understand that. What do you mean by that exactly? You mean for the... I mean, you knew the rule, you knew not to walk into one. What's the difference in knowing and, and, and understanding the outcomes and not being more safe? When you teach your seminars, what are you teaching or what do you describe to people about the human behavior of what happened with you?
16:10
Samuel Couillard
Because if you have a, If you, if you do, because, okay, if you start from zero to as a pilot, private or commercial, you start aviation. So you, you know nothing. You are better when you start than pretty much when you have hundred, hundred fifty or two hundred hours, because you are better. So you, you're gonna stop or simply cut safety moment or feelings.
16:41
Samuel Couillard
So if you use your airplane to go somewhere, and it's right now easy, or it look like, if you walk and you go straight in the, another airplane, that's easy to figure out that when you start aviation, maybe some month or years ago, you was super safe, and right now you're not, because you are doing something different. So, That's a big difference of someone, maybe me, over 180 hours up to a person that just start right now at the school. This person's gonna look everywhere. They gonna think, they go slow, and they are stressed, they are scared, and that's a big thing.
17:29
Samuel Couillard
But if you are starting in aviation, I mean, after you have 150, 180 hours, and you are starting to be better, you, I don't know to explain this, but it's, it's sometime a, a way it's easier, or it look like, but that's a big problem that can kill you, what, what it, something simple. Oh yeah, we've had an author on the show many times, his name's Paul Craig, and he, who, the book he wrote, he wrote a lot of books, but his biggest book is called The Killing Zone. And it's mostly about flight mistakes, but the killing zone is about 150 hours to 300 hours. It's that zone of where you have that level of confidence that you'll probably take more risks or maybe not pay as much attention as you would if you're a first time pilot. And that's where we make mistakes. That's where pilots traditionally make mistakes. That's where the large majority of all fatalities happen.
18:24
Samuel Couillard
I
18:24
Bobby Doss
guess I want to ask you a question. What do you tell pilots who insist this would never happen to them?
18:33
Samuel Couillard
I'm not the best to give this. I cannot, I cannot give lies. I cannot do what. I cannot say, the, the best way to be safe. But the best way is to look for other what they did and to be sure that no one's going to do the same thing as me. But it's, it's, it's, you know, that everything you do in your life, you can create something dangerous. You can, you can kill your, you can kill yourself in the toilet. So I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure the percentage are pretty low, but that can, that can happen. So everything gonna do in your life, you need to be more safe with everything you do.
19:15
Samuel Couillard
So sometime it's, something that it's super easy because you do this every day, but you change something, but you, you don't, you don't, you don't look really the, you don't see the change that you did if you have some stress with it. So if you have a new formation about the double engine and you start back and you have, if you talk about the, 150 hours that we just talked some minute ago, You gonna start back the safety. You gonna be more safe again because you need to relearn this, the same thing as what you start when you, you was a, when you are, more young, I don't know. But that's a, that's a big thing. You need to be more safe with time.
20:05
Samuel Couillard
But if you do the same thing and you change a small thing, it's easy to change a lot part of your life. So when you, when you teach your seminars and you debrief or talk to those in the audience afterwards, what
20:19
Bobby Doss
factors, what human factors do you think most often create issues for pilots in aviation? Which human factors do we make the most mistakes with? Is it complacency, distractions, fatigue, routine? You said routine.
20:36
Samuel Couillard
I, I think it's tired. When, when you are tired, then that can change your life. But it's Sometimes you don't feel it. You don't see it. You don't, you cannot, you cannot see when someone is tired, really. You, you can see it, but the guy is gonna be really, really tired. So when you have a new formation that you use for a Cessna that you wanna use, if you start VFR or IFR, everything, and it's all new, that's gonna be great. But if you use book every day and you have a big eight, ten hours at the end of the day, you're tired and you're gonna redo this one, one day after, that can happen, but no one's gonna really see it.
21:26
Samuel Couillard
Maybe if they ask, but, that, that's the good thing that you need to have other friends or people or people that you work with. To be sure that if someone see you, tell you. It's free. It's really, really free. You just talk with it and you say, are you tired? Are you good? Can we take any type of airplane to go somewhere? And are you okay? Because sometime, time won't never stop. You need to follow. But if you're tired and you're not able to follow, that's a big problem. You're going to have a, a big quantity of, error at the same moment. And if you, if you have one, two, three, that's going to touch you.
22:10
Bobby Doss
So I would think if I was listening to this and wasn't hosting it and had done as much research on you as I have, I would question like, could you not see the propeller? Was it, hard to see it that day? Was it, I mean, I can imagine if it's spinning, it, it's almost transparent. What, would you say that that contributed in some way to it? I know you said the sound of the other engines stopping made you think that it was Your engine that was stopping, what do you think about the environment drove you to just walk straight through, straight through the prop?
