Flying with family

Published June 17, 2013
By Tech. Sgt. Andrew Caya
914th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

NIAGARA FALLS AIR RESERVE STATION, N.Y. -- Mothers and fathers in the military may find their children trying on their uniforms after the duty day or when they separate from the service. One Air Force dad found out his son was flying his old planes.

Don't worry. The son, Capt. Matt Ables, a 2008 graduate of the Air Force Academy, is fully qualified to pilot a plane and comes from a family of C-130 pilots.

"The first time I flew the same plane, I took a picture of the tail number and sent it to him," said Capt. Ables, an aircraft commander in the 50th Airlift Squadron at Little Rock Air Force Base.

Lt. Col Mark Ables, 914th Airlift Wing Combat Readiness officer, said a unit he used to fly with lent aircraft to the C-130 school in Little Rock, Arkansas where his son was training. So Capt. Ables piloted the planes that Lt. Col Ables once flew.

"It was a weird, surreal experience to know that my dad had been flying the same actual piece of machinery," said Capt. Ables.

Flying the same aircraft did not stop in training, as the father and son have flown the same aircraft in times of war.

Capt. Ables, a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan Campaigns, said when he was deployed, every now and then, he'd see relics of the 914th Airlift Wing's flying unit--the 328th Airlift Squadron on the aircraft he was piloting at the time.

When Capt. Ables arrived in Afghanistan, he said one of his first flying missions occurred when he was becoming oriented to the area of operation. He said when his crew was readying the plane, he saw the iconic mushroom sticker of the 328th.

He said he wasn't sure if that was the same aircraft his father piloted, but there were a handful of planes that he commanded overseas that his father was also the commander of.

"It's a surreal experience to know someone in your family was there before you, and I'm half way around the world in these cases." said Capt. Ables.

For years, the two pilots have been in the same plane at different times. That changed as, as the two Ables flew together for the first time as commissioned officers June 12.

Because the younger Ables is an Active Duty Airman on leave, he can legally fly in the same plane as his father as a passenger, said Lt. Col. Ables.

"We've been talking about this for some time," said Lt. Col. Ables. "When he (Capt. Ables) went to pilot training he wanted to fly C-130s like his dad and grandfather...and we were thinking for a long time how cool it would be for us to fly together."

"I'm going to learn a lot from him, said Capt. Ables. "It's a great opportunity to get a different perspective on how we do the same things."

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