Air Canada Captain Flew 900 Flights WITHOUT an ATP? | Captain Steeeve

Peel Regional Police are describing it as something out of a movie script.They've arrested a former Air Canada captain accused of flying hundreds of flights without the required license.

59 -year -old Jeffrey Wall of Barrie, Ontario is now facing several fraud charges.

This longtime Air Canada pilot is accused of fraud and deceit, flying all of those flights and tens of thousands of passengers without the required license.What?

What?Air Canada had a captain that flew over 900 flights and didn't have the proper licensing?What in the world is up with this?All right, I was blown away when I first saw this article.At first, I thought it was fake.There's no way that that could happen.

Well, the answer is yes way, and it did happen.The guy's name is Jeffrey Wall.formerly employed by Air Canada.In fact, he actually retired, I believe, before he was sacked from Air Canada, and he had no ATP license from 2009 all the way to 2025 when he was voluntold and retired.So, what's an ATP license?It's an Air Transport Pilot License, and every captain that flies a commercial airliner has an ATP license.

I got my ATP license back in late 1991 when I was just before I got hired at my airline.Most First officers and captains have an ATP license.It's difficult to even get an interview or to get hired without one, but it's not a requirement for first officers.So in other words, you can be a co -pilot and not have taken your ATP written or your ATP checkride.Your time over there in the right seat, fleeting up to captain is time where you accumulate hours, but somewhere before you go to the left seat and take that checkride, You've got to get your ATP exam done, and it's a long exam.I want to say it one more time.

questions.It was very extensive.I studied for that thing for about six months before I took it.And fortunately, I passed it on the first try.A lot of guys don't pass it on the first try and you got to take it over again.It's a chore.

It's a little bit equivalent to passing a bar exam.It's just it's a comprehensive exam for pilots.And then you have to take an ATP check.Right.That's separate from the normal check rides that you take with your airline, so I'll differentiate between the two of those here in just a minute.But FOs are not required to have either one of those, but before they go to the left seat, they got to get it done.

All right, wallhead.Jeffrey Wall had a commercial pilot's license, but not the ATP license.They're not one in the same.So you say, wait a minute, is this the same as Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can?He was faking being a pilot, never had any of the qualifications.No, it's not the same at all.

Leonardo DiCaprio just bought a pilot's uniform.learned a little bit of the lingo and charmed his way into the jump seat on an airplane.He was never at the controls of an airplane.He would have had to be a fraud on a different level in order to get that done, like this guy right here, okay?So having said that, It's not the same.You get a private pilot's license, and he has a private pilot's license, so this pilot has a private pilot's license.

The ATP is that secondary license that you have to get before you go to the left seat of an airplane.Now, There's so many questions here.Here's the first question.How did he get away with it for so long?That's number one on my mind.Number two on your mind and my mind is, what sort of trouble is he in now?

Did he get your hand slapped or what is this?How did he get caught?This is fascinating how he got caught.And finally, how did they not catch himhim for 16 years?How did they not detect this sooner?

16 whole years.This guy flew as a captain and didn't have the proper license to do so.All right, let's answer question number one.All right, he got caught after a routine check, right?After a routine check.So every 12 months, or every nine months for my entire career, I went down to get a checkride.

And during that checkride, before you go into the simulator for the check part of your checkride, you would have to produce your pilot's license and your medical.And it's a piece of paper, your medical, and it's an actual driver's license.a laminated driver's license, an ATP license that you have to produce for the check airman, the supervisor.Supervisor looks him over in the front and back, okay.Then, and here in the United States, in the good old US of A, he will then go into the FAA's database and look at all of the information on your license and double check it with you right next to him.So, the two of you are sitting there and you're looking.

And you'll go, all right, pilot's license, blah, blah, blah.Is that correct?And you double check on the screen.Yep, that's correct.All right, still live at the same address?Okay, no limitations.

Okay, English proficiency?Yes.And you go and he flips it over the back.Okay, you're qualified on this airplane, this airplane.If it's not on the screen, you're in trouble.because something's wrong in the government database.

So he double checks not only the physical license, but the government database.Once you get all that done, he hands it back to you, says, thank you very much.And everybody is reassured that you haven't slipped through the cracks somehow or falsified something along the way.So that's every nine months at my airline.Now, every once in a while, as a captain, once a year, you'll get a random a random check, right?Check chairman will just show up and say, hey, Steve, I'm going to drive along with you today.

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for you.And can I have your license and your medical?And so you produce that for him.He goes through the same thing.He's on an iPad now.He looks it over, goes, okay, yeah, is this correct?

Same exact process to double check and verify.That's the point where he got caught.After 16 years, how many times had he handed his license over to somebody in those 16 years?And whatever this license was, apparently, It was falsified.Apparently it was a fake.Now, I say apparently because we don't know all of the details, but in the report from the government officials, they said, and I quote, anomalies were detected.

Anomalies were detected in the license that was presented.That's according to NBC News.So he handed over his license and this astute Czech airman went, huh?It's like a fake money, right?Counterfeit.It doesn't quite feel right.

