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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Sponsor

Honored by:
Jason Russ

Captain Gary Russ saw a commercial plane at the airport in the late '50s and said, "That's what I want to do with my life". He learned to fly at Crystal Shamrock in north Minneapolis during the morning, attended classes at the University of Minnesota in the afternoon, and worked nights for the railroad while raising a young family.

Gary was hired to fly the L-188 Electra for Northwest Airlines in August of 1966. He went from flying turbo props around the Upper Midwest, to flying the B-707, DC-10, B-727, and B-747 all over the world.

The high point of his career was captaining and orchestrating the successful diversion of a crippled B-747 back to the ground after a catastrophic engine failure, smoke in the cabin, and multiple bells and vibrations too numerous to mention. For this, he and his crew received the 1996 ALPA Superior Airmanship Award.

Gary's last revenue flight was to begin as Flight 8, Northwest's iconic link from Seattle to Tokyo. The 1:30p flight was cancelled earlier that day due to the morning events of September 11, 2001.

Starting out as a poor kid from Minneapolis with a dream, to flying props with no autopilots and executing NDB approaches, to walking the ALPA picket line many times, to guiding the massive B-747 into Hong Kong on the checkerboard approach, Captain Gary Russ had a truly remarkable career.