High-flying pilot stands down

Life has been quite a ride for U.S. Air Force Maj. Jason “Jaws” Curtis.

On Wednesday, Kalispell native Curtis, 35, wrapped up his three-year stint with the elite U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds in a final flight aboard an F-16 Fighting Falcon at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

“After flying back to Las Vegas, I shut down my F-16 for the last time. My wife, Larissa, showered me with champagne and my daughter, Aurora, sprayed me with a fire hose,” Curtis said. “The entire Thunderbird squadron was there for my farewell.”

Curtis, a solo pilot, has seen life right-side up and upside-down. As the lead solo, Thunderbird No. 5, for the past year, he spent a lot of time inverted, which is why the No. 5 on his jet is upside down, Curtis explained during a phone interview with The Daily Inter Lake. The previous year, he served as Thunderbird No. 6, the opposing solo.

As a Thunderbird, Curtis has flown in 147 air shows in 72 locations — including the 2014 Mountain Madness Air Show in the Flathead Valley — with nine fly-overs for events such as the Super Bowl.

Performing in his hometown was “definitely” one of the most memorable air shows for Curtis, a 1999 Flathead High School graduate who learned to fly at Kalispell City Airport.

“The one thing I really enjoyed at the Kalispell show was a unique chance for me to connect my service to our nation with my local community. To put on a show with the Thunderbirds was something a lot of the community has never seen before,” said Curtis, who recalled that he was just 4 years old in 1985 when he saw the Thunderbirds perform in Kalispell.

“The greatest thing that came out were the mentoring opportunities that arose,” Curtis said.

In the week prior to the Mountain Madness Air Show, Curtis received a hero’s welcome and talked to audiences at Flathead High School and Flathead Valley Community College, where he also attended school before he went to the U.S. Air Force Academy.

It takes a lot of experience to be a Thunderbirds demonstration pilot.

Curtis has clocked 2,500 hours in an F-16 and 285 hours of combat time in Afghanistan and Libya.

“After coming home from a combat deployment in Afghanistan, it was there that I saw the hardships our soldiers went through on daily basis that didn’t necessarily receive a lot of recognition and praise,” Curtis said. “Their stories need to be told.”

The “Ambassadors in Blue” represent “nearly 700,000 active duty, Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard and civilian airmen,” according to the U.S. Air Force.

Just as athletes have a training preseason, so do the Thunderbirds, practicing twice a day from mid-November to mid-March “at least 94 times,” Curtis said. The result is awe-inspiring precision in tight formations.

“No. 6 is as close as 18 inches away from me with wingtip overlap,” Curtis said of one maneuver. “There really is little room for error.”

Curtis will be grounded for a while as his life takes flight in a new direction.

“I’m sure there will be growing pains,” Curtis said about coming down from 11 years of flying F-16s. “But I welcome it. I welcome broadening my educational experiences in this world.”

Instead of a seat in the cockpit, Curtis will take a seat at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service to obtain a master’s degree through the Air Force’s Foreign Policy Fellowship Program.

He will also serve as an intern at the U.S. Department of State working on policy development — unless he hears back on a pending application for a fellowship program at the White House to intern in the executive branch.

“It’s by far the most challenging application I’ve done — 19 pages, mostly essays,” Curtis said, in addition to a letter of recommendation from U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.

His end goal is to work in an embassy for at least two years as a foreign affairs specialist.

Before his family moves to Washington, D.C., in the summer, he hopes to make a stop in Montana to visit family. And no matter where he goes, Curtis said, “I’m extremely proud to be from Montana.”

In the future, Curtis forecasts he will be back in the sky.

“I’ll come back and potentially fly the F-35,” Curtis said in such a way that you could picture him smiling on the other end of the line.