It might look right, but you go, hmm.He's looking at it, maybe he holds it up to the light and goes, you know what?Something's not right.But how did he get away with it for that many years?Well, it's again, This couldn't be true, right?The guy's a captain.

He's sitting here in the seat.He's been flying for years.There's no way he faked a license.Your brain doesn't want to accept that, but some on top of it check pilot went, you know what?This isn't right.and began to dig a little deeper.

And the deeper he dug, the more he found out that this guy was fraudulently flying as a captain.Now, does that mean he wasn't qualified?Hold on to that because there's two different things here going on.Two things can be true at the same time.So just I want you to put a pin in that thought right now.So then they told Transport Canada, who started an investigation.

Transport Canada is like the equivalent of the FAA up there.Transport Canada then started Project Icarus, to check licenses across Canada.So this guy lit up, right?This is important.for Transport Canada as it's embarrassing for Air Canada.I think that's more of a story than the fact that this captain was flying as a captain and it falsified or had a fake ID or fake license all the way along.

That I can track and understand.Why would you do that?Again, but I think Air Canada has some egg on their face.All right.Wall apparently deceived his employer and the federal civil aviation regulators.He is charged with seven, count them, seven counts, all right, under Canadian law, including fraud, uttering forged documents, and public mischief.

I don't know what public mischief is in good old C -A -N -A -D -A, but public mischief to me means, what, did he TP the chief pilot's house or the federal regulators?Did he go out and throw toilet paper in the house?I don't know.But anyways, public mischief, right?And he's also accused of filing a false report to police claiming his pilot documents were stolen, according to the Associated Press.It's never the crime that gets you, my friends.

It's always the cover up.It's always the cover up.You dig a deeper hole when you try to falsify or lie on top of a lie.If you've been flying around forever and you faked a pilot's license at the point where it gets discovered, it's time to come clean.I'm here to tell you.It's just time to come clean.

Yep, I did it.It was wrong.I'll never do it again.You know, throw yourself on the mercy of the court at that point.But if you lie to the police and claim that somehow somebody stole your your real documents and you had to forge some fake ones because you were embarrassed or I don't know what the story is.Now you're compounding our issues.

All right.So that's number one is, you know, how did he get caught?All right.Second is what trouble is he in?I would think that he's inbe considerable trouble.

I think this guy's probably going to face some jail time, if not some certainly some hefty fines, probably a combination of the two.Everybody here in the U .S.and in Canada takes public transportation and public safety very seriously.And especially when you do something that's so outrageous that you embarrass your employer and you embarrass the government.they're probably going to throw the book at you.

And so he was arrested on June 1st.He's got a court date on June 29th.We're going to know more about it then.If there's any good details, we'll come along and we'll share an update on Jeffrey Wall and what is going on with him.But I would think he's in considerable trouble.Okay, question number three, what did he get away?

How did he get away with it?That's a great question.How did he get away with this for so long?And were his passengers in danger?Well, my contention is his passengers were never in danger.Why?

Because he passed every one of his check rides.This guy, by all measures, was a good pilot.He could actually fly the airplane.That's where the connection with Catch Me If You Can, the movie, falls apart because Leonardo DiCaprio never flew an airplane.This guy was flying an airplane every nine months or 12 months, I think, up in Canada.You get a checkride.

He had to pass all his checkrides.Regardless of whether he had the documentation to support him or not, he still had to pass the checkrides.Now, so was he qualified?Technically, yes, but only technically, right?He was in the position, he was passing the checkrides, but that essential piece of paperwork that he skipped or he falsified that piece.Does that make you a better pilot?

Well, hold on to that because I've got a thought on that.I want to talk about that a little bit.Was he an imposter or a pretender?And the answer to that is, yeah, a little bit.Sort of.It's complicated.

There's a thing called imposter syndrome, and that's different than what I'm discussing.Imposter syndrome is when you're in a position and you just don't feel like you're qualified.You are qualified, but you doubt yourself how you got here.You're like, I don't know.I'm just a kid from the suburbs.You know, I shouldn't be a captain at an airline.

Well, you are, right?And there's a little humility in all of that.That's not what this is.This guy was actually a captain, but he had skipped something that was essential and important and that was eventually going to catch up with him.This is more of an embarrassment to Air Canada, I think, than anything else.How did they let this guy fall through the cracks?

And the illustration is this.Could you be a good driver and not have a driver's license?Now think about that for a minute.Could you be a good driver and never get a driver's license?And the answer to that is, yes, you could.You can just go out in your car right now, never get a driver's license, go out, learn how to drive, be an excellent driver.

In fact, could you be a good captain and never possess an ATP rating?Yeah.Yeah, apparently you can up in good old Canada.And so he was, by all measures, everybody looked at this guy and went, yeah, he's a very good captain, very good at the airplane, very safe and all that.So I don't think any passengers were in harm or in danger at any point because he didn't have the last license that he needed to get to.My driver's license example, here's a perfect example of it.

