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The Great Flour Bombing Campaign of 1989

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • The narrator, an FAA employee, discovers the private airport of reclusive but talented pilot and mechanic John Schweller, whose community-building efforts at Lumberton Airport are ignited by the narrator's unconventional "flour bombing" fly-in.
  • The narrator details two tragic aviation accidents: John Schweller's fatal crash on Christmas night with his son and infant granddaughter, attributed to a "lack of situational awareness" in fog; and years later, the death of her friend Bruce Menkel (who was with her when she first found Lumberton) in a King Air crash during a foggy approach.
  • Grappling with intense personal grief and the surreal nature of losing close friends to accidents she professionally understands, the narrator reflects on the inevitability of human error in aviation and finds a way to honor the memories of those lost while continuing her work in accident prevention.
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Illustrated by Chris Gall

It was the summer of 1989, and the Midwest was sweating through an endless stretch of hot and humid days, cloudless but wrapped in a thick layer of haze. Weather forecasts were so boringly predictable that calling for a VFR briefing was pointless; the vis would come up to three miles by midmorning and anything beyond “hot and humid with no chance of precipitation” would have been front page news. Remember those good old, pre-9/11 days when the only place you saw a TFR was on an FAA written test?

Martha Lunken

Martha Lunken is a lifelong pilot, former FAA inspector and defrocked pilot examiner. She flies a Cessna 180 and anything with a tailwheel, from Cubs to DC-3s.

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