22:44
Bobby Doss
During this moment, that was, when I talk about the sun, I think I was probably closing my eyes pretty much, because that
22:56
Samuel Couillard
was too, too much sun, maybe? But, it's impossible to know. It's, even if I try to go back and think about it, nobody knows. And when I talk about my license that I forgot at home, that's a big problem. You, you forgot that. If your life tell you that you forgot something, just sit and just think, why, why did you forgot something? And you have this part, and then you go, just go faster to go at school to fly, and then you, you have your engine, and you start the engine, and, and the second thing that happened in my, during my flight, I start the engine, and I test for ignition.
23:46
Samuel Couillard
That was a play for, that was a, I think, 300 horsepower lower, the, sorry, the, 300 RPM lower, too low. You need to test the, ignition to be sure that you're gonna be able to double ignition to, at the same RPM. They wanted to. So I think that the one, number one, that was, extremely low, that was pretty much carbon in, in the airplane or ignition, I don't, really don't know. And I did that, but your, your life, it's, it's another thing that It's, it's free. You, you really can just stop.
24:24
Samuel Couillard
If something is bad, you are stressed, you are doing something not really well, you don't, it's easy to just take your, just airplane and go back and touch the ground and stop the engine and just ask again if you can do this or take another one or take a coffee or something, but that's a big problem that my life just changed with fast because of it. And, I think that was the big moment that I just saw that the airplane was great, RPM was great, I was ready, and was, the wait was great, and I fly from Quebec to Montmagny, and yeah, that's, I'm still searching why, but every day I, every morning I open my eyes and I think to ask questions, and I'm not able to go back. It's impossible.
25:20
Samuel Couillard
No doubt. I'm sure the environment had something to do with it and came into play for sure. let's
25:28
Bobby Doss
move to the building a safety system that protects us from ourselves, right? I mean, we wrap up there saying, well, we do I'm safe every time we fly, we do some sort of pre-flight actions every time we fly, but it sometimes, I don't know if the right word is lazy, but sometimes we do it out of a function of repetition, but in reality, are we really checking ourselves? Are we really evaluating if we're safe to fly? So, let's say we are, how do we build a system that takes us to the next level? But what do you teach in your seminars about human factors and what people should do to, to really make sure they are in the right headspace in all these situations?
26:14
Bobby Doss
Because if you, if
26:15
Samuel Couillard
you do something with all type of, airplane, because that can be heavy, what's the, what's the year? I think at 18 years old you can fly up to, there's no maximum, but in Canada it's 18. And, they are fast. They are great. At 18, they are, they are really fast. They learn fast, they go fast. And, and we have maybe people of 30, 40, 50, 60 years old, they start aviation. They go slow and they think, and they have more safety because they know that they don't want to have any type of airplane, airplane, accident. But that can kill everyone, any type of person, any type of, model.
27:07
Samuel Couillard
But if you do something, you create percentage of accident. And if you, if you are able to have a more, I don't know how to explain this for, for school at eighteen, that's more safe because of it. But that can be dangerous. I'm, I'm trying to follow you for the questions, but.
27:35
Bobby Doss
Well, how about this question? If you, if you could take what happened to you and prevent one more person from walking into a propeller, what do you think all of us should do, what would you want us all to change? What's the thing we can do to be more safe in those environments? Because
27:52
Samuel Couillard
you know that the first thing you, you learn in aviation is to never go in the front. I mean, for a propeller that go in the front. And sometimes it's easy to, we, we explain this every time you use your airplane with someone that can be a people of your family, your friends, or you, just a client. You know that this person know, even if the engine stop, burn, or anything, you, you don't go in the front. Why? There's a reason. Because there's a propeller in the front. So if you use your airplane, you need to be able to go back up to any way of place of the airplane. That can be a kid that have, not even five years old. They need to get it, and they go up to back in the airplane.
28:43
Samuel Couillard
But a, but the best way to learn is to really, really explain this with someone as the pilot in it. When I was Pretty much at the end of my formation, so that's weird that I did not get it, and I explained this this day late. Okay, this morning I need to explain this for a client that was not a pilot, that was just someone in my flight to go in Mombani. So he learned how to be more safe in the front because of the prop, and I said, if the engine are still turning and we need to go out, you need to go run back first. And I did not hear myself, so I just said the same thing as him, but that's weird, but I forgot that.
