Captain Marco Rusconi

Captain Marco Rusconi

Snowbird #7

Victoria, BC

Call sign: Diego

It didn’t take long for Marco Rusconi to achieve his long-time career goal of becoming a Snowbird pilot.

At just 30, Rusconi is in his fourth year with the Snowbirds. The average term for a Snowbird is typically just two or three years.

Rusconi, who was born with dual Canadian-Italian citizenship but grew up in Italy, said the first time he saw the Snowbirds in high school his sights were set.

"I saw the team when I was in high school and said, ‘ya that would be an awesome job to do’," he said.

Rusconi was recruited by the military and educated at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario where he completed his undergraduate degree. After he became an officer in Kingston, he moved to Moose Jaw to become a pilot. After that two year process was done he became a flight instructor for another two years and in 2007 when the Snowbirds were looking for new recruits, Rusconi asked to try out.

Today, he admits, he was a long shot, but went in with the “nothing-to-lose” attitude. He was selected for the team at just 26 years old.

"A lot of stars had to allign for me to be here, and I just consider myself very lucky to just have made it on the team," he said.

In his first year his experience was on the lower-end of the scale compared with some of the older Snowbirds, and he said the learning curve was steep. That tough first year has motivated Rusconi to mentor his new peers.

"You do so much growing in your junior year on the team and the learning process never stops but now when you see a junior member come in you want to help them out," he said.

This year he is the senior training partner to rookie Snowbird Denis Bandet, of Regina. Rusconi said it’s an interesting dynamic since Rusconi has three seasons under his belt performing the Snowbirds precise maneouvres, but Bandet has more overall flying experience.

"He’s a more experienced aviator than myself and so therefore its quite interesting that even though I’m the senior training partner," he said of the relationship adding that they’ve become close friends outside of work too.

"We poke fun at each other as well which is an important thing on any team," he said.