Air Force veteran completes C-130 flight over Lake Oconee
If you happened to glance up at the vast sky on June 26, you might have spotted a U.S. Air Force C-130J flying at an unusually low altitude.
It wasn’t a military exercise or the prelude to anything over Lake Country, but rather the final flight — known in Air Force circles as a “fini flight” — of Lt. Col. Ryan Sanders, who is retiring after 22 years of service.
On the ground, social media quickly filled with photos and videos of the aircraft passing over Lake Oconee in the midday sun. After the flight, Sanders returned to Dobbins Air Reserve Base, where his wife, Lauren, had the opportunity to taxi the aircraft in and take part in the celebration of his final flight.
“He is an elite pilot,” Lauren Sanders said. “There is nobody I’d trust more to fly with.”
The couple met in 2004 when Lauren was teaching high school in Marietta, fittingly home to the former Bell Bomber Plant and now Lockheed Martin, which produces the C-130, C-141 Starlifter, and C-5 Galaxy.
After a chance meeting, the relationship began long-distance. Lauren eventually moved to Texas to be closer to Ryan, and the couple married on Veterans Day in 2006.
Since then, their family has grown with the birth of their daughter, Avery Beth, now 17, and son, Crew, 4.
Lauren said she understood early on that Air Force life would mean long separations from her husband, but felt it was worth it.
During his career, Ryan Sanders was deployed to Iraq three times, Afghanistan twice, Guam, Germany, and on numerous temporary duty assignments lasting from a few days to as long as six months.
Lauren estimates he spent roughly 2,000 days deployed or serving overseas.
Sanders said he became hooked on flying after experiencing an emergency landing early in his career — an incident that may have unsettled others but only deepened his interest.
After receiving a congressional appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy, he pursued a pilot slo. He ultimately flew the C-130, an Air Force workhorse that has been in service since the 1950s.
The C-130J Sanders flew is not a fast aircraft.
“It’s fun to fly, but it does take a while to get someplace,” he said.
He said one of its greatest strengths is its ability to land on short, austere runways, including strips in Afghanistan that were not well-lit.
“It was like descending into a black hole,” Sanders said. “You can’t see anything until you’re at 300 feet.”
One of his most memorable missions came in Afghanistan when his aircraft was struck by enemy fire. Despite the damage, he was able to deliver critical supplies to U.S. troops on the ground.
After Sanders and his wife moved to Reynolds in 2018, he joined the Air Force Reserve while also working in civilian aviation, which allowed him to return home most evenings.
Now retired from active duty, Sanders will still spend time in the cockpit, flying an Airbus A350 in civilian service.
Hopefully, he is well past being shot at.