We Lost a Great Friend Yesterday

Flying is an inherently dangerous business.

I have often heard, and experienced, that the longer you are in this business the more likely you will lose a friend.  For what was unfortunately not the first time, I lost a friend in an airplane accident yesterday.

Ian McBeth was one of the pilots on the Coulson Aviation plane that crashed while fighting fires in Australia.  Ian was a consummate professional, and one of the best pilots I ever had the opportunity to fly with.  He was an expert in his craft and one of the most respected pilots in the firefighting community.

On top of working for Coulson, Ian was also a member of the Montana National Guard and before that the Wyoming National Guard, also flying the C-130 as an expert on the MAFFS mission.

I got to know him because over the last year or so he regularly flew with us in Reno as we continue to get spun up as the newest of the MAFFS units.  He was an exceptional instructor in what is arguably the most dangerous mission the C-130 executes.  He was always calm and collected as our pilots learned this dynamic and essential mission.

I will always remember his cool demeanor, and his ability to mould our pilots into even better pilots.  Ian was always a pleasure to be around and he will be truly missed.

This whole thing frankly sucks, and is a good reminder to all of us aviators that what we do is dangerous and unforgiving.  We will all learn from this tragedy and improve the safety of this mission in any way we can.

As I talked with my fellow classmates here at UPT Icame to realize one of the amazing characteristics of pilots, and more specifically Air Force pilots.  We have an incredible amount of resiliency.  We have terrible tragedies like this, we take the time to mourn our friends, and we will certainly never forget them, but then we get back to work and take care of business.

That is what our friends would want.

Ian was doing what he loved, and that is a great example for all of us to commit ourselves to something as important as fighting fires, and more importantly to commit fully to whatever it is we do.

To all of our friends that have gone before…a toast.

You will be missed Ian.