29:39
Samuel Couillard
I forgot safety for me, but I was trying to save for other people, so that's what I do. That's pretty weird. One way I guess we could is just try to eliminate the hazard, obviously shutting down the engine, making sure we're doing good passenger briefings, describing that the propeller could be invisible when it's spinning. lots of little things like that that we could probably do to hopefully eliminate it.
30:05
Bobby Doss
How important, again, you were a pilot, but how important would a passenger briefing be? You just told me you did the passenger briefing, so I bet a new, I think it goes back to that new and experienced almost, the new person never going to walk forward because you just scared him to death. But there might be some level of familiarity that we've been around these spinning props all the time, and I just know my tolerances, right? You hear that engine shut down, can't see the prop, and your life changes forever, but the passenger briefing is where I would think it comes into play that maybe eliminates some of the risk. Wally, what do you think? is there something that flight schools should do? Is there something more I should do? Is there something we should do? You're the most senior pilot on this podcast right now. What do you think we should do to try and eliminate the risk of this?
30:59
Wally Mulhearn
Yeah, I, I, I don't know if there's something, something new, cause if there was something new, we'd, we'd introduce it and we'd all do it and this would never happen again. I will say this, I mean, I, I, I, I keep going back to this. There, there are so many listeners saying, there's no way I could ever do that. I, I couldn't ever do that. And, and I will, I will tell you this. I'll give you a couple of, of examples. I have, I have flown with, with other pilots and, they have told me stories of flying transport category airplanes. And leaving an engine running and leaving the airplane. I've heard stories of people getting called on their cell phone while they're in the hotel van, going to the hotel from, from station operations saying, come back to the airport and shut down the airplane. There's an engine running.
31:54
Wally Mulhearn
I've heard of, of people getting out and doing a post-flight inspection of an airplane and coming back to the cockpit and saying, we left the engine running. I will, I will say this, I, I, I, I know of an airline where the, the procedure, the, the, the checklist response for, for the shutdown, the parking checklist for the, the start levers used to be cut off. And now today it's not just cut off, it is cut off fuel flow zero. Now, There are not people, there might be, but I, I don't think there are people who are sitting around on, at a desk trying to come up with, hey, let's just make changes for the sake of making changes.
32:46
Wally Mulhearn
Changes usually happen because of either an accident or a near accident. So the fact that, that a response to a checklist is now not just fuel control switch cut off, it is now cut off fuel flow zero, that, you know, indirectly tells me that we, you know, people have left engines running. People that look a lot like me and a lot like you. I mean, I can, I can, I can honestly say I've never done it. maybe I have, I, I don't know about it. They, they, I've never gotten that phone call that says come back and shut down an engine. But this can happen. This can happen.
33:32
Wally Mulhearn
And, and, You know, oh man, the, the, the, the first, trait or behavior that, that is scary is the person who says, it can't happen to me.
33:47
Bobby Doss
No doubt, no doubt. and I, every accident we've ever talked about, everything Paul Craig's ever said, nobody got up and said, I'm going to crash an airplane. Samuel, you didn't wake up and say, I'm going to walk into that prop. None of us are intending to do any of the bad things that happen in aviation, but they all happen and they still continue to happen. hopefully what we do at UFS around safety is good, better than most, and hopefully going to prevent these things from happening. Samuel, let's talk a little bit about recovery now.
34:20
Samuel Couillard
it probably wasn't a week. you probably didn't go in the hospital and check out the next day. Just give the listeners an idea of what recovery was like after September 19th, 2015. I opened my eyes in the airport, sorry, at the, hospital. I slept two weeks, two weeks, and I, and I was not sleeping at all. I just opened my eyes, and I was straight back in the airport. They gave me drugs, so I was just opening, opening eyes, and I, I was back, and I was no rain, no, no pain at all, so that was great. But now I was lost.
35:05
Samuel Couillard
I was, I just was sleeping somewhere else, and I was strapped, and I was not able to move at all, no oxygen. I have, a lot of, machine connected for my heart and blood and everything, and I lost, a lot of part of my body that I did not look and see, and I saw my hand, cut. So I lost my, my last, the fourth fingers up to the first, and, there's no one. There's nothing there. I don't know if you have cameras, during this, but, that's, now I'm a robot, so that's pretty cool. But this two weeks was, pretty special.
35:56
Samuel Couillard
When you open your eyes and you, it's really, really looking like a dream. And, all is true. All's, everything is new. Your family's always there. Every morning, every night, and they are sleeping in the airport. And, You lost. You're really, really lost because you don't even know who you are. That's the reason I'm talking like this. I needed to relearn French and English both. That was not fun at 20, 25, 26 years old. And, I did this during a lot of, years. The first year, I was not really able to talk. my voice was just not there. That was cut.
36:49
Samuel Couillard
So, it was bad. That's pretty good. I, I don't know why, but my, okay, that's a big part of my body that just worked. And my vision, my head, so I was not, my, my head was open, every day. So, I have no, The, the brain in it was pretty much 30% out, so that's pretty, that's pretty, special. And my chest, my back, and, yeah, I was starting to just wanted to, trying to walk every day. So, just to go, just to go walk, just to go pee, I'm trying to.
37:38
Samuel Couillard
It's pretty difficult, and I do this during month, month, month, and I go back home at, 20 December, so that was great for my family.
37:51
Bobby Doss
So that's 10 months, it took you, you were in the hospital for 10 months?
37:54
Samuel Couillard
No, three, three months, from September to December.
37:58
Bobby Doss
Okay. And then when you got home, I'm assuming you needed a lot of help still, for sure.
38:02
Samuel Couillard
A lot, a lot, every day.
38:07
Bobby Doss
And so everything you've been through, what gives you the greatest sense of purpose today?
38:13
Samuel Couillard
That's a big questions that I ask myself during, I think that a good three years like this. I was not, I, I did not get it. The, the reason that I lost everything of my life, my dream, aviation, what I was trying to do or create in my life, I lost everything. And right now, I just receive a call one day. That was a baby company that, the name is, Pratt and Whitney. I said, oh, okay, they asked me for safety. I said, okay, for, for what? You, you want my story there for? they asked me because of, accident, Of Montreal.
39:00
Samuel Couillard
There's, some people that have pretty much some maybe accident for weights, safety for mechanics. That can happen, but sometime it's just something that can happen with any type of company. But I said, okay, I can, I can do something to save someone, and I can live with this. So, okay. and right now I'm still doing this. But yeah, pray with me call because of this, and I said, okay, I, I won't stop, and, I gonna try to about, I gonna talk about my life and maybe trying to, to be sure that I'm gonna be able to save someone like me one day too. I, I gonna maybe have a call one day for someone that's gonna say, oh yeah, you, you just break me for something. So, I don't know.
39:52
Bobby Doss
Well, the other part I said. I gotta do this thirty years. You can rest assured, we do podcasts every other week for the last five years now, and we don't know if we've saved anybody, but truth be told, we probably think we have. They just probably didn't call us, right? So you might not ever get the call, but if you talk the talk and you walk the walk, you're probably going to save someone. But we never hear about the ones that didn't. We only hear about the ones that did make a mistake or did have a problem. I'd like to kind of close with kind of three thoughts for the listeners, right? That the flight's not over when the wheels stop turning. It's got to be through the shutdown, through all the operations, finish the stuff. Knowledge. Alone is not a safety system.
40:35
Bobby Doss
You got to have experience, good intentions, and really act on the safety mechanisms that you and your instructors have taught you over long periods of time, and try and stay as rigorous as you were on that first or second flight, and then build a bigger barrier from the mistake, right? If you, if you tell your new passengers to walk to the back, try to always remember to walk to the back, and maybe don't walk up front until you clear the wing tip or something. Like, come up with your de facto rules to prevent you from ever making this mistake. And Samuel, I got one final question for you. If you could stand in front of every student pilot in the world, this will be listened to on five continents Monday, and you had 30 seconds, what would you tell those student pilots?
41:23
Bobby Doss
Don't
41:23
Samuel Couillard
run. Go slow. Everything you do, if you want to create a future in your life, break. Do well your thing, be safe, to be sure that everything gonna be able to, to make everything in your life be able to go back in your home. That's, that's the only thing to do. You, the best way to explain something is to go back home every day. So if you wanna fly, you wanna create a dream, go back home every day.
41:57
Bobby Doss
Wally, anything to wrap?
41:59
Wally Mulhearn
Oh, I like that. I, I don't, I can't top that. Go back home. I, I, that's gonna be, that's gonna be part of my checkride briefings now. Go back home. One of our, one of our goals for this flight is to go back home tonight. Thank
42:13
Bobby Doss
you for, for sharing that. Thanks for sharing your story. I mean, man, I'm getting choked up listening and, wow. I, I, I got no words. And we really did start this over, over four years ago. We're in our fifth year, and when we came up with a name behind the prop, and I say it every show, fly safely and stay behind the prop. I never thought I would have someone that walked into a prop on the show. So Samuel, again, as Wally said, thank you so much for sharing your story. Hopefully the listeners will learn something, find a way to heed, and do more safety for themselves and others. As always, fly safely, and don't walk into the prop, people. Thanks for listening. Thanks again, Samuel.
42:57
Samuel Couillard
No problem.
43:00
Behind the Prop Outro
Thanks for listening to Behind the Prop.