Meet A Rotorcraft Pro


By Lyn Burks


RPMN: What is your current position? SCHAAF: Chief Pilot, Fairfax County, Virginia Police Department. I am retiring on March 22nd and starting a new job as VP ­ Operations at HAI in Alexandria, VA overseeing the Safety, Operations, Regulations and International Affairs departments at HAI.


RPMN: Tell me about your first flight. SCHAAF:My first flight in a helicopter was in an Army TH­55 at Fort Rucker, Alabama in the Army’s Warrant Officer Flight Training Program in 1987. I will never forget my primary flight instruc­ tor, Mr. Whitesell. Before starting our training sessions, he would often tell me about a road intersection he would pass through on the way to work. He would say, “Do I make a left turn and come teach you to fly, or make a right turn and go someplace else? I decided


10 March 2013


to turn left today.” The implication was that he made a choice that day to teach me and therefore was going to do it to the best of his ability and expected the same from me as his student.


RPMN: How did you get your start in helicopters? SCHAAF: My father was a career US Navy pilot whose career spanned WWII through Vietnam. He flew carrier based fixed­wing propeller and jet attack aircraft, so I had it in my blood, I think, due to all the exciting stories growing up. At age 14, I spent a night in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy and remember a mede­ vac helicopter landing just outside my window. I watched the patient being unloaded and the pilot tying down the rotor blade (it was a Bell 206 aircraft). I thought at the time that there could


be no job cooler on planet Earth. Now, 33 years later, I think I called it correctly because I love it more today than I did when I started and seriously, how often do people say that?


RPMN: When and how did you choose to fly helicopters? Or did they choose you? SCHAAF: I was a distracted high school student with little academic ambition, but with an immense capacity to dream. I found my way to the Army recruiter’s office expecting to find something useful to do. A poster in the recruiter’s office hinted at the Warrant Officer Flight Training Program possibility. I told the recruiter, “I will do that, thank you very much,” and he proceeded to tell me that he had never processed a recruit for that assignment and did not


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