Max Verstappen, all right, is a very famous F1 driver.When he was 17 years old, I think this is back in like 2015 timeframe, hehave a driver's license.He was only 17 years old.And in Belgium, you need to be 18 before you can apply for and get your driver's license.So this guy drove for 14 Grand Prix races on the circuit without a driver's license, and it was completely okay by F1.

To be an F1 driver, you don't need to have a civilian driver's license.Max's mother drove him to the racetrack to drive his car.Was he a good driver?The best of the best.Did he have a driver's license?No.

Two things can be true at the same time.I don't know about Jeffrey Wall as a pilot.I'm assuming since he passed his check rights, he was a competent captain, but he didn't have the ATP, that Air Transport Pilot's License, that he was required to have.And so that gets us to the final question.How did they not catch him for 16 years?And how did he get away with it?

I mean, those are two kind of interconnected questions.Well, it was apparently a carefully crafted forgery, the license that he had.My question is, how did he get the written exam that he was supposed to take?How did he get credit for that?Or did nobody ever double check that he got credit for that?Because when I took my ATP exam, it was by a licensed government ATP examiner who, when I was done, graded my test and went right over to the computer and went, all right, your name, your social security number, here you go, boom.

And the date and the grade I got and everything else is right there.You can still go check it out today.In fact, I did it every nine months.So all of that stuff needed to be loaded in a computer.Was there some way up in Canada to somehow forge that?I don't know the answer to that.

That's what's going to come out in the investigation.Buta very carefully crafted forgery of a pilot's license, which he had to produce, a skill set that passes check rights.He obviously was very good at this.And the sheer audacity of the fraud.When you put all three of those things together, I think that's how he got away with it for 16 years.

Just the sheer audacity of the fraud.People just couldn't comprehend in their brain He's over here, but he never did his ATP checkride?That can't be.There must be some other... explanation.And so maybe when they looked at his license, they went, I don't know, just kind of feels funny or whatever.And they handed it back to him.

It couldn't be, you know, maybe it's because it sat in his pocket or something or got sweat on.I don't know.It's hard.There's lots of reasons that somebody would try to explain away something, any of the checkpiles that were checking this guy's credentials.The sheer audacity, I think, is what caught most people off guard.And then, All those things put together, right?

Careful forgery, a set that passes, a skill set that passes all of his check rides.Voila, you have Jeffrey Wall and a 26 -year career at the airlines.I think he was about 11 years as a first officer, another 15 or 16 as a captain.All right, this is absolutely shocking on a lot of different levels, but it's But at the same time, you can look at it and go, oh, yeah, I can kind of see how that happened.All right.Just here's here's the takeaways on all of this.

Here's my takeaway.Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.It's the difference of the world between can and can't and should and shouldn't.I taught a leadership course for the Navy for years.And I thought I did.Twenty twenty five thousand sailors came through my course over the an 18 year period.

And we talked about can and can't and shouldn't shouldn't.And we live in this world today.of the world of can and can't.Just because you can do something, however, doesn't mean that you should do something.You've been trying to teach that lesson to your children for a long time.Is it legal?

Can I get away with it?Will anybody find out?And if I do get caught, what trouble will I get into?Those are all the questions that somebody who's going to forge a document like this and perpetuate a fraud is asking all the time.And apparently, for a very, very long time, got away with it.So having said that, the longer you get away with it, the more emboldened you get by it.

Should you do something like this?No, absolutely not.Here's the equivalent.A doctor, a brain surgeon, right?Somebody in one of the articles that I read equated what Jeffrey Wall did to a family doctor, family practice doctor, practicing brain surgery in his office.That's not the illustration here at all.

This is an actual qualified brain surgeon, but to be a neurosurgeon, a brain surgeon, you have to go to medical school and get an MD.That's the first step.A pilot has to go get their private pilot's license, step one.Then you go into a residency as a doctor.For a neurosurgeon, that's going to be about seven years.For a pilot, you're going to have to accumulate your hours.

You can do that as a first officer at a major airline.You can accumulate all of those hours to finally get qualified to go over to the left seat.neurosurgeon then has to go and get board certified.And at that point, now they can be performing brain surgery, they can be doing a wonderful, fantastic, they can be the best brain surgeon in the world.Then the final step for them, the equivalent of that ATP written exam and that ATP checkride is board certification.So they're going to go before whatever their governing board is, they're going to pass the exams that are there at that level, and then they're going to get licensed and board certified.

That's the part that Jeffrey skipped.He had everything else in place.He could fly an airplane just fine.He could pass a checkride just fine.He had all the experience and all the hours, but he didn't do the board certification.He didn't do his ATP written exam, apparently, and he didn't have that ATP checkride.

And how he got from the right seat to the left seat without it?that's going to remain a mystery.So just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.Air Canada has egg on their face over this and I would be embarrassed too if I was over there and didn't catch this.And finally, number three, cheaters never prosper.It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when you get caught.

Well, now you know.I'm Captain Steve.Fly safe.Sometimes there's things in aviation that are absolutely shocking that you can hardly believe.If you want to see another video or two of some stuff that's shocking and just kind of hard to comprehend, check out this video or this one that YouTube recommends.