Episode Notes

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Hasara is a former United States Air Force KC-135 instructor pilot and veteran of four wars. As Deputy Commander of the cadre tasked with building the world’s only TOPGUN-style school for the Air Force KC-135 fleet, Mark and the cadre developed the 509th Weapons Squadron, the only PhD-level school on global air refueling operations. Eight days after 9/11, Mark began a series of deployments to the Middle East planning and executing air refueling operations for all six coalition nations as Chief of the Air Refueling Control Team from an allied Air Operations Center near Riyadh Saudi Arabia. In twenty-six days, this team of 30 US and International airmen planned and executed operations transferring enough fuel to allow a Ford F-150 truck to make 2685 round trips to the moon. Mark was selected as a curriculum director at National Defense University’s Joint and Combined Warfighter School, training US and international officers in the campaign and military operations. Leaving the Air Force in 2007, Mark led a Systems Engineering team designing cockpits for military aircraft working for Rockwell Collins. His autobiographical book Tanker Pilot: Lessons from the Cockpit was published by Simon & Schuster in November 2017. Mark began hosting the Lessons from the Cockpit podcast in October 2021, educating and entertaining his audience with flying stories but more importantly what did aviators learn from those extreme and extraordinary events in the air? A gifted stage speaker, Mark instructs audiences on the three words every pilot uses to get through any bad situation: Aviate, Navigate, and Communicate. His website is markhasara.com He and his wife Valerie live in Salt Lake City Utah and are parents to five children.