TALOYOAK/SPENCE BAY - As a child, Noah Nashaooraitook would play with the light switches above his passenger seat, pretending he was the pilot doing the checklist in preparation for take off.

Noah Nashaooraitook, a co-pilot with Keewatin Air, flies medevacs for the company out of the Baffin region. Originally from Taloyoak, he said he is one of three Inuit flying planes commercially. - Jeanne Gagnon/NNSL photo

He now flies in the right-hand seat of a plane's cockpit as a co-pilot for Keewatin Air, one of its 16 pilots flying medevacs out of the Baffin region.

"It was something I always wanted to do but I never got a chance to do it because of personal reasons. Eventually, I was able to do it," he said. "It was my passion since I was a young person."

The part he always finds exciting, he added, is seeing the runway appear through the clouds as they are about to land.

Born and raised in Taloyoak, Nashaooraitook started his fixed-wing aviation training in 2003 and finished his commercial training in 2006 before getting his multi-engine and instrument ratings a year later. He started working for Air Nunavut in 2008, flying mostly charters, before joining Keewatin Air in September 2010, doing medevacs for the company since mid-December.

"There are rotations that are really quiet. There some rotations that are really busy," he said. "It just depends on the time of the year, too. Certain times of the year, there are a lot of people having colds or a child having a cold or a person just really sick. There are times there's not as many people that are sick, so it gets quieter."

Nashaooraitook said he knows of three Inuit flying planes commercially.

"It was mostly personal why I wanted to be a pilot, but at the same time I wanted the young people (to know) they can fly as well," he said. "Whoever you are, as long as you want to do it - you want to become a pilot or anything that you want - as long as you're passionate about it, you can do it."