When my husband and I started dating in 2010, I told my dad, a retired Air Force Airborne Warning and Control System mechanic, that my date was a Black Hawk pilot. My dad made a face and said helicopters were just flying rocks and called them dangerous. He said he had no desire ever to fly on one.
In 2013, my husband was deployed to Afghanistan for the first time. I was seven months pregnant and at home when the phone rang. I answered and heard my husband's voice saying, "There was a crash. It wasn't me. You won't hear from me for a while. I love you."
Click. The phone line went dead. I slid down to the cold tile floor and sobbed. I didn't hear from him again for a week. Both of the pilots who died were in my husband's class in flight school.
In 2014, I stood in the living room rocking the baby back and forth while the news showed my husband dropping water on a raging fire. The news camera zoomed in on his helicopter just as the fire flared in front of him and his Black Hawk disappeared behind a plume of black smoke. The news anchor exclaimed, "Oh, my gosh!" as my heart dropped. I wondered whether I had just seen my husband's last moments on live TV. I breathed a sigh of relief along with the news team as he emerged from the smoke a few seconds later.
In 2015, in a beautiful northern Colorado valley, I sat next to my husband on a little couch in a cabin with several other military families. After two nearly back-to-back deployments, our family was on a retreat with Project Sanctuary, which supports military families by focusing on their mental health. Despite our peaceful surroundings, we all looked nervous, sad or both.
The topic on this day was trauma and PTSD. The veterans and active-duty service members in the room were encouraged to speak about their horrific experiences that led to having PTSD. After everyone who was in or had been in the military spoke about their experience, a hush fell over the room. Tear-stained faces looked at the floor, while others who felt awkward stared out windows. Then, the veteran who was leading this session spoke: "Now, what about your spouses?"
Everyone looked up in confusion and asked for clarification. He said that while spouses may not necessarily have PTSD, they often have anxiety due to their experiences at home while their service member is deployed or due to dealing with their PTSD when they return home. Everyone thought for a moment, finding their answer, but I knew mine instantly. When it came my turn, my voice trembled as I said, "When people call me and ask me if he is dead."
My husband asked, "What?"
"Every time, there is a helicopter crash remotely near where his friends and family last heard he was, they call me and ask me if he is OK," I explained. "I usually haven't even heard about the crash yet, and if he is flying, I often have to wait for hours to find out if he is alive."
The other people in the room agreed it was awful, and my husband hugged me hard as I sobbed, my shoulders shaking as I laid down this heavy load for the first time.
It wouldn't be the last.
The aviation community is very small. The rotary aviation world is even smaller. Since I met my husband in 2010, we have not gone a single year without a fatal crash in our community. He often knows those who have died, or one of his friends or co-workers knew them. Between 2020 and 2024, there were 12 serious incidents involving Black Hawk helicopters and 17 involving Apache helicopters, according to Army Aviation Mishap Prevention., according to Army Aviation Mishap Prevention.
At this point, I cannot count the number of times I have waited with bated breath for confirmation of the safety of my husband or our friends. Every time, there is a flurry of text messages and a head count done. The rush of relief -- immediately followed by sadness and a touch of guilt knowing that someone else is learning of the loss of their loved one -- is a feeling I know well. I hold Gold Star families in a place of reverence, while simultaneously fearing the possibility of becoming one.
I keep a binder called "The Deployment Binder," and it contains every password, detail and phone number I might need to know. We update it regularly with my husband's wishes for his funeral. We joke about him wanting to be shot out of a cannon or buried at sea. When he and his fellow pilots talk about work, we make dark jokes that would leave most people clutching their pearls.
We also talk about history and statistics. One of his favorite facts to share is that during the Vietnam War, the life expectancy of an Army Huey pilot in combat was about 19 minutes. Our conversations about death are frank, open and constant while peppered with humor to make them bearable. The possibility of death in this industry is a constant undercurrent; we have to acknowledge it, or the grief and fear will drown us.
One of the darker parts of being a pilot includes listening to the last moments of those who have gone down while trying to discern what went wrong to avoid doing whatever that thing was. No crash is ever taken lightly, and it takes up space in our minds and hearts with that mixture of grief and relief that has become so routine in our home. After the January collision of a Black Hawk and an American Airlines passenger jet over Washington, D.C., my husband analyzed every radio call and video along with flight patterns.
Coincidentally and sadly, I am writing this article as my husband books a flight to yet another funeral. Crashes are not the only death with which we are all too familiar. The other night, we lost another friend to suicide. Many do not realize this, but pilots are unable to reach out for mental health help without being grounded, possibly permanently.
While there are ways for them to get back in the cockpit eventually, they are difficult and full of red tape, not to mention they still have to pay the bills in the meantime. It is because of this that many pilots and crew members often refuse to go to therapy or get help, no matter how badly they need it. Pilots who need help often keep it to themselves, fall through the cracks and often lose the battle they've been fighting.
Regardless of the reason for the loss, attending funerals on such a constant basis changes you. My husband's old unit has attended so many funerals that many refuse to wear their dress blues to the unit Christmas party. They associate the formal uniform with death and sorrow, and it only brings back those memories when they wear it. They will don those uniforms this weekend at yet another funeral.
When I explain to people the amount of death and grief we encounter, they love to use that most-hated phrase in the military community: "I could never do that!" I always respond with a shrug and say, "We don't really have another choice."
My husband loves to fly, and he loves the medevac mission -- a mission already filled with more trauma and death than most in the aviation world. I would never ask him to give up something he loves. As with all things, we must take the bad with the good.
Movies constantly kill helicopter pilots and crew in a crass, throw-away moment as an excuse for an explosion. The pilots in the movies rarely even get names or lines. They don't get a backstory. They are just fodder for shock value. On Jan. 29, 2025, that happened in real time as news anchors and armchair quarterbacks made callous commentary about the collision, pilots and crew involved in the crash over the nation's capital.
The deaths of pilots and crew members aren't political stunts; they are tragedies that leave an entire community in grief. Every single one of those tragedies affects the families in those communities, even if we didn't know the crew involved personally. At the very least, it leaves us fearing the possibility that our loved one could be the next one on the news, being heavily judged by people who have never sat in a cockpit.
While I hope that the aviation world will continue to become a safer place, I ask more immediately that you remember that the pilots are real people, with real families and real grief. I don't ask for pity or even sympathy, just mindfulness.
K.C. Hastings is an author, artist and esthetics educator. She grew up in an Air Force family, and her husband is currently an AGR Black Hawk pilot in Colorado.
Veterans and service members experiencing a mental health emergency can call the Veteran Crisis Line, 988 and press 1. Help also is available by text, 838255, and via chat at VeteransCrisisLine